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To: Ridi J who wrote (9184)	8/15/1999 1:36:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Respond to of 21876

Ridi J: From CBS Marketwatch:MCI WorldCom takes data network offline: cbs.marketwatch.com TA ---------------------- MCI WorldCom takes data network offline By Jeffry Bartash, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 2:01 PM ET Aug 14, 1999 NewsWatch Earnings Surprises CLINTON, Miss. (CBS.MW) -- MCI WorldCom took its troubled frame-relay data network offline Saturday in an attempt to fix problems that have plagued the high-speed service for more than a week. MCI WorldCom customers, including America Online and other Internet service providers, experienced disruptions as a result of the shutdown. "Some customers of some Internet Service Providers will not be able to connect to their service through their regular local access numbers," MCI WorldCom said in a statement announcing the move. The company apologized to its customers for the problems, which began more than a week ago. The service disruption will last about 24 hours, the company said. America Online said as many as 2 million subscribers to its AOL and CompuServe services could be affected. Most affected customers will have to dial in on a different access number, said Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for the Dulles, Va.-based online service. Members "might have difficulty using their normal access number," Weinsten said. Software glitch MCI WorldCom's problems, attributed to software supplied by Lucent Technologies, have intermittently slowed or cut off access to the Internet, knocked out some bank ATMs and hampered operations of financial markets for more than a week. "Up to this point we still dont have full information" about the cause, said MCI spokeswoman Linda Laughlin. "Obviously we apologize to our customers," she said. The failures have affected as much as 15 percent of MCI WorldCom's network. Customers are not happy with the outages. Chicago Board of Trade Chief Executive Thomas R. Donovan, in a blistering letter to MCI WorldCom, wrote: "This recurring MCI WorldCom failure is unacceptable. CBOT members and market users demand and deserve world-class technology and service, and we are receiving neither from MCI WorldCom." The CBOT's global electronic trading network was knocked out from Thursday, Aug 6 to Tuesday, Aug. 10, then experienced a three-hour outage on Wednesday and was knocked out again Friday. It reportedly will remain shut until Sunday night. "We were told the problems would stop and service would actually get better," said CBOT spokeswoman Katherine Spring. "People are so frustrated." She said the exchange would review all its alternatives, hinting at possible legal action. The board has lost lots of business, she said. In the meantime, the CBOT is relying on an internal network and dial-up access outside the board's headquarters so users can get access to electronic trading. The board, of course, has also had to contend this week with problems facing its electric utility, Commonwealth Edison. See related story. Network disconnected The disruptions raise questions about the reliability of networks at the heart of the so-called Information Age, particularly those involving new types of data switching. MCI WorldCom (WCOM: news, msgs) is one of the biggest data traffickers in the world, serving governments, corporations and consumers in 65 countries. It's the second-largest U.S. long-distance provider, behind only AT&T (T: news, msgs), and its UUNet subsidiary has 70,000 business customers in Asia, Europe and North America. When MCI WorldCom has trouble, so do many others. MCI WorldCom's network was built up in part by acquisitions, which tied together disparate software, equipment and technologies. While the carrier is trying to make its network more uniform, it's also been expanding during the past six months to keep up with rapidly surging demand. The carrier is apparently have some difficulty handling those two tasks simultaneously. MCI WorldCom, however, has simply blamed the problems on software supplied by Lucent. Lucent spokesman John Callahan said Wednesday the telecommunications equipment maker was "working very closely" with MCI WorldCom to fix the software glitch. The problem hasn't arisen before, and the nature of the problem remains unclear, Callahan said. When CBS.MarketWatch.com asked to speak with an MCI WorldCom engineer for a technical description the network problem Friday, spokeswoman Laughlin said, "All of our technical team is working on getting customers back up. That's what our focus is on." MCI WorldCom shares rose 2 9/16 to 78 11/16 Friday. Frame relay technology MCI's high-speed data network is partly based on frame relay transfer. Frame relay is a "packet switching" technology in which information is broken into small packets and sent via various routes to the final destination, where the packets are reassembled for use by the recipient of the message. Frame relay and other packet-switching standards are used to send vast amounts of information -- such as audio, video and graphics -- over high-speed networks. Eventually, packet-switching networks are expected to replace century-old circuit-based networks, which are still used by major carriers such as AT&T to carry voice phone calls and some data. As shown by the MCI WorldCom problems, however, packet-switching networks still have kinks to be worked out and aren't as reliable as older, though slower, circuit-based networks. Most companies are reluctant to fully switch to packet-switched networks until reliability is the same as with older networks. MCI WorldCom's Laughlin acknowledged that some big corporate clients have access to alternative high-speed networks or other backup capabilities. Some industry observers say delays are inevitable, likening the expansion of the Web and the data networks that connect it to the repaving of major urban roads during rush hour -- there's bound to be some congestion. What's important, they say, is whether the networks are designed properly. Those that are should be able to avoid big problems or work through them quickly.

