[10822] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: MCI & This weeks Net comments
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Pushpendra Mohta)
Fri Mar 11 00:17:35 1994
From: Pushpendra Mohta <pushp@cerf.net>
To: jim@chiba.tadpole.com (Jim Thompson)
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 12:56:39 -0800 (PST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9403081022.AA08836@chiba.tadpole.com> from "Jim Thompson" at Mar 8, 94 06:18:17 am
>
> > The way our access provider (Cerfnet) tells it, there's no way to tell the
> > phone company "I want this allotted bandwidth to have a different physical
> > path than that bandwidth."
>
>
I am not sure where the attribution to CERFnet originates from, perhaps
from the message I sent out in response to the MCI fiber outage in
San Diego last Friday.
Obviously , it is possible to tell the phone company to take
a physically diverse path, that is if the phone company has one to
offer . In San Diego, MCI has no diverse path.
So, we bought backup links from other carriers. What their sales people
did not know, or did not tell us , was that at some point that link
started to ride the MCI fiber in San Diego. There is a whole bunch of
bandwidth trading that goes on between carriers behind the scenes. This
effected us last Friday when the MCI cable was cut. We have a fully
interconnected backbone, but that was of no conolation. The NSFnet
backbone link was on the same fiber as well, so that even if the
affected part of CERFnet had stayed up we would have lost a chunk of
connectivity.
Now, we have ordered links from other ( third ) carriers that
promise us their first born if the link ever rides the MCI fiber
in San Diego. MCI plans to turn on a redundant path on May 5 as well.
Perhaps this discussion should move to comp.dcom.telecom
--pushpendra
Pushpendra Mohta pushp@cerf.net +1 619 455 3908
Director of Engineering pushp@sdsc.bitnet +1 800 876 2373
CERFNet
p.s
