At 5:22 p.m. on the afternoon of Sept. 11, Bill Chen, director of network architecture for Everest Broadband, watched as the TV showed the horror of 7 World Trade Center’s collapse. A minute later, monitoring software at the Fort Lee, N.J.-based Internet service provider’s Network Operations Center starting generating a slew of network failure alarms. The T1 and T3 lines the company leased from Verizon and other carriers to connect its customers to the public WAN ran through the fallen building and now lay, severed, beneath tons of rubble. Some of Everest’s clients, small to midsize companies in large, multitenant buildings were left without Internet connections. At first, Chen says, Everest thought they could simply wait until the lines were recovered?everyone had higher priorities. But soon “we realized that if this takes a long time we are going to lose our customers,” he says. Laying a new T1 line would require permits and street work, and Verizon had placed a moratorium on new orders anyway. But Everest already had fixed wireless antennae extending its LAN between the two buildings on its Fort Lee campus, and now as the company hurried to bring its clients back online, it occurred to Chen that fixed wireless would be the only way to do it. It took a couple of weeks to clear debris from and restore power to the buildings (and for authorities to grant access to the ground zero area) and another week or so to conduct the line of sight surveys necessary to line up the antennae. The end result was three buildings, each within a mile of each other, with 100Mbps wireless antennae on their roofs. The signals consolidate on the top of the third building and travel five miles to a building with a T3 line, which connects back to the WAN. Chen now says that Everest will continue to use the fixed wireless as a permanent solution because it is cheaper and “no one can tell the difference.” Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe