FCC Outage Reports ..(.was Verizon outage in Southern California?)

Wallace Keith kwallace at pcconnection.com
Thu Oct 20 14:01:00 UTC 2005


I wasn't thinking in terms of  automatic monitoring, that would open up
a can of worms security wise.
 Just looking at some way of getting the manual reporting (that is still
taking place to the FCC) back in the (semi?)public domain. Due to
terrorism concerns, that information is no longer available online. I'm
pretty sure the LEC's and IXC's like it that way also, as they no longer
have to air their dirty laundry. I was able to get some information
under the Freedom of Information act for an outage that affected me
directly , but that takes days or weeks. As close to real-time
information as possible is what's needed to assess and respond to a
major outage, i.e. routing voice/data via different carriers, being able
to explain to end users why their email or phone calls didn't go through
, etc. and eliminating the need to open tons of trouble tickets during a
major event.  One master ticket - such as fiber cut affect xxx OC48's
would suffice.
Not sure how this can be balanced against DHS perceived needs
though...any suggestions?

-----Original Message-----
From: Vicky Rode [mailto:vickyr at socal.rr.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 5:45 PM
To: Wallace Keith
Subject: Re: Verizon outage in Southern California?

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I wonder how would Telcos, ISPs and GOV agencies feel about a third
party polling their devices, not to mention security.


I think netcarft comes close to what you're suggesting.


regards,
/virendra



Wallace Keith wrote:
> All this speculation!!
> Remember the good old days when you could see faxes of FCC outage 
> reports online?
> Was sure nice to know what was going on, before the FCC took these 
> offline (due to DHS?) It would really by nice to have some sort of an 
> online clearing house, and gain some visibility again into overall 
> network status. This will become even more important as things 
> continue to converge. DACS and DC Power failures tend to affect 
> multiple services and in the case of power,  multiple carriers that 
> are colo'd in the CO.
> -Keith
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf 
> Of Vicky Rode
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 1:29 PM
> To: wb8foz at nrk.com
> Cc: nanog list
> Subject: Re: Verizon outage in Southern California?
> 
> 
> I wonder what ever happened to redundancy? I guess 5 9s (dunno what 
> the going number is) got blown out of the water for them.
> 
> 
> 
> regards,
> /virendra
> 
> David Lesher wrote:
> 
>>>Speaking on Deep Background, the Press Secretary whispered:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I'm not completely familiar with the telco jargon.
>>>>Does Tandem mean the same as a local central office, where POTS 
>>>>lines terminate at the switch? Long Beach has a population of 
>>>>470,000. The C/Os I know of are:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>A "Central Office" switch talks to subscribers aka end-users. 
>>>On its backside, it talks to other CO's and tandems. Time was, that 
>>>was also VF copper pairs, but it's long since all
>>>DS1 and up.....
>>>
>>>A tandem is a switch that talks not to subs, but only to CO's. In 
>>>days
> 
> 
>>>of old, when a {dialup} call went to the other side of town, chances 
>>>are it went you-yourCO-downtown tandem-joesCO-joe. {copper all the 
>>>way...}.
>>>
>>>A tandem was always housed in large CO building, but might have been 
>>>ATT's vice the operationg company, etc...
>>>
>>>But ESS's and ""classless switching"" and massive expansion of the 
>>>plant really muddled the picture. An ESS could be both a CO switch 
>>>[for multiple prefixes and even multiple NPA's..] AND act like a 
>>>tandem.. And oh, the actual "line cards" can be remoted 100 miles 
>>>away
> 
> 
>>>in a horz. phonebooth box alongside the road in Smallville....
>>>with DS1's/OC coming back. 
>>>
>>>My guess is a DACS, a cross-connect point that is an software-driven 
>>>patch panel, lost its marbles. [engineering term of art.....] A DACS 
>>>could have dozen->MANY dozen DS1/DS3/OC-n going hither and yon. Some 
>>>will be leased circuits. Others will be the CO trunks going from one 
>>>switch to another. It may/may not have muxes internal, so that what 
>>>arrives on a DS1 leaves in a OC96..
>>>
>>>I note it went down at 2:20 AM. That SCREAMS software
upgrade/cutover.
> 
> 
>>>What's to bet GEE, no...VZEEE, was doing just that and there was a 
>>>major ohshit.
>>>
>>>Sean noted a long while back that somehow, DACS crashes always seem 
>>>to
> 
> 
>>>take hours to recover. Maybe the backups are on Kansas City standard 
>>>tapes, I donno.. but this sounds like that..
>>>
> 
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