Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

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.

Strategies & Market Trends : Currencies and the Global Capital Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Henry Volquardsen who wrote (2047)	8/11/1999 11:09:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3536

Might this explain some of the downward pressure of the past several days??: CBOT PIPES UP ABOUT MCI WORLDCOM NETWORK OUTAGE By Greg Burns Tribune Staff Writer August 11, 1999 The Chicago Board of Trade on Tuesday blasted MCI WorldCom Inc. for bad service after a technical glitch lasting nearly five days took down its global electronic-trading system for corn, soybeans and U.S. Treasury bonds. CBOT President Thomas Donovan called it "a catastrophic outage." MCI restored its data-transmission service Tuesday, and the exchange's Project A system went back into service at 2:15 p.m. The data network problem affected nearly 30 percent of the financial institutions and other companies that use it, a spokeswoman for the No. 2 U.S. long-distance carrier said Tuesday. A small number of Cash Station Inc.'s 7,000 automated teller machines were affected, though only slightly, a spokeswoman said. The outages were intermittent, because each ATM has a backup line with another phone carrier that reconnects it if the primary carrier goes on the blink, the spokeswoman said. The CBOT's electronic system had no similar backup carrier, though it might in the future. In a letter to exchange members, Donovan said that he had met with MCI officials just before the outage "to express my extreme concern and displeasure with the unsatisfactory quality of service." MCI officials assured him the service would improve, he said. But two days later, on Thursday evening, some 275 Project A workstations in Paris, Tokyo, London and the United States were knocked out. Another 280 workstations inside the Board of Trade Building were unaffected. "The CBOT will immediately review areas of redress," Donovan said, without elaborating. An MCI spokeswoman said the network experienced "congestion from overutilization." At the Board of Trade, some members said that the outage illustrates the fragility of screen-based trading, which is replacing the shouting and arm-waving of traditional open-outcry pits at most exchanges outside Chicago. "All these things need the test of time," said Conrad Leslie, a veteran of the exchange grain markets. "We're running awful fast here." Project A is slated to be replaced in about a year by the electronic system used at the Frankfurt-based Eurex exchange. "The Eurex network has proven to be more reliable, so it's a good thing we're going to migrate to their network," said former CBOT Chairman Patrick Arbor. chicagotribune.com