At 11:49 PM -0400 10/9/99, William Allen Simpson wrote: [snip]
APS is really a useless feature. Even when you get the contract to say there are diverse paths, they will later groom the circuits to put them in the same bundle.
Quite right that grooming is a constant threat. Depending on the carrier, one safeguard: when you write a contract in which you pay for facility diversity, write in a provision that lets you audit the Data Circuit Layout Record (or whatever the specific carrier calls it) periodically -- perhaps every 30 to 60 days. While they may groom both paths into a single cable, they will document this. By Murphy's Law, of course, they will tend to groom just after you've audited the documentation, but it's some help. I'm trying to remember the details, but I believe it was MCI in the Chicago or Florida area (not to single them out, just an example) that was sued successfully for not diversifying media for which facility diversity was specified, even though there was no actual outage.
Paul A Vixie wrote:
why pay the complexity and cost overhead of SONET if you're not building rings?