----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Walden" <andy@tigerteam.net> To: "Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com> Cc: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 5:15 PM Subject: Re: Thursday Hawaii telephone mishap

...

Widespread chaos ensued:

"The Maui Visitors Bureau Visitor Information Center the agency's tourist call center on Moloka'i was crippled for 27 minutes." :) << I -wish- that was the extent of the cut.<smile> For 6 hours, I was unable to reach any exchange in the state or the mainland with my Verizon landline. My Sprint PCS phone could reach Oahu and the mainland, but all Verizon's Maui numbers resulted in fast busy. With PCS I could get messages to Nextel customers here on Maui, but they couldn't retrieve them. Can someone venture a guess as to what would cause Verizon's Maui intra-island system to collapse from a fiber cut 100 miles away on another Island? Oh btw, I wasn't using it during the entire outage, but my ADSL line worked fine for the 3 hours that I did use it. --Michael

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Sean Donelan wrote:

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http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Oct/26/ln/ln01a.html

A Verizon telephone worker accidentally cut a fiber cable in Kalihi yesterday, setting off a chain reaction that resulted in the most widespread phone failure in the Islands in recent years.

Widespread chaos ensued:

"The Maui Visitors Bureau Visitor Information Center the agency's

tourist

call center on Moloka'i was crippled for 27 minutes." :)

andy

-- PGP Key Available at http://www.tigerteam.net/andy/pgp

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Michael Painter wrote:

"The Maui Visitors Bureau Visitor Information Center the agency's tourist call center on Moloka'i was crippled for 27 minutes." :) <<

I -wish- that was the extent of the cut.<smile>

According to published reports, it disrupted approximately one-third of the telephone service in the State of Hawaii up to seven hours. State officials (Governor, Public utilities commission, legislature, etc) will hold the normal hearings and investigations of Verizon.

Can someone venture a guess as to what would cause Verizon's Maui intra-island system to collapse from a fiber cut 100 miles away on another Island?

My guess, lack of SS7 diversity. Although it receives limited public discussion, the public telephone network has significant risks in comparison to the Internet. Because of the public discussion, and customer demand, ISPs have been forced to invest a lot of money in network backups and now offer SLA's significantly better than any telephone company offers. On the other hand the telephone network has been undergoing a lot of "value engineering" for the last decade, reducing their network backups. I wonder if we have reached the cross-over point, and the Internet is now effectively more reliable than the public telephone network.

Oh btw, I wasn't using it during the entire outage, but my ADSL line worked fine for the 3 hours that I did use it.

This would indicate a problem in the control systems of the PSTN, since communications which didn't use that control system were unaffected.

On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Steve Goldstein wrote:

FYI, at about the time of the break, I was engaged in a Web-based meeting that included the Maui Supercomputer Center. We were using a phone bridge in San Jose, CA. The phone conversation persisted, but Maui's Internet connection dropped.

I do believe that if STP/SS7(?) trunks are dropped, calls in progress are not interrupted. Just my observation from when we did a number change and all that SS7 magic made our numbers move to a new provider. The cut was made, but all existing calls on our old dial equipment chugged merrily along... Charles

--Steve --

On Sun, 28 Oct 2001, Steve Goldstein wrote:

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I wonder if we have reached the cross-over point, and the Internet is now effectively more reliable than the public telephone network.

FYI, at about the time of the break, I was engaged in a Web-based meeting that included the Maui Supercomputer Center. We were using a phone bridge in San Jose, CA. The phone conversation persisted, but Maui's Internet connection dropped.

I don't know what type of network links the Maui Supercomputer Center has. Whether it was a problem with a commercial Internet provider or something specific to the Maui spercomputer center.