Re: RE: Attacks Expose Telephone's Soft Underbelly

[Frank Coluccio <fcoluccio () dticonsulting com>]

Something I've heard zero about during the recent restoration procedures in NY 
was the "mutual assistance program," or MAP, which is comprised of about a dozen 
carriers in NY. MAP was conceived about ten years ago when the "Trillion Dollar 
Gamble" document was issued to/by the financial community in NY under the aegis 
of the Chamber of Commerce, and it allegedly played heavily into the restoration 
of the '93 bombing. But it has been relatively quiet since then. Perhaps the 
disruption of the bunker in 7 WTC caused those contingency preparations to be 
aborted. Anyone with knowledge about this please email or post here.

Good use of the 911 response mechanisms to demonstrate your point, btw. Both 
outwardly (the service provider, i.e., Telco, NSP) and inwardly (the user 
organization, itself). To advance your point another step and to support mine, I 
should point out that it is incumbent on enterprise IT organizations to ensure 
that 911 capabilities are supported by PBXs, and now VoIP LAN platforms [call 
managers and gateways], as well, in order to ensure employee safety on a 24/7 
basis. 

The same holds true for other, highly-visible services when given sufficient 
priority, especially when mandated by law. Such would be the case with D/R 
contingency preparedness when other aspects of public safety and welfare are at 
risk. These factors all play directly into one of your main points, which is the 
effect of throwing more cash at targeted applications.

-FAC

> On Mon, 15 Oct 2001, Kevin Gannon wrote:
> > I guess this is really a question for Sean given your background.
> > Over on this side of the pond the 999 (112) service needs to be
> > 100% reliable/redundant, having seen a major CO melt down in
> > the capital I can atest that it works.
> >
> > My question is how is this achieved for both 999 services and
> > critical government services ? Surely buisnesses can learn
> > something from it ?
>
> Never watch sausage being made.
>
> The basic principles (aka best practices) are well understood.
> However, money is the driving factor in all decisions whether
> those decisions are made by the public or private sector.
>
> 9-1-1 (the US version of emergency number) service is very
> reliable, but has been disrupted the same things which disrupts
> telephone service in general.  Not all public service answering
> points have redundant circuits.  Not all end-offices have diverse
> paths.  Even when redundant circuits exist, they've been groomed
> on to a common physical facility.  Operator and software errors
> corrupt translation tables in switches.  Much of the reliability
> comes not from preventing things from breaking, but by priority
> repair service when it breaks.  Because 9-1-1 is usually repaired
> before most other services, it has the best MTBF/MTTR even if it
> breaks due to the same cause as other services.
>
> Of course, there is always the definition of working.  If your phone
> doesn't work, you can't call 9-1-1, even if the PSAP is "working."
>
> Another problem in New York City was NYC's emergency operation center
> "bunker" was destroyed in the collapse of the world trade center
> tower.  In addition to all the other problems, Verizon needed to
> install/re-route emergency circuits for almost everything connected
> to the EOC.