The majority of the CLECs pick up your copper in the 'remote', each Central Office is serviced by a large number of remotes that concentrate the copper and usually implement a protocol known as GR.303 to oversubscribe the remote, normally at about a 4:1 ratio. The resulting lines are then routed back to the CO via high cap circuits, usually on a SONET ring. The remotes may be just fine, but if the CO is damaged/destroyed your calls have nowhere to terminate. CLECs and DLECs pick up the copper at the remotes just like the incumbent telco, but they jump off of the SONET ring in different locations, not at the CO. If you had service via the incumbent AND via one of the xLECs it would generally require widespread devastation in multiple locations (or at the remote itself) to take you completely out of service for any extended time period. FYI: We don't service the NorthEast US and I don't have explicit topology information for NYC, but this description covers every telephone office I have ever seen. Tim McKee -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Kath Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 02:16 To: Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Attacks Expose Telephone's Soft Underbelly I'm confused as to this comment: "Assuming they are willing to spend the money, business customers can achieve redundancy, or surplus and backup capacity, by running cables to several different central offices or, in some cases, by using several different communications carriers. Several of Verizon's competitors, in fact, have benefited from the disruptions by signing up new customers in Lower Manhattan. " Are they referring to voice CLECs (or data CLECs for that matter)? I don't see how this situation could have helped them, but only hurt them. I mean, if you have a physical facilities issue (severed copper/fiber optic, damaged CO), then you are gonna have problems with telephone or data service no matter who you use. Plus, some of us know how long opening and resolution of a trouble ticket with an ILEC can take when coming from a CLEC, but now you could only imagine when Verizon has a serious issue, like this. Even if it was a CLEC who ran/leased their own fiber/copper outside of Verizon's network, chances are they are in the same tunnels as Verizon. Are they maybe talking about telephone/data over satellites/microwave or something else wireless? - james -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Monday, October 15, 2001 1:52 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: NYT: Attacks Expose Telephone's Soft Underbelly The New York Times is reporting about some of the issues Verizon is facing with its New York recovery. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/15/technology/15PHON.html Although most people are focusing on Verizon, things are much more interesting when you look at the interaction of all the different carriers in lower Manhattan. And what I think is more important, what happened outside of Manhattan. Carriers restored service be re-routing circuits through Cleveland and London (Yes, England). One issue that did come up was government planning was limited to Verizon. So alternate capacity which could have been used during the first few days went unused, and some services were disrupted because employees of non-Verizon carriers weren't allowed into the area.