SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Technology Stocks : Data Race (NASDAQ: RACE) NEWS! 2 voice/data/fax: ONE LINE!
RACE 334.44-0.1%3:12 PM EST
 Public ReplyPrvt ReplyMark as Last ReadFilePrevious 10Next 10PreviousNext  
To: Niels Larsen who wrote (28578)4/16/1998 2:34:00 AM
From: Marshall  Read Replies (1) of 33268
 
April 16, 1998 - Rich Tehrani On AT&T's Frame Relay Foul-Up

In an age where voice and data are beginning to share a common packet network infrastructure, we must be even more cautious about how we select our packet network providers than our voice network providers. AT&T's recent frame relay outage has serious ramifications to Internet telephony as a whole.

This week, AT&T worked long and hard to get its frame relay network back on line after a major outage affected all of its frame relay customers. Two out of the 145 AT&T frame relay nodes encountered a communication error -- the exact nature of the error remains unknown at the time of this writing. This ambiguous software or hardware error spread throughout the network, eventually affecting every node in the network.

As Internet telephony is a very young yet vital industry, this sort of problem may be a blessing in disguise. A major outage from one of the largest frame relay service providers in the world serves as a wake up call to the rest of the service providers out there. Certainly no competitor of AT&T would like to be afflicted by a similar problem.

The timing of this outage strikes me as especially ironic in light of the fact that AT&T just recently introduced a new class of frame relay service with quality guarantees. Provisioning, restoration time, latency, throughput, and network availability are all covered under these recently introduced Service Level Agreements. AT&T is aware of how important it is to keep their packet networks up and running, and subsequently waived network charges until they can figure out what happened and make sure it won't happen again.

Internet telephony provides true convergence and with the power of convergence comes the service providers' responsibility to provide packet networks that are more reliable than even voice lines. We need to make sure that our service providers realize this, and to that end, we should remind them -- every chance we get -- that our data network is becoming more crucial than the voice network as it carries both voice and data. Tomorrow's service providers will be judged perhaps more on the reliability of their data lines than voice lines and that is an important shift in the market that we all must be aware of.

Please send your comments to rtehrani@tmcnet.com (http://www.tmcnet.com )
----------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, barring the (almost) inevitable "equal taxation" and the explosion of internet traffic,
are we getting anywhere here? Ask the CEO of WorldCom what he thinks.
Report TOU ViolationShare This Post
 Public ReplyPrvt ReplyMark as Last ReadFilePrevious 10Next 10PreviousNext  

HomeMailHotSubjectMarksPeopleMarksKeepersSettings
Terms Of UseContact UsCopyright/IP PolicyPrivacy PolicyAbout UsFAQAdvertise on SI
© 2026 Knight Sac Media.  Data provided by Twelve Data, Alpha Vantage, and CityFALCON News