Fox just reported that the switching station for the Phones in the South East US is located in the SBC building in New Orleans, and the Chillers are running empty there trying to put water back into them but if they cant the South East US won't have phone service....

I'm sorry, this is bullshit.  I have a severely hard time thinking that our entire telephone infrastructure is placed in one building in one of the most vulnerable cities in the country.  Just for reasons of national security back in Cold War days I cannot see how this could be true.  Did Fox News report this or is this total collapse a conjecture?

IP Telephony


The Internet was designed to withstand nuclear war.

Quoted: I'm sorry, this is bullshit.  I have a severely hard time thinking that our entire telephone infrastructure is placed in one building in one of the most vulnerable cities in the country.  Just for reasons of national security back in Cold War days I cannot see how this could be true.  Did Fox News report this or is this total collapse a conjecture?

They reported it even focussed there cameras on the building while they talked, and then the Anchor in New York started asking what chillers were....

been in the network/computer biz for over 20 years. I doubt this rumor is true. prolly some partial truth to it.. prolly is a switch there. chillers empty.. i would expect the power to go out first. i've seen both happen btw. most places like this have multiple backup.. batteries, dual generators. the generators either run on diesel or natural gas. in the first case they run out of diesel after a few days, in the second case they run out as soon as the gas lines are cut. the chiller thing is something they almost never think of. water gets cut and a place useing water chillers for chilling computer rooms with air conditioners those rooms heat up and the gear fries. i saw this happen once almost at a company i worked for. at the last minute pump truck arrived, filled up a t a local creek and pumped the water 3 or 4 stories up to the cooling tower.

there was a story going around amongst the internet infrastructure network people after 911 that there was an ATT colo (co-locate) under the twin towers that was complete buried and unaccessable but continued to function for a couple of months routing internet stuff and so forth. this was a urban legend basically and so is this about SBC.

Quoted: IP Telephony The Internet was designed to withstand nuclear war.

No it wasn't silly.

Thanks for a reasoned input.  I want to see what is happening but judging by what happened here in Atlanta two days ago I do not want to see any more rumors spread.