Exodus Files Chapter 11

Thu Sep 27 00:30:21 UTC 2001

On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 03:35:48PM -0700, Christian Nielsen wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 26 Sep 2001, Andy Ellifson wrote:
> 
> > It finally happened...  too bad.
> 
> Yes. But what does this mean to the network world? I dont think very much.
> Last I checked, AS_174 is still up and running. And I highly doubt anyone
> is going to go and turn the datacenters off tomorrow... Remember, this is
> Chapter 11 and not Chapter 7. If it was Chapter 7, I would be more
> worried. From the news stories I have read, Exodus had a lot of debt. I
> think they are going Chapter11 to get rid of that dept.
> 
> Airlines have done this in the past..... as have other companies. Not all
> make it but some come out of it in the end...
> 
> Christian
> ---------
> 
> i am me, i dont write/speak for them

Well, I would suggest that it may mean that certain customers will be
looking for other solutions, certain network links might also be
severed making it somewhat more difficult to get reliable connectivity
to the various locations within Exodus, and yet more geeks may be
living in cardboard boxes before the year is out.

Lets not forget that globalcrossing (who already laid off 13,000
people a couple of months ago), as a result of the sale of
globalcenter to exodus has a 20% stake in that company. Their stock is
now worthless. They also had contracts (which will no doubt be
renegotiated) as part of the sale to provide Exodus with at least 50%
(if I remember correctly) of their connectivity. No doubt the
bankruptcy will cause that company some considerable consternation
which could adversely affect their end of the year results meaning yet
MORE geeks could be living in cardboard boxes before the year is out.

Don't think that financial matters don't impact the network in some
ways. If companies of these sizes are struggling, what does that mean
for AT&T, Sprint, and WorldCom?

If various people decide they are losing money on their backbones,
they might be more inclined to oversell it, meaning more congestion
and more packetloss overall until the business climate
improves. Perhaps they'll delay upgrading that overworked router in
chicago or boston. Maybe they'll decide that the engineers don't
really need a full 8 hours of sleep and will allow certain problems to
persist instead of correcting them in a timely fashion. Who knows what
people will be willing to do to cut costs.

Deffinitely food for thought.

-Wayne

---
Wayne Bouchard
web at typo.org
Network Engineer
http://www.typo.org/~web/resume.html