MCI Glitch Causes Slow Response Times
for Some DRA Customers
Customers of the St. Louis-based Data Research Associates, which offers automation systems and network services to some 3,000 libraries worldwide, experienced some outages and data delays when telecommunications giant MCI WorldCom suffered a problem with one of its frame-relay networks August 5.
DRA Vice-president Joe Bonwich told American Libraries that, as of August 12, “virtually all of our library customers are still online, though some are experiencing slow response times. When portions of the network went down, MCI would fix the problem, but then another portion would go down.” Bonwich said that the crisis was manageable because MCI WorldCom is not DRA’s only network supplier, and many of their connections were on point-to-point relays instead of the frame relay.
According to the August 11 CNet online news service, MCI did not yet have an estimate on when service would be completely restored. The outage also affected many bank ATMs and the Chicago Board of Trade.
Posted August 16, 1999.
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