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BCPL'S UUNET CONNECTION IS STILL DOWN
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As I explained in System News earlier today, our connection to the
Internet is currently down.  If you missed that message, you will find it
in the System News archives at http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/sysnews.html.

As I write this (5:00 PM, Thursday, July 17)  I have just finished talking
to UUNET tech support.  Details are still a bit sketchy, but apparently a
major fiber optic cable was accidentally cut by a crew replacing railroad
ties somewhere between Baltimore and Washington. The repairs were only
about half completed as of 4:00 PM, so it looks like the connection will
not be back up until some time well into the evening.
 
Please understand that this is not a BCPL problem, it is a UUNET problem. 
There is nothing we could have done to prevent it, nor was there anything
the folks at UUNET could have done to prevent it.  They did not cut the
cable, a railroad crew did.  There is nothing they can do to speed up the
repairs.  Splicing fiber optic cable is a very slow process due to the
precision required.
 
Because the connection has been down for so long, routers all over the
Internet will have forgotten how to find us.  Once the connection is
restored it may take a while for the routing tables to update, so there
may be a period during which connecting to BCPL from elsewhere and
connecting to elsewhere from BCPL is hit or miss.  Assuming the cable is
fully restored by late this evening, everything should be back to normal
by late tonight or early Friday morning. 
 
Thanks to all of you for your patience through this outage.  Believe me,
if there were a magic button I could push to reconnect us to the Internet,
I would have pushed it long ago.  Unfortunately in the real world such
things aren't possible.  :-(
 
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If you have questions about this, or about anything else related to
your BCPL Internet Account, please contact the BCPL Help Desk.

 Phone:   410-887-3297
 FAX:     410-887-2091
 E-Mail:  help@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us

 Help Pages:            http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/help.html
                        (or enter "help" at the UNIX shell prompt)

 System News Archives:  http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/sysnews.html
                        (or enter "sysnews" at the UNIX shell prompt)