At about the time that you first reported having speed problems here, I too experienced dead weight on this site. All other sites that I've attempted reaching on the 'net appear to be operating normally with only normal delays, but not SI... way slow.
Anyone else experience this today? Seems to be mildly better right now, but still nothing to dance about.
There were two notable backbone problems on Friday. One being a fiber cut on an MCIWorldcom route which was very bad, causing a lot of their switched services to be rerouted and aborted. And the other affecting a number of ISPs at the MAE West NAP. Not sure if they were related.
So, I understand that this SONET stuff is supposed to self heal, eh? In my grandpa's backyard tomato patch, maybe. But not in a national mesh incorporating umpteen hundred Digital Cross Connects and a hodge podge of dissimilar makes and brands of Sonet network elements accrued and pasted together like patchquilit over the past ten or so years. [[Hi, Bernie!]]
Winton and Branford brothers?
gatewayno.com
===============================================
The two cited net outages:
eBay Suffers From Traffic
Congestion
(11/12/98 9:11 a.m. ET)
By Amy Rogers, Computer Reseller News
High-flying online auction house eBay hit
some bumps this week, when a glitch at
the MAE West NAP threatened to derail
sales.
Users of the site, which lets consumers
buy and sell collectable items --
everything from Beanie Babies to Elvis
memorabilia to baseball cards --
complained of agonizing waits for pages
to download.
"This has been going on for over a week,"
said one user in an e-mail to eBay's help
desk. "We are talking several minutes to
access a page, or a time-out with no
access."
Customer-service representatives at San
Jose, Calif.-based eBay, which uses ISP
Exodus Communications, in Santa Clara,
Calif., as its primary Web-hosting facility,
said the company conducted tests and was
"able to pinpoint the problem within the
MCI network at a NAP named
mae-west3.fddi.mci.net."
"The bad news is except for reporting the
problem to MCI, there is not much else we
can do to remedy the slow access
problems," said the customer-service rep.
"The good news is we are talking with
Exodus about getting connectivity through
an additional ISP, which will allow for a
choice between best routes."
Exodus officials would not comment on
the situation.
An MCI-WorldCom spokeswoman said
the company recently installed new Cisco
ATM switches to try to alleviate the
congestion at MAE West, the NAP located
in San Jose, which could be contributing
to eBay's woes.
Exodus, an MCI-WorldCom customer,
uses FDDI technology and is one of the
customers MCI-WorldCom is upgrading
to ATM, the spokeswoman said.
In fact, eBay has taken some steps to solve
the problem. Notations on eBay's
announcement log on its website indicated
the company had enlisted the aid of ISPs
Savvis Communications, Uunet, and
Alternet to try to improve the slow
response times. New parts have been
ordered from Inc. to fortify eBay's own
network hardware but, as of Tuesday,
those parts had still not arrived.
"A company like eBay with IPO money in
their coffers can easily address this
[problem] with multiporting and buying
more routers and more servers," said
Vernon Keenan, analyst with Keenan
Vision, in San Francisco.
"Cisco knows we need it, and is doing its
best to get it to us," said Mike Wilson,
vice president of product development
and site operations at eBay.
Despite the snafus, shares of eBay, on a
steep upward trajectory in recent weeks,
were trading at $118.88 at midday
Wednesday.
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