Frank,
Looks like Sevcik is right again.
WorldCom Suffers Widespread Internet Outage
Thu Oct 3, 3:37 PM ET
By Elinor Mills Abreu
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Struggling WorldCom Inc. , which provides the major backbone network that routes traffic over the Internet, suffered a widespread outage on Thursday that cut off some businesses for most of the day and slowed Web access for others, the company and analysts said.
The network problems, which began at 8 a.m. EDT, affected corporate networks and millions of computer users across the United States and worldwide, analysts said.
WorldCom spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said that by about 2:30 p.m. EDT service was being restored but that the cause of the problem was still under investigation.
"Some customers are back up and we're working to restore the others as soon as possible," she said. "At this point our technicians and our vendors are investigating the cause of the issue."
As much as 65 percent to 70 percent of the world's Internet traffic runs across WorldCom's network, according to Matrix NetSystems.
The problems disrupted service for WorldCom's many corporate customers, and slowed down the Internet for others, said Peter Salus, chief knowledge officer at Matrix NetSystems, based in Austin, Texas.
"There probably were major delays in terms of getting onto the Internet for a few hours this morning" for some people, he said. "There were some people who were literally unreachable. If you subscribe directly to WorldCom's service, you couldn't get onto the Internet.
Salus and Tom Ohlsson, vice president of marketing and business development at Matrix NetSystems, said a WorldCom memo to customers indicated the problem may have been caused by a software glitch. It appeared to originate in routers in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, they said.
"The problem is performance losses at L.A. and D.C. peering locations are affecting routers on other Internet service providers," Ohlsson said. "There is congestion on other networks because they can't get their data off their networks onto WorldCom."
Salus estimated that for those who did not suffer a total outage, network traffic may have slowed as much as 40 percent. "As it was, this was an inconvenience to people, especially people in the northeast and southern California," he said.
Clinton, Mississippi-based WorldCom owns about 30 percent of the actual Internet hardware, such as wires, routers and other equipment, Salus said.
Telecoms operator WorldCom filed for the world's largest corporate bankruptcy after it buckled under a heavy debt load and a massive accounting scandal.
There were no reports of problems on Sprint Corp.'s network, a spokesman said.
story.news.yahoo.com |