To: Ridi J who wrote (9184)	8/15/1999 1:44:00 AM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Respond to of 21876

Ridi J: CNET: ISPs say MCI outage could kill businesses news.com TA ----------------------------------------- ISPs say MCI outage could kill businesses By John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com August 13, 1999, 2:00 p.m. PT update Steven Efurd is afraid of losing his seven-year-old Internet service provider business in Tyler, Texas. He's lost his connection to the Net for eight days now--the first extended outage in his company's history, he says--and hundreds of his customers are beginning to flee. And there's nothing he can do about it. Like dozens of other small ISPs around the country, Efurd's East Texas Global Services relies on MCI WorldCom's data network to connect to the Internet. That company is still suffering a crippling nationwide network outage, putting Efurd out of luck--and, if it continues much longer, possibly out of business. "If I go through the weekend without Net access...I might as well lock the door and go home," he said. Unfortunately for Efurd, and countless other businesses and consumers, the nightmare is likely to continue through the weekend. MCI WorldCom said late today it will take a domestic frame-relay network platform out of service at noon ET tomorrow until "approximately" noon Sunday. The company said the 24-hour down time is needed "to restore stability" to the network. Around the country, scores of small ISPs that depend on MCI WorldCom's data network to connect to the Internet are offline. Like Efurd, many are bleeding customers at rates they say will shortly kill their businesses. In Plainview, Iowa, Powerline Internet says it has lost close to 20 percent of its 600 customers in the last week. A.K. Jordan, president of Intellitech in Highland, New Jersey, says he's already lost about 10 percent of his 1,000 customers but can't really tell how badly the company has been shaken yet. "I can't even gauge how much bleeding there is, because email is down," Jordan said. "Customers can't even send me a nasty email about the problem." The problem has been compounded by the way many Internet service providers buy their connections from wholesalers. RMI.Net, a Colorado-based service provider, sells data connections to 150 ISPs nationwide. Because its backbone connections have been caught in MCI WorldCom's problems, 66 of its customers were still down as of midday today, RMI spokesman Mark Stutz said. Those customers in turn serve about 200,000 to 250,000 subscribers, Stutz added. And like many other companies, RMI says MCI WorldCom has not been forthcoming about the problems or helpful in trying to mitigate their effects. "MCI WorldCom has the Internet's version of the Exxon Valdez on its hands, and they're acting like a few turtles got a little oil on them," Stutz said. "This is about as bad as it could be." A week of network nightmares MCI WorldCom's woes began more than a week ago, when a planned software upgrade to their high-speed data network went awry Thursday evening. The problems are grounded in the frame relay network--a data technology similar to the public Internet that breaks files and messages into individual "packets" of information and sends them separately to their destination. These networks are heavily used by businesses, banks, and ATM machines. The source of the problem was a software upgrade to the Lucent Technologies hardware that routes data though the networks. Teams of engineers from Lucent, MCI WorldCom, and Bell Labs have been working on finding the source of the problem all week but still haven't isolated the root cause, a Lucent spokeswoman said. Since midweek, the company has been saying it has been contacting customers individually and bringing them back online one by one. A spokeswoman said the original outage affected 15 percent of the company's network and 30 percent of its customers, but that number is dropping as fixes are made, she added. But many customers, ranging from small businesses to the Chicago Board of Trade, have complained bitterly that MCI WorldCom's efforts have been inadequate. That dissatisfaction, which is spreading by the day as the outages continue, has raised the specter of wide defections from the company's data business. In 1998, AT&T had a similar outage which lasted for several days, but CEO C. Michael Armstrong quickly took public responsibility for the problems. That helped keep all but about 2 percent of its customers on board, analysts said. But while MCI WorldCom tries to fix its problems, ISPs say their customers are blaming them--and until MCI WorldCom makes a more public statement about the scope of its problems, there's little the small companies can do. "Because MCI is not forthcoming in the press, when I say it's not us, it's hard to get someone to believe you," Jordan said. "They're saying its congestion in their network. This isn't congestion. This is not a little problem. It's shutting my door." Some ISPs are talking about lawsuits but are reviewing their contracts and waiting until the problem is fixed to see what MCI WorldCom ultimately does. MCI WorldCom says it doesn't want to discuss the problems until they know what caused them. "Until we find out what was the root cause, we're not going to guess what caused it," spokeswoman Linda Laughlin said. But every day the telephone company maintains its public near-silence hurts the ISPs, they say. "My reputation has gone to hell," Efurd said. "I try to be honest with everybody, but of course they think you're lying. And how do you recover from word of mouth?"

To: Ridi J who wrote (9184)	8/16/1999 12:01:00 PM
From: Tunica Albuginea	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21876

USA TODAY: MCI glitches anger customers: CBOT on indefinite backup. MCI glitches anger customers usatoday.com By Del Jones, USA TODAY An MCI WorldCom outage that halted Internet service, made many ATM cards useless and disrupted futures trading ended Sunday after 10 days. But it did not end criticism of the telecommunications giant. The exact source of the problem remained a mystery. Service was restored when the company removed the Lucent Technologies software added during an upgrade that started the outage Aug. 5. The glitch caused an estimated 15% of the company's network to fail, having an impact on 30% of 12,000 customers who rely on it for high-speed data transmissions. The impact was widespread because many of those customers are banks and Internet-service providers, whose own customers were inconvenienced and angry. MCI WorldCom has received more criticism for keeping customers in the dark and downplaying the seriousness of the situation than for the outage itself. When AT&T had a shorter but more widespread outage last year, chief C. Michael Armstrong gave daily updates. Late Sunday, MCI WorldCom issued a two-paragraph statement with an apology from CEO Bernard Ebbers. Spokeswoman Linda Laughlin says the company wanted to make certain of information released. "Our customers want the facts and deserve the facts." Powerline Internet Service of Plainview, Texas, posted on its Web page Sunday that it was getting the "runaround" from MCI WorldCom, and "explanations are lame, to say the least." The Chicago Board of Trade accused MCI WorldCom of issuing "hollow assurances" that the network system would be fixed. That caused it to delay switching to a backup system, costing it 46,000 lost contracts each day. But such assurances were made last week when MCI WorldCom believed it was making progress, Laughlin says. This won't be the last outage as data begins to dwarf voice transmission, says telecom consultant Jeffrey Kagan. "I can imagine MCI did everything they could do to avoid this," but they couldn't stop it, he says. The only insurance is a backup plan, Kagan says. The Chicago Board of Trade says it will stay on a backup system indefinitely.