South African telecoms giant Telkom has confirmed that a "break" on its ATM network, in Rosebank, caused a large-scale ADSL service interruption on Friday, but says the problem was resolved.
In a statement issued late on Friday, Telkom CTO Thami Msimango revealed that the problem necessitated a "replacement of key equipment".
"The ADSL service in Gauteng was affected as a result of ADSL running over the ATM backbone. Currently all customers are back on line," he said.
Telkom reported that the fault was experienced at 11.45am and was resolved by 2pm.
A source at Telkom indicated that, on Friday, problems with several digital subscriber line access multiplexers (DSLAMs) were reported, prompting Telkom to carry out fault localisation, which determined that 126 permanent virtual circuits (PVC) were down.
According to the source, it was determined that the circuits on the ATM network, across which DSLAMs operate, were in "waiting for resources" status, unable to connect.
It was reported that Telkom detected a common element at the Rosebank ATM node, on which these PVCs are dependent, and a MR 16 card (16 STM-1 circuits) on this node failed diagnostics, necessitating replacement.
The source also revealed that, subsequently, seven of the 126 PVCs were still in "waiting for resources" mode, leading to the identification of a faulty link between Bryanston and Sunninghill.
Telkom could not immediately comment on how many ADSL users were affected by the fault.
Another Telkom source last week told ITWeb that the telecoms group had been experiencing problems with its fibre optic network infrastructure, but this could not be confirmed.
Related story:
Mystery surrounds ADSL problems
Share