IP: Massive Fiber Cut Pauses East-West Traffic

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Massive Fiber Cut Pauses East-West Traffic       

Click on our sponsors! Updated 11:42 AM ET September 29, 1999By Max 
Smetannikov, Smetannikov, Inter@ctive Week

At least four Internet service providers are experiencing severe 
traffic backlogs because of a massive fiber-optic cable cut that put 
out four OC-192 lines connecting data networks on the East and West 
Coasts.
Industry sources told Industry sources told Inter@ctive Week that the cut was accidentally 
made by an unidentified gas company in Ohio around 12:30 EST today.
 
The news is sending shockwaves through the networking community, with 
many carrier operators struggling to understand why, all of a sudden, 
their traffic is routed through London and Denmark. At least four 
Internet service providers are being affected by the outage. Various 
online sources have named AboveNet; GTE Internetworking; and MFS 
Communications, a WorldCom subsidiary, as ISPs hit the worst.

"Let me tell you, it really hurts right now," said Dave Rand, 
AboveNet's chief technology officer. "We were given a 1 hour estimate 
for this problem to be corrected."

GTE Internetworking's public relations department had heard of an 
outage in Pennsylvania earlier today, but had no comment on the Ohio 
development. MCI WorldCom public relations didn't have an immediate 
answer to the query.
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