Router Failure Cuts Internet to [Bentley College] Campus
(You'll probably have some difficulty accessing the story - I saw it via Google News Alerts which got me past the registration, but you probably won't be so lucky.)
The linked story describes the situation Bentley College (BC), located in the Boston area, found themselves in last weekend when they lost their primary Internet connection with Level 3 Communications due to a failed router. BC's contract with Level 3 specified next business day restoration, so Level 3 committed to resolve the problem by Tuesday, at which point BC would have been without Internet access for more than 48 hours. But the BC IT staff had a backup plan - TowerStream. Within a day, TowerStream had BC back online with a connection that was ~20 Mbps, which proved to be inadequate (what's really surprising was that BC was "getting by" with a "mere" 45 Mbps connection).
So, something remarkable (for the mainstream telecom industry, like Level 3, but routine for TowerStream) happened. Excerpt from the BC Vanguard story linked above:
Internet service was up and running at Bentley by Saturday evening, although only outbound traffic from campus was working. Some services such as inbound e-mail and the Ruckus network were still unavailable, however, with the e-mails being held in queue until the Level 3 router was back in commission.
Students were notified of the problem on Saturday evening, and were advised to limit their Internet usage to homework only, as the bandwidth being used by TowerStream was only half of the 45 megabytes usually provided by the Level 3 router. However, students apparently did not heed this request, so the bandwidth from TowerStream was expanded to 45MB on Sunday morning.
Link upgrade to 45 Mbps overnight... on top of a one (weekend) day installation of the link in the first place. Ah, the wonders of Broadband Wireless Internet Access, as implemented by a highly clueful Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Provider that seems to like helping customers rather than the "service with a snarl" attitude so prevalent with telecom service providers like Level 3 (who, I concede, was apparently within their contractual responsibilities.)
It's my guess that the TowerStream sales rep who would have followed up with Bentley College this week had a pretty easy time getting an appointment to discuss TowerStream's 100 Mbps (and faster) connectivity options.
By Steve Stroh
Except for excerpts from the Bentley College Vanguard, this article is Copyright © 2005 by Steve Stroh
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