[DCN-TechOps] Omsoft/DCN Facilities upgrade

[Robert Nickerson]

Hi

The current DCN/Omsoft connection to the Internet rides on an ATM DS3 to SBC
on a fiber physical link. As of October 6th, the DCN/Omsoft connection will
be upgraded and provisioned over an ATM OC3 through the same fiber cabinet.
No additional upstream bandwidth will be ordered at this time, however as
the coming months add many more DSL users to our network, we will be adding
additional bandwidth.

The reason for the upgrade is that our current DS3 can no longer support
additional bandwidth upgrades at this time. Anticipating we will need
additional bandwidth in the 3-4 month range, Omsoft has gone ahead with a
facilities upgrade to our current connection. The current 45 Mbps DS3 has 1
20 Mbps circuit carrying traffic through our upstream provider, PBI, to the
Internet. The remaining 25 Mbps brings traffic from the SBC DSL network into
the Omsoft/DCN network. Instead of ordering another DS3 it is cheaper and
simpler to upgrade the exiting DS3 to OC3. This will give us room to add
lots of additional customers and bandwidth with the 155 Mbps capacity of
that connection.

A brief timeline of the upgrade process follows:

1) New Backbone router SMS 1800 (with OC3 card)  installed 9/29 and tested
5-8 am. The one 20 mbps connection to PBI is transferred from the DS3 pipe
to the OC3 pipe. Downtime should be around 1-2 minutes if all goes well.
Traffic comes onto the network through the old DS3 and gets routed out the
new OC3. This is left up for a week to ensure things run smoothly.

2) Transfer of SBC DSL customer circuits. This will occur between 5-8 am on
Monday 10/6. One customer Virtual Path will be tested initially for a period
of 15 minutes, and then the rest of the SBC DSL customers will be
transitioned in about 2 hours. These customers will experience some downtime
as they are transitioned from the DS3 to OC3 facility. All customers should
be back in service by 8 am on 10/6.

3) Old DS3 decommissioned on 10/6 old redback SMS 500 removed and completely
replaced by new SMS 1800.

Anecdotes:

No changes for any of the DCN servers will be necessary to complete this
move.
This new SMS is about 8 times more raw processing power than our current
SMS - so I am expecting latency to drop a little.
The new unit has redundant power and 1 plug will go to the Fortress UPS,
while  the other will go to another Omsoft UPS.
The old DS3 will be available until 10/12 should any problems arise with the
new equipment everything can be transferred back to the old equipment and
DS3

We will send out a notice to the customers for the 10/6 downtime on 9/29.

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Thanks
Robert Nickerson
C.E.O.
tel (530) 758-0119
fax (530) 758-0140
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