Date: Thu, 31 Dec 92 00:09:36 EST
From: andys@internet.sbi.com (Andy Sherman)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: All Circuits Are Busy Now ...
Organization: TELECOM Digest
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 925, Message 1 of 9

On 25 Dec 92 21:26:00 GMT, john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) said:

> I would have thought that by now AT&T would have stopped its annoying
> practice of drastically reducing its capacity on holidays. A number of
> AT&T employees have told me that for reasons that are not very clear,
> the company has traditionally blocked off a major amount of the
> system's capacity on various holidays such as Christmas and Mother's
> Day. This is the real reason you get the "All Circuits Busy"
> recording, not because there is an inordinate amount of traffic.

I will admit I don't know whether this is true or false (a rare
admission -- treasure it) but it doesn't make any sense.  Every year
after Mothers' Day, Thanksgiving, etc., AT&T issues a press release to
the effect that they set yet another volume record with X completed
calls from Y attempts.

I can't imagine why they would deliberately turn away business, since
they make money selling it.  Furthermore, if you go find back issues
of the {AT&T Technical Journal} in a library, I suspect you will find
that Mothers' Day is the acid test for new routing algorithms like
DNHR (Dynamic Non-Hierarchical Routing) and RTNR (Real Time
Non-Hierarchical Routing).

> Naturally, there is no trouble calling anyone on Sprint or MCI since
> these companies do not engage in this silly ritual of network choking.

They also don't have anywhere near the market share, which means their
networks aren't presented with anywhere near the load.  I *have* heard
that the OCCs have more headroom, since they have all those trunk
routes in place but lower market share ...

Maybe one of my ex-colleagues will address this issue?

On 27 Dec 92 09:24:00 GMT, john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) said:

> How soon we forget. Hours after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, I
> tried at some length to get though to my home from southern
> California.  All circuits were busy. Then I tried Sprint. The call
> went right through. Discussions right here on the Digest pointed to
> the policy of AT&T of purposely restricting incoming access to a
> disaster area. I, for one, was very grateful for the fact that AT&T's
> policies are not always imitated by the competitors.

The choke after the earthquake had a reason behind it.  It was to
reserve some large fraction of trunk capacity for outgoing calls from
the disaster area.  That policy and the reason for it was plastered
all over the media, in hopes that people would wait for the "I'm OK"
call rather than flooding the network with call attempts to empty
houses.  I believe that the disaster assistance agencies also liked
that arrangement, since it improved the chances of their folks on the
scene being able to call out.

I'm quite surprised to hear my ex-employer take it on the chin for
their response to a disaster.  Time after time, when disaster strikes,
they send out portable COs and portable phone banks to help put the
victims in touch with relatives and with help.  So where are the OCCs
at those times?


Andy Sherman   Salomon Inc  -  Unix Systems Support  -  Rutherford, NJ
(201) 896-7018  -  andys@sbi.com or asherman@sbi.com
"These opinions are mine, all *MINE*.  My employer can't have them."