The company finished cutting the cables to circumvent the problem area at about 4:30 p.m. PT.
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The Internet architecture according to Boardwatch magazine.
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"It's not like a water main break that sprays and tells you where it is," MCI (MCIC) spokeswoman Leslie Aun said. The outage affected users mainly in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut areas, but people trying to phone the region sometimes met busy signals, and Internet services were sluggish across the country.
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| Have an opinion on this story? Add your comments to the bottom of this page. |
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Some Internet service providers were losing up to 88 percent of their data during the early hours of the outage, which occurred at about 8 a.m. PT, according to Internet Weather Report, a California-based Net-traffic monitor.
It's all in the packets
When a network suffers loss of data, called packet loss, it means information -- such as Web pages, e-mail or file-transfers -- takes longer to reach its destination, must be re-sent several times, or does not reach its destination at all.
MCI said it was rerouting traffic to other parts of the network. The outage also is affecting telecom companies that rent space on MCI's network, such as WorldCom.
A WorldCom (WCOM) spokeswoman said the company also had transferred traffic, but earlier it warned customers of the break.
An official at GTE subsidiary BBN Planet - an East Coast backbone provider that exchanges traffic with WorldCom in what is called a peering agreement - said BBN had suffered serious congestion as a result of the outage.
Ripple effect
"It's like throwing a rock in a pond, the ripples hit everywhere," said the official. "WorldCom customers noticed it first, when they couldn't get anywhere (on the Internet). And then it started affecting other carriers."
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'It's not like a water main break that sprays and tells you where it is.' -- MCI spokeswoman |
WorldCom owns UUNET, the largest Internet backbone, and several smaller service providers, including ANS Communications and CompuServe Network Services.
While outages are fairly common, they are rarely of this magnitude. But as the summer construction season gets under way, backbone companies run a higher risk of having their fibers severed.
Most fiber cuts are caused by construction of digging, a spokeswoman for WorldCom said.
Call before you backhoe
At least three separate mishaps with a backhoe caused widespread Internet outages last summer.
WorldCom spokeswoman Linda Laughlin said her company's "Call before you dig" program --which encourages people to contact the company before they grab their shovels -- is an attempt to prevent such problems.
"There's a lot more underground than just dirt," she said. MCI workers have spliced a severed fiber optics cable that slowed Internet service and cut off long-distance phone calls to much of the East Coast Thursday. The company is still searching for the exact cause of the break -- which occurred in a cable under 42nd Street in the New York City.
The company finished cutting the cables to circumvent the problem area at about 4:30 p.m. PT.
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|
|
|
|
The Internet architecture according to Boardwatch magazine.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"It's not like a water main break that sprays and tells you where it is," MCI (MCIC) spokeswoman Leslie Aun said. The outage affected users mainly in the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut areas, but people trying to phone the region sometimes met busy signals, and Internet services were sluggish across the country.
|
|
| Have an opinion on this story? Add your comments to the bottom of this page. |
|
|
|
|
Some Internet service providers were losing up to 88 percent of their data during the early hours of the outage, which occurred at about 8 a.m. PT, according to Internet Weather Report, a California-based Net-traffic monitor.
It's all in the packets
When a network suffers loss of data, called packet loss, it means information -- such as Web pages, e-mail or file-transfers -- takes longer to reach its destination, must be re-sent several times, or does not reach its destination at all.
MCI said it was rerouting traffic to other parts of the network. The outage also is affecting telecom companies that rent space on MCI's network, such as WorldCom.
A WorldCom (WCOM) spokeswoman said the company also had transferred traffic, but earlier it warned customers of the break.
An official at GTE subsidiary BBN Planet - an East Coast backbone provider that exchanges traffic with WorldCom in what is called a peering agreement - said BBN had suffered serious congestion as a result of the outage.
Ripple effect
"It's like throwing a rock in a pond, the ripples hit everywhere," said the official. "WorldCom customers noticed it first, when they couldn't get anywhere (on the Internet). And then it started affecting other carriers."
|
'It's not like a water main break that sprays and tells you where it is.' -- MCI spokeswoman |
WorldCom owns UUNET, the largest Internet backbone, and several smaller service providers, including ANS Communications and CompuServe Network Services.
While outages are fairly common, they are rarely of this magnitude. But as the summer construction season gets under way, backbone companies run a higher risk of having their fibers severed.
Most fiber cuts are caused by construction of digging, a spokeswoman for WorldCom said.
Call before you backhoe
At least three separate mishaps with a backhoe caused widespread Internet outages last summer.
WorldCom spokeswoman Linda Laughlin said her company's "Call before you dig" program --which encourages people to contact the company before they grab their shovels -- is an attempt to prevent such problems.
