
Paul A Vixie <vixie@mibh.net> writes:
> i take it that it's mostly the bypass carriers and the long haul > carriers who cheese out on ringing their sonet on diverse paths?
> i know pac bell rings just about everything.  how are the other > regionals?

Due to the way the FCC regulations are written, ILECS appear to
have more reportable outages.  However, due to who carries the
most Internet traffic, the cuts which make NANOG tend to involve
CLECs and a couple of long-haul IXCs.  Many of which aren't reportable
outages according the the FCC regulations.

I have a problem with the way the reporting is done, in particular
the "root cause" analysis.  Usually the backhoe is blamed as the
root-cause.  But as Paul points out, why should a single cut lead
to a reportable incident in these facilities?  As is usual in other
industries, there is often a string of decisions leading up to the
final direct cause of the the outage.

Whether a regional has rings or strings depends on where you
look.  In *major* metro areas, they tend to have rings.  In
the suburbs, strings start appearing.  In rural areas, rings
or any type of diversity is hard to find.  "Rural" isn't
necessarily god-forsaken country either.  Third-tier suburbs
around a metro area are a typical example.  They are often spokes
hanging off the metro ring.

SBC (parent of Pacbell, Ameritech, and others) has several outage
reports on file where most or all the circuits in a region were
routed through a single facility.




