On Sun, 7 Jun 1998, Michael Dillon wrote:
If a large network with large amounts of nonportable space, like UUNET, were to fail entirely (financially, or system-wide, e.g.), what would happen to the address space that that network had assigned to its customers?
Nothing. First the courts would appoint someone to run the company on behalf of the creditors. Then someone would buy the assets and customers for 10 cents on the dollar. Operational impact will be minimal to
But...what would happen if some hypothetical national or international backbone provider (call it hypo.net) were to litterally run out of funds. If they fall far enough behind that the utility companies kill power to all their POPs, you could see a few days of loss of service before some other backbone buys the pieces and gets things back online. Sure, this would require monumental mismanagement, and is probably about as likely as natural disasters simultaneously destroying all a backbones POPs. BTW....while poking around just a bit at UUNet's web site, I found this: UUNET Technologies, headquartered in Fairfax, VA in the United States, was founded in May 1987. Now a WorldCom, Inc. subsidiary (NASDAQ: WCOM), UUNET is recognized as the largest Internet Service Provider in the world. Weren't they majorly downplaying the size of UUNet and MCI when the two were going to be owned by Worldcomm?? ------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lewis <jlewis@fdt.net> | Spammers will be winnuked or Network Administrator | drawn and quartered...whichever Florida Digital Turnpike | is more convenient. ______http://inorganic5.fdt.net/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key____