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Re: And now, the rest of the story



On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Robert Mullenax wrote:

> Okay, here is my point.  Alden is supposed be a provider of data for
> operational
> use.  How can a provider for such purposes have a 2 week outage?  We had a 
> T1 go down at our site in New Mexico a few years back and it only took
> a week to be repaired and this is in the very rural area of eastern New Mexico
> AND we told them it was not a rush job.
> 
> The main thing though is the lack of response.  I know customer service is
> becoming
> a thing of the past, but not responding to your customers regarding a 2-week
> outage is ridiculous.  
> -----------------------------------------------------

I agree. Here's some more information and a clarification. For you
long-time UNIDATA folks, Alden sends the data through a T1 line from their
Billerica, MA home to an uplink site in Monee, IL south of
Chicago. Old-timers (I'm gonna get it here! ;-) ) remember how the old
McIDAS feed was sent out at 9600 baud through that. In any case, that
cable got cut off. MCI is working on it, Alden says, but MCI might
have leased the line to Ameritech, which is complicating things. And
there's a problem somewhere in there somewhere. Not that it affects me,
but they don't yet know where the T1 problem really is yet, though they
hope to have that pinned down this afternoon.

So why are the Internet data feeds up? Simple. It's not the T1 to
Washington DC/NCEP where they get the data. It's the T1 from Massachusetts
to northeastern Illinois to *uplink* the data to the dish. In house, their
data feeds are fine at Alden. So, they are getting the data...but the only
way they can send it out is via the IDD.

That having been said, lightning and thunder.alden.com are having problems
independent of all of this, which is why DiFAX has been dying. But today
it is dead because the NWS is having major networking problems. The NWS
says they may not be back up until tonight.

For what it is worth...

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Gilbert Sebenste                                                     ********
Internet: address@hidden    (My opinions only!)                     ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University                      ****
E-mail: address@hidden                                 ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu                                      **
Work phone: 815-753-5492                                                *
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