nanog mailing list archives

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


From: Vicky Rode <vickyr () socal rr com>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:52:01 -0700


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Thinking out loud.

I guess some sort of trust model would help similar to what nsp-sec has
in place (not sure its current state).

It could be nice if there was some sort of a consensus among this
consortium to distribute executive health metrics with the help of some
secure trusted monitoring mechanism or maybe push model to a central
database of some sort.

Like to hear more thoughts as well.


regards,
/virendra

Wallace Keith wrote:
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 () socal rr com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 5:45 PM
To: Wallace Keith
Subject: Re: Verizon outage in Southern California?

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 () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On Behalf 
Of Vicky Rode
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 1:29 PM
To: wb8foz () 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..


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDWHPxpbZvCIJx1bcRAv/DAJwPg4J5CNSZc6z0kTv3UwFKHBKq7QCePH2M
As5MkIaZrrH0N+XnxT7oVAI=
=G/S3
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


Current thread: