Academic network Janet had a lucky escape this week when it avoided
the turmoil following the collapse of Internet service provider
KPNQwest.
At the time of going to press, KPNQwest's network was still
running, while the company's trustees attempted to get enough funds
from creditors to keep the network from complete shutdown.
KPNQwest customers facing the shutdown of the company's network are
not the only ones affected - all European Internet users face
bottlenecks and delays, with 30% of European capacity under
threat.
Tim Kidd, production services director of the UK Education &
Research Networking Association, which runs the Janet network for
the UK's higher education institutions and administers the .ac.uk
and .gov.uk TLDs, got a phone call saying that KPNQwest was going
into administration last Friday morning and that its network
service was at risk.
"We needed to find someone to provide 1.2gbps of global Internet
transit very quickly. Luckily we were talking to Worldcom that day
and we managed to move entirely to their network in the space of
4.5 hours without interruption," said Kidd.