Live data from Hacker News

ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

tennessean.com

21–30 of 517 posts

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#21
post #18
post #9

The building (185 2nd Ave N) the RV exploded in front of appears to host a lot of equipment: https://www.telcodata.us/search-switches-by-zip-code?zip=372...

Yep it's the main spot in nashville for voice stuff. Has local access switches (dms 100), tandem, and LD goes out of there. At&t I think also has their long haul optical transport and some core ip backbone stuff there.

I was the first person in my town to get residential ISDN back in ~1996. I was a fledgling admin on the network team and work paid for it. It took me almost three months to help the local telco get it up and running, but we could never get 64kbps on the data channels because of some weird issue with the switch. (Still beat the hell out of dial up)

I think your comment is the first time I’ve read or thought about the DMS 100 since then.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#22
This article doesn't make this so explicit, but ATT infrastructure appears to be the intentional target of the bombing. You can see the building in the helicopter shot at the top of the NYTimes article on the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/us/nashville-explosion.ht...

Obviously a telecommunications/switch hub, with it being a large windowless building in a downtown core.

The other thing that's particularly odd is the fact that the attackers appear to have broadcasted some sort of warning or evacuation message from the site of the bombing prior to the explosion.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what little we know, targeting the AT&T infrastructure could be a reasonable guest a motive. The blast itself didn’t seem to take the hub offline; there was a broken water main followed by AT&T being refused access to the building by emergency response. It appears that things started cascading a few hours later, presumably once the generator fuel was exhausted.

Sensible call on the generator fuel. Thanks for thinking of it.

I would think buried utilities, they lost power?

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#25
post #21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep it's the main spot in nashville for voice stuff. Has local access switches (dms 100), tandem, and LD goes out of there. At&t I think also has their long haul optical transport and some core ip backbone stuff there.

I was the first person in my town to get residential ISDN back in ~1996. I was a fledgling admin on the network team and work paid for it. It took me almost three months to help the local telco get it up and running, but we could never get 64kbps on the data channels because of some weird issue with the switch. (Still beat the hell out of dial up) I think your comment is the first time I’ve read or thought about the…

Tragically there was nothing simple about ISDN. A customer would have to know their switch type at the CO and there were a number of other things that could break it. At least with a T1/DS1 you only had to worry about SF/ESF, B8ZS/AMI and number of channels.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#26

This article doesn't make this so explicit, but ATT infrastructure appears to be the intentional target of the bombing. You can see the building in the helicopter shot at the top of the NYTimes article on the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/us/nashville-explosion.ht... Obviously a telecommunications/switch hub, with it being a large windowless building in a downtown core. The other thing that's particularly…

What is the source for AT&T being the intentional target? Maybe it just happened to be the building in the background?

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#27
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of conspiracy are you imagining here? Someone exploded an RV in an entertainment district so that AT&T had an excuse to disable service while the NSA installed wiretaps? I think that as investigations unfold, that will not end up being what happened. Just a guess though.

To be fair, if it was true, no investigation would publically uncover that either. It would come out as some sort of lone wolf, x or y supremacists, anti-vaxx, anti-5g, nutjob. If you allow for conspiracies to exist, it becomes harder to judge truth since all facts become subjective.

> If you allow for conspiracies to exist, it becomes harder to judge truth since all facts become subjective.

What are you talking about? Conspiracy theories? This bombing is a conspiracy by definition (Edit: Unless he acted alone).

This missuse of the term conspiracy as something only a crackpot would use need to end.

BTW my favourite conspiracy theory is that lunatic conspiracy theories are a conspiracy to limit free speech.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#29

Watching the impact on the network through downdetector today has been interesting. If I wanted to be conspiratorial I'm reminded of Room 641A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Upon seeing the reports of the location of this specific real-world incident I researched to try to find an article I know exists describing how indestructible those windowless telecommunications hub buildings are. Isn't there an article somewhere describing how they're hardened against unconventional military attack? Visually the Nashville structure seemed very very well reinforced. As for the NSA angle, this locati…

The NSA’s building in NYC is one of the windowless telecom building called Titanpoint and can withstand and an atomic blast on NYC. [1]

As you said the building in Nashville if it’s not even on your list. I guess it’s worth speculating.

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#30
post #9

The building (185 2nd Ave N) the RV exploded in front of appears to host a lot of equipment: https://www.telcodata.us/search-switches-by-zip-code?zip=372...

Let's give them billions in COVID-19 relief while we get our measly $600. I'm sure they'll improve broadband access and services.
Post reply on HN