MTN network crashes

PaddyTM said:
SA market not high on MTNs list of priorities
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Ironically enough, even less can be said about Vodacom, who is mostly owned by foreign company Vodafone and secondly by proudly south african F*ckup Telkom :)



vodakom seems like they are destined to be a failure.
 
Tweak said:
Ironically enough, even less can be said about Vodacom, who is mostly owned by foreign company Vodafone and secondly by proudly south african F*ckup Telkom :)



vodakom seems like they are destined to be a failure.
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I recommend that you read the news more often.
 
Pitbull said:
huh?

AFAIK that is still how it stands. Vodaphone has not bought out any part of the Telkom share. I might be very wrong on this. :o
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A discussion that belongs elsewhere, but consider that Vodacom cannot be 'mostly owned by foreign company Vodafone' which would mean >50% if Telkodemonopolies still owns exactly 50%. AFAIK the deal is in progress even though the CWU and SACP don't want it to go ahead.
 
ic said:
A discussion that belongs elsewhere, but consider that Vodacom cannot be 'mostly owned by foreign company Vodafone' which would mean >50% if Telkodemonopolies still owns exactly 50%. AFAIK the deal is in progress even though the CWU and SACP don't want it to go ahead.
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o so it's still 50/50

Thought I missed something :o Thanx for the update IC
 
Back on topic.

@Pitbull, any news on what actually did or did not happen with the MTN network?

Clearly some forumites were affected and others were not, but it does seem to me like the SABC did not do any homework and decided the headline would look better with the word "crashes".
 
There was a communication sent out this morning advising all staff to refer the press to the correct people. I wasn't in on the weekend and not affected that I'm aware of. I had better things to do over the weekend past :o

I did hear a rumour it had to do with SMS's that caused a bottle neck which in turn locked up the network in a certain erea. But this is unofficial I only heard it via other people in the office.
 
An MTN company rep, was interviewed about the problem on 702 yesterday and guess what?
Her signal kept on breaking up despite numerous attempts to re-connect. She then said it was a software problem and before the interviewer could ask for more details the call dropped again!
 
Pitbull said:
There was a communication sent out this morning advising all staff to refer the press to the correct people. I wasn't in on the weekend and not affected that I'm aware of. I had better things to do over the weekend past :o

I did hear a rumour it had to do with SMS's that caused a bottle neck which in turn locked up the network in a certain erea. But this is unofficial I only heard it via other people in the office.
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MTN had a failure on one of their two STP's, causing a fail-over to the remaining one. These are the engines that handle the SS7 signaling on the network, setting up and managing calls, etc. Pretty critical stuff.

If one of these engines fail, the network will fail over and the other one will handle all calls, but at this point you're likely to see severe congestion and thus not all calls will be set up, etc.

So, in theory anywhere between 0 and 50% of subs (on voice and SMS) could have been affected, most likely much less than this though, depending on how much load one box and transmission could handle.

On a positive side, at last MTN could 'test' their fail-over. Not something you tend to do on a live network. And it looks like it worked well.
 
Eish, a Vodacom person talking about MTN stuff... collusion if there ever was any :p

Honestly though, whoever the info comes from, its nice to see it was a system behaving in a way that it was designed. Even if it was a failure with the subsequent fail-over.

Didn't VC have a similar issue while ago?
 
ToxicBunny said:
Eish, a Vodacom person talking about MTN stuff... collusion if there ever was any :p

Honestly though, whoever the info comes from, its nice to see it was a system behaving in a way that it was designed. Even if it was a failure with the subsequent fail-over.

Didn't VC have a similar issue while ago?
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hehe I'm actually glad he could give an answer cos I couldn't. All my go to guys are on leave, I also only heard rumours and I wasn't in the office over the weekend. :p
 
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ToxicBunny said:
Eish, a Vodacom person talking about MTN stuff... collusion if there ever was any :p

Honestly though, whoever the info comes from, its nice to see it was a system behaving in a way that it was designed. Even if it was a failure with the subsequent fail-over.

Didn't VC have a similar issue while ago?
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The networks are pretty similar and both MTN and VC have the same challenges in keeping millions of users working 24x7.

Last 'biggie' I can remember was a HLR problem on our side. Similar architecture but a different function.

The problem with fail-over architectures is that you can't provision both systems to handle the full load. Or at least it's very expensive to run twice the capacity on both systems, interconnecting links, etc. just in case you get a failure on one.

And, of course, the only time you can really test it is when everything goes pear-shaped. :rolleyes:
 
Ahhh yes, the HLR systems.. I remember that problem. caused me a fair amount of grief at the time :)

And yeah, I've tried to provision fail-over systems before.. and had a client want "no performance loss" until such time as I provided the quote.. where they then pooped themselves :)

I've managed to test a fail-over system a few times..... but yeah, unfortunately only in a live environment when I least wanted to test it....
 
live environments are the best test-beds to test out new systems and methodologies...

...not the right way to do it, because it stresses everybody out big-time...

...and laboratory test results versus real-world test results always does not returns the same results...
 
The_Librarian said:
live environments are the best test-beds to test out new systems and methodologies...

...not the right way to do it, because it stresses everybody out big-time...

...and laboratory test results versus real-world test results always does not returns the same results...
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....especially if you don't have 20 million tests users in the lab.
 
bekdik said:
You really need to get a bigger lab then.

:D
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Hmmm...maybe Nigeria?

It really is a problem to try and stress test new technology on a network this size. It's one thing to run a simulation for a few hundred users, but how do you simulate millions? The simulation hardware will cost more than the new technology.
 
vodacom3g said:
Hmmm...maybe Nigeria?

It really is a problem to try and stress test new technology on a network this size. It's one thing to run a simulation for a few hundred users, but how do you simulate millions? The simulation hardware will cost more than the new technology.
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Wouldn't vodacom benefit by using some of the Vodafone UK's expertese who is operating across the world ?
 
Tweak said:
Wouldn't vodacom benefit by using some of the Vodafone UK's expertese who is operating across the world ?
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Unfortunately we're often the ones who lead the rest of the group when it comes to rolling out new technologies.

Let me confirm, but I think we're now have the bigger 3G network.

But your point is still valid, the whole group does work together when it comes to rolling out new products.

It's just that we often hit sizing issues first in South Africa due to our high uptake of HSDPA compared to other countries (who don't have the DSL issues we have here).
 
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