Subject: Re: [Ieprep] Re: PSTN collapse

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 11:07:28 EST

In a message dated 12/9/2002 6:26:33 PM Eastern Standard Time, [email-masked] 
writes:

> I have an amusing email from an engineer who reports that he is working 
> from home today and has call-forwarded his home phone to his desktop VoIP 
> phone. He had a call this morning from the phone company, who wanted to 
> know when his service had been restored. They didn't like being told that 
> their dial tone was still unavailable and he was being serviced by VoIP 
> from 3000 miles away. 
> 

Great story, and I believe it would be true. Perfect example of having an 
aternative for the last mile - that hunk of aerial telephone wire that always 
comes down in an ice-storm. I wonder how that individual gets his Internet 
service. Maybe by a TV cable that happens to go a different way (route 
diversity). In my case, we have no TV cable, but two phone lines. When they 
get to the pole outside, they go opposite directions up and down the road to 
separate concentrators to different Central Offices.

When all is done in NC, I think you'll find that the "PSTN", that is the 
switches and backbone, did not fail. All the problems are in the access and 
are not congestion problems, but rather broken physical layer, a problem 
shared by both traditional telephony and Internet access.

Mike Pierce
Artel

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 16:00:56 -0500

On Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002, at 11:07 America/Montreal, [email-masked] 
wrote:
> When all is done in NC, I think you'll find that the "PSTN", that is 
> the switches and backbone, did not fail. All the problems are in the 
> access and are not congestion problems, but rather broken physical 
> layer, a problem shared by both traditional telephony and Internet 
> access.

This is one reason why microwave links are popular (for both PSTN and 
Internet)
as backups to physical links.

Ran

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