[ Thanks to Phillip
Brown for this link. ]
“When you pick up a telephone in the states of Kansas and
Missouri and your call goes through, you can thank Linux. That’s
because Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., of San Antonio, Texas,
relies on 36 computers running Linux–the UNIX-like operating
system–to keep a close eye on its telephone network in those two
states.”
“Since April of 1998, technicians at Southwestern Bell’s Kansas
City, Mo., network operations center have been using Linux to keep
an around-the-clock watch on thousands of miles of telephone lines
and fiber optic cables, as well as on more than 600 telephone
routing switches.”
“A reliable monitoring system is vital to keeping these
telephone lines up and working. “It’s about as mission-critical as
a system can get,” says Randy Kessell, a network maintenance
manager in Southwestern Bell’s Kansas City office…”
“The obstacles that have kept Linux out of corporate IT
departments, such as the lack of around-the-clock technical support
and backing from major computer vendors, are disappearing
rapidly…”