Re: MCI WorldCom fiber cut in White Plains, NY

[Danny McPherson]

> APS is really a useless feature.  Even when you get the contract to say there 
> are diverse paths, they will later groom the circuits to put them in the 
> same bundle.  

APS, just like other things, can be employed less-than-intelligently.  That 
doesn't make it broke.

Believe it or not, more than a few times I've actually seen circuits switch to 
protect work when a fiber cut occurs on the primary path .. and, of course, we 
didn't read about those on NANOG :-)

Given, had the protect path been on the same fiber that extra nanosecond 
likely wouldn't of provided much protection.  Obviously, they need to be 
engineered and provisioned correctly.

I do agree that grooming or lack of correct provisioning needs to be 
addressed, contractually, with clearly defined significant penalties 
associated with failure to meet the obligation.  Once this occurs, I believe 
folks will begin to give more attention to such things that seem negligible in 
comparison to the commission they're about to receive.

-danny