Re: Thursday Hawaii telephone mishap

[Steve Goldstein <sgoldste () nsf gov>]

At 2:06 AM -0500 10/28/01, Sean Donelan wrote:
> ...Although it receives limited public
> discussion, the public telephone network has significant risks in
> comparison to the Internet.  Because of the public discussion, and
> customer demand, ISPs have been forced to invest a lot of money in
> network backups and now offer SLA's significantly better than any
> telephone company offers.  On the other hand the telephone network
> has been undergoing a lot of "value engineering" for the last decade,
> reducing their network backups.
>
> I wonder if we have reached the cross-over point, and the Internet is
> now effectively more reliable than the public telephone network.

FYI, at about the time of the break, I was engaged in a Web-based 
meeting that included the Maui Supercomputer Center.  We were using a 
phone bridge in San Jose, CA.  The phone conversation persisted, but 
Maui's Internet connection dropped.

--Steve
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