NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Massive AT&T U-verse phone service outage brings "President's Analyst" fantasy to real world
Massive AT&T U-verse phone service outage brings "President's Analyst"
fantasy to real world
http://bit.ly/aVjfO4 (AP / Fox23)
VoiP and other advanced digital phone services bring all manner of
benefits, but this failure by AT&T -- if actually as described by news
reports -- can only be viewed as gross engineering negligence.
The ability of "a server crash" to kill U-verse dial-tone in --
reportedly -- the entire 22-state AT&T local phone service area,
is remarkable in the extreme.
Keep in mind that with conventional phone systems, their distributed
and fault-tolerant designs make such a massive failure of local
dial-tone essentially impossible.
Back many years ago when I used to screen the classic 1967 film "The
President's Analyst" to groups, I'd sometimes be asked if the sort of
national phone system failure postulated in the film was actually
possible.
My answer was essentially no -- there was no "master control" for the
entire phone network in the sense that the loss of a single building
would have such national effects -- at least in terms of local and
typical regional connectivity.
But now, thanks to AT&T's apparent "under-provisioning" (to use a
polite term) of U-verse, the scenario described by agents Masters and
Kropotkin in the film suddenly doesn't seem so far-fetched after all:
http://bit.ly/b8zxe0 ("Plan Rasputin" - YouTube)
--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator