[Outages-discussion] [outages] Explosion in Nashville

[Jay R. Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Clayton Zekelman" <clayton at MNSi.Net>

> My wild ass guess is that whoever did it knew the building was a major hub for
> the wireline phone network in the region.
> 
> What they thankfully didn't know is those buildings were built to handle the
> weight of the old step-by-step and crossbar switches, and are heavily
> reinforced.
> 
> There are a number of buildings in North America that are major telecom hubs.
> Those of us in the industry know where they are and what they do, and have
> nightmares of things like this happening.

Sadly, for practical reasons -- buildings change names a surprising amount --
we tend to refer to those buildings (even if the owners do not) by their 
street address.  While those change *occasionally*, it's a couple orders of
magnitude less frequent.

And it's not terribly hard to find lists of colo and wire center locations.

As Clayton points out, it also doesn't matter as much; the ex-CO floors in
the colo tower I was most recently in are stressed for 200lb/ft2, something
like 6 times that of the office floors in the tower, IIRC.

But does this one worry me strategically?  No.  If you're a terrorist, you're
about scaring people.  If *10* of these went off time-on-target, *then* I 
would be scared.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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