OUTAGE: DACS failure in USWEST/spokane

[Sean Donelan]

This morning USWEST lost a DACS serving Spokane (and other places
in Washington State).

That isn't very unusual, but did spark my interest in a continuing pattern
of DACS failures around the country.  Not only have several telco's we
use had DACS failures (usually a power supply), but the mean time to
repair (and reprogram) them was over 12 hours.

Whatever method of quickly re-loading the repaired DACS configuration
doesn't seem to be working, or the operational procedures of several
telephone companies are lacking.  Generally after 10-12 hours, the telco
usually informs us they are manually re-programming the DACS circuit by
circuit.

Have other network operators seen the same thing from their facility
departments or providers?  Is this a problem with the DACS vendor, user-
interface design, operator procedures, or dumb management?
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation