March 5, 2004—AT&T has conducted a six-day network disaster recovery (NDR) south of Seattle.
The exercise, designed to test and evaluate how well the company can respond to a simulated disaster that “destroys” a Seattle area data-routing or voice-switching center, falls on the three-year anniversary of the 6.8 magnitude Nisqually Earthquake that impacted residents, buildings and businesses throughout the Puget Sound area.
AT&T’s NDR exercise, conducted several times each year, is part of AT&T’s comprehensive business continuity plan to ensure communications can be restored quickly to its government, business and consumer clients if a disaster damages or destroys parts of its network. The company’s network disaster recovery program, a mobile extension of AT&T’s Global Network Operations Center, includes the industry’s only mobile, full-readiness network disaster recovery team, allowing AT&T to monitor, manage and proactively protect customers’ networks worldwide.
Complex centers, like the one that will be restored during the exercise, are the heart of telecommunications networks, routing data and voice communications to customers. Experience gained from the exercise is used to refine AT&T’s disaster response systems and to strengthen business continuity services for AT&T clients.
Industry studies over the past decade estimate that 80 to 90 percent of businesses without well-conceived disaster recovery plans go out of business in two to five years after a major disaster. Yet according to an AT&T commissioned study completed by Digital Research, Inc., in 2002, about 25 percent of companies do not have a disaster recovery plan in place, and almost 20 percent of those companies with plans have not tested them for five years.
During the past 10 years, AT&T has invested more than $300 million in its NDR program, which includes a team of more than 100 managers, engineers and technicians, as well as a fleet of more than 150 self-contained equipment- trailers and support vehicles that house the same equipment and components as an AT&T data-routing or voice-switching center. The exercises demonstrate the company’s network disaster recovery processes, from the initial call-out of team members to equipment transport and service turn-up and testing.
Since 1990, the NDR team has been activated 12 times in response to disasters, including restoring service after south Florida’s devastating Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the Northridge, California earthquake in 1994, and tornadoes in Oklahoma in 1999. In 2001, the team mobilized to provide recovery services following the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York.
NDR exercises begin with an initial call-out to NDR team members to assemble at the disaster site to prepare for the arrival of the AT&T tractor- trailer trucks containing the equipment needed to restore telecommunications services.
Once the trailers arrive at the exercise site, the team can roll out up to 15 miles of coaxial and fiber optic cable to interconnect the individual components in the trailers to match the unique configuration of a damaged switching facility. Temporary microwave towers and satellite earth stations also can be erected for situations where cable cannot be used to access AT&T’s global network.
The NDR team then begins the process of re-activating and testing communications service. Using the equipment in the trailers, they can, for example, convert electronic signals to optical signals for transmission over AT&T’s fiber optic network, amplify or regenerate optical signals, and link a recovery site by satellite to AT&T Network Operations Centers to allow remote testing.
With the NDR personnel and equipment, AT&T can recover communications services within days after a disaster. The trailers, which have self-contained or dedicated power and environmental systems, generally travel by road, although they have been designed to be shipped by rail or air.
For more information, contact the AT&T Network Disaster Recovery Program.
