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Internet Giants Prepare for WorldCom 'Storm'

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sounds-wise-anyhow dept.

swight1701 writes: "MSNBC has an article about how E-bay and others are enacting contingency plans in case WorldCom goes under and no one steps in to run UUNet right away. Also talks extensively about how this is happening already in Europe with KPNQwest, who is telling their customers, 'During this week you can already expect outages to happen that we cannot solve any more. At the end of this week we expect that larger parts of the network will be down.' Can telecommunications giants realistically keep up with the public's need for ever-growing bandwidth without going bankrupt?"

2 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. nothing to fear... by constantnormal · · Score: 0, Troll

    Personally, I think they're hollering Fire! FIRE!! when there's only a whiff of smoke in the air. After all, the internet was DESIGNED to withstand having large chunks of it taken out (it was originally a DARPA project to build a resilient computer network that would survive a nuclear war), and while there's not nearly so much unused capacity as a year ago, there's still excess capacity. If UUNET were to go dark, it would be similar to yet another bad Microsoft virus (CodeRed, SirCam, Klez) clogging the net -- a slowdown, and some systems offline, but in a few days most things would be fully functional again. Either someone else would buy UUNET and fill the need, or some other company (Level 3?) would eagerly pick up the load.

  2. Why? And Who? by MrIcee · · Score: 1, Troll
    Why is all the fibre dark? Because the last mile problem still hasn't been solved (getting the fiber into the home).

    Why did worldcom go down? Because of bad management and siphoning off money and cooking the book. They need to go to jail for a very long time.

    WHO will bail worldcom (and the others out)?

    • The government might write a huge trillion dollar check to worldcom to keep their networks afloat, if worldcom agrees to pay back some of it into the republican national party... the rest the crooked execs can pocket, wait 6 months, then go bankrupt again.
    • Microsoft... they have enough cash, and look what they would end up with. The largest 1st tier network in the world, AOL dependency, MCI and other phone networks. Geeze, and I'll bet that billy goats would even be willing to throw a few billion at the republican national party if they look the other way during the purchase.

    As the SMUDGEreport.com says.... Harmless nut John Walker Lindh in jail for 20 years, Enron (and worldcom) execs who collapsed US economy walking around free.