nanog mailing list archives
Re: Telecom Collapse?
From: "Alexander Harrowell" <a.harrowell () gmail com>
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 00:16:38 +0000
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 7:18 PM, Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com> wrote:
We haven't really had a major catastrophe where we've been totally dependent on IP yet, AFIAK. Maybe all of the qos, call gapping and the rest of the stuff the TDM networks do to deal with disasters will be left in the dustbin of Moore's Law, but maybe they won't. One thing is certain: we'll definitely find out one day, and it's not likely to be from a position of having taken the precautions, congratulating ourselves IMO.
The only disaster I experienced which affected telecoms was the July, 2005 terrorist attack on London. Although the infrastructure wasn't affected, there were significant load challenges for the GSM nets especially. It was widely assumed by the unclued that either one or two GSM operators failed under peak load; by the clued that the Access Overload Control process, analogous to the PSTN's Government Telephone Preference Scheme, had been initiated to deal with the peak load. In fact, it turned out much later that AOC had indeed been declared, but unnecessarily, and against the decision of the lead agency dealing with the emergency. The Metropolitan Police didn't request it, but the (smaller) City of London force did, although the network in question was coping - the entire outage was caused by mismanaging the TDM call-gapping and QoS features. Both the Internet, and our corporate VoIP system including its peering with the wider PSTN, worked throughout.
Current thread:
- Re: Telecom Collapse?, (continued)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Marshall Eubanks (Dec 05)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? David Cantrell (Dec 05)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Jack Bates (Dec 05)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Ben Scott (Dec 05)
- RE: Telecom Collapse? Aaron Wendel (Dec 05)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Jeff Shultz (Dec 05)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Marshall Eubanks (Dec 05)
- RE: Telecom Collapse? Skywing (Dec 05)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Michael Thomas (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Steven M. Bellovin (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Alexander Harrowell (Dec 04)
- RE: Telecom Collapse? Erik (Caneris) (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Chris Marlatt (Dec 04)
- RE: Telecom Collapse? Skywing (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Stephen Sprunk (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Chris Marlatt (Dec 04)
- RE: Telecom Collapse? Skywing (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Joe Greco (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Josh Potter (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Paul Bosworth (Dec 04)
- Re: Telecom Collapse? Steven M. Bellovin (Dec 04)