ninatoo wrote:Hi StewL,
I asked them in one of the calls about that, and they said Telstra uses a different DNS server. Now that was either the first or the second techie I spoke to, and neither one of them helped in the end, so I don't know how true it is. You would think that ultimately they would share the same fibreoptic cable going to Scotland, but then what do we know?
It all depends where the major fibreoptic "exchange" (exactly analgous to a telephone exchange) is in that part of the word. Even then, in one major cable, there are 100s, sometimes 1,000s of "channels" . It sounds like the problem here lies more in the associated computer control equipment, as well as the link into the exchange.
What's particularly annoying here, is that there is a massive amount of redundancy built into the worldwide fibreoptic network, and a tremendous amount of spare capacity due to over-investment in the cabling and the exchanges all around the world some 6 or 7 years ago. (The company that I used to work for was the major contractor in the world for the cables and exchanges, amongst other activities.)
In this case, assuming that they actually recognised the problem it should have been very straightforward for Optus to reroute their traffic. But that would probably have cost them a bit extra, and take a bit of techie effort, so looks like they decided to bury their corporate heads in the sand.
(See http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/cables.html for the top-level world network, - you'll have to page down a bit, - the main link out of Vic and SA appears to be via the Pacific, but this map probably won't show an internal Australian Telstra network.....
See also http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol5/issue4/dodge_kitchin.htm for the so-called backbone network.
And you'll like http://www.mmv.vic.gov.au/NewsMultiMill ... 28June2006 !!
Note that the fibreoptic cables and exchanges are largely owned by third parties who provide a service to anyone.)
ninatoo wrote:I just conducted a little experiment to see just how many Scottish sites I could not get onto, and so I googled Scotland. I went through the first three pages of searches and I could not connect to about 3/10 per page, amongst failures were scotsman.com scotland.gov.uk scottishfa.co.uk and rampantscotland.com . Of course I have no idea if those addresses are still current anyway, but it seems all is still not well in the cables and the problem is NOT just affecting SP.
All four "failed" addresses are current, just don't try the Scottish FA one unless you have to, as it insists on taking a minute or more, even via broadband, to load its shopping page.
It would be interesting if you were to repeat the effort and see if the same addresses are consistently problematic, or whether the failures are random (altho' that's demonstrably not the case with SP!). In theory, a company the size of Optus should have several options for fibreoptic links out of Australia, and not be limited to Singapore.
ninatoo wrote:I am going to throw a reconnection party when this is over!
Nina
Now there's a new type of party
![[woohoo]](./images/smilies/woohoo.gif "[woohoo]")
David
Later edit, - Telstra changed to Optus.
. And I have done my homework, I have asked every southern Australian I know to try to access the site and they all get timed out like me.
