A lot can happen in 24 hours. AT&T knows this firsthand.
The company's frame relay network was finally fully restored last night after a failure between two switches cut off service to all of its frame relay customers.
A somber Michael Armstrong, CEO and chairman of AT&T, said in a press conference yesterday that the exact cause of the problem, which began at 3 p.m. Monday, still had not been determined. Even today, reports on AT&T's Web site do not pinpoint a root cause. Cisco System's Inc., maker of the BPX 8600 series switches that are being investigated, declined to comment yesterday about the possibility of a failure by the switch and its network management software. But AT&T Executive Vice President Frank Ianna said AT&T did not have the time it would have liked to respond to the failing network.
The situation affected not only business-to-business data communications but also a large portion of the consumer economy, both online and in stores. Bank ATM machines, travel agency orders and credit card transactions were disrupted.
Many customers reportedly switched to backup systems running over private lines, ISDN or other carriers' networks, alleviating some of the disruption.
For more on the outage, click here.
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AT&T network goes down for the count
Network World Fusion, 4/14/98
AT&T restores frame relay data service for business customers
AT&T's statement on the outage.
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