Its been a week since the latest provider-wide network failure, so
here's a bit of post-mortem.
As reported everywhere, the AT&T frame-relay network failed last
Monday, April 13, 1998. Since then, AT&T has been catching up in
the keeping the customer informed department. Even recognizing the
substantial penalty because of the slow initial response, I have to
admit that AT&T eventually surpassed most of their competitors in
this area. Full disclosure, AT&T did offer me some baseball tickets.
The next question is how well will Cisco/StrataCom handle their part
in this incident. Was it something unique about the AT&T network, or
are other providers who also use cisco/StrataCom frame-relay switches
at risk of experiencing the same problem. Or had they already experienced
the problem, and updated their switches prior to this event. This isn't
the first frame-relay network that has collapsed.
And finally, does anyone know why the cloak of secrecy over where the
two initial frame-relay switches that failed? Even though the New York
Times reported (which doesn't make it true, just highly probable) the
switches were in Albany and Cambridge, the AT&T people seem striken by
apoplexy when you mention the general location.