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To: pat mudge who wrote (12618)	8/10/1999 4:45:00 PM
From: zbyslaw owczarczyk	Respond to of 18016

MCI Problem Cripples ATMs, Data By CLIFF EDWARDS AP Technology Writer CHICAGO (AP) - A glitch in MCI WorldCom Inc.'s (Nasdaq:WCOM - news) data transmission network has partially disabled thousands of automated teller machines and restricted financial market trading of corn, soybeans and U.S. Treasury bonds. The problem at the No. 2 U.S. long-distance carrier began late last week during a system upgrade and has disrupted high-speed data service for nearly 30 percent of MCI's global data network customers, spokeswoman Linda Laughlin said Tuesday. ``Our technicians are still investigating what caused the problem and are working to identify all the service interruptions,' Laughlin said, adding that she did not know when service would return to normal. MCI was upgrading network software from Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:LU - news), a former AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news) subsidiary, when the system began experiencing problems in large cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As a result, ATMs nationwide - and in some cases outside the United States - have had intermittent trouble dispensing money because the bank machines couldn't communicate with each other, making it impossible to determine the customer's balance. ATM networks have not been able to determine the number of machines affected because many of the disruptions are only short-term, said Kate Coleman, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Cash Station, which operates ATMs mainly in the Midwest. Chicago Board of Trade president Thomas Donovan issued a stinging rebuke of MCI after the disruption shut down electronic trading terminals across the globe. Days before the outage, Donovan said he had met with executives from the communications company to complain about the quality of service and said he'd been promised things would improve. ``Despite these assurances, we began experiencing a catastrophic outage because of MCI WorldCom just two days later,' Donovan said in a letter sent Tuesday to members of the world's largest futures exchange. The CBOT's Project A electronic trading platform allows members to trade futures contracts linked to U.S. Treasuries, the Dow Jones industrial average, grains and other commodities. The exchange, which also maintains open outcry trading pits, was able to keep terminals inside the building running through a local network. The exchange later said Project A trading would be restored by late Tuesday, and that it would add more terminals in the building Wednesday if the disruptions continue. MCI's problems come at a time the company is launching a $100 million program to build data centers and expand its existing facilities in an attempt to lure more customers to its burgeoning data and Internet businesses. The problem is reminiscent of an outage in AT&T Corp.'s network last April, which affected thousands of corporate customers nationwide. AT&T blamed the outage on problems that occurred during a similar software upgrade. MCI's stock fell $2.311/4 to $75.121/2 in trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: pat mudge who wrote (12618)	8/10/1999 8:40:00 PM
From: gbh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18016

As I understand it --- and most of the technical details are beyond my ken --- there's no comparison between Ascend's GX 550 and NN's 50/320 Given the GX550 has been available for 18 months, this doesn't surprise me. I'd be very surprised if a GX550 follow on was not ready soon. The 25Gb/s 550 is just about ready to migrate to the edge, from the core. Very interesting that NN is using the IBM Prizma fabric. We evaluated that chip set well over a year ago and found it "wanting". There were issues then, with multicast and redundancy. I wonder if they've been addressed. But, what surprises we most, is that a company of NN's stature is relying on an OEM solution at all, for the family "jewels". NN also has another new product that I don't understand in the least but I'm told it will change the access architecture once it's released. Most likely something that integrates the SONET/SDH transport layer functions. Check out the following link for a company about to go public, with just such a product, that may force carriers to rethink the entire network. cerent.com gary