internet outages

[Mike Strock]

I am as hardcore as the next guy about having my internet access.  I
think this is a great idea that could be used during other times as
well, such as national emergencies when the phone systems tend to be
overloaded, and local emergencies like an earthquake or volcano
explosion.  I do agree with John that DSL is less affected by electrical
events such as last week's storm, but it can be affected, and it never
hurts to have backup connectivity.

Mike.

On Fri, 2006-12-22 at 18:46 -0800, John van Oppen (list account) wrote:
> I happen to be in the "dark" portion of the city last week visiting my
> parents...   I can't say that geeks don't think about emergency
> preparedness (given that I am a hardcore geek), I had the fun time of
> watching the emergency plan and equipment I put in for my parents go
> into full effect:
> 
> They never lost internet access (two redundant DSL links to the ISP I am
> a senior network person work for) combined with a generator meant all
> they had to do was make sure they hade enough fuel and they were not
> going offline.   It was pretty cool actually, they had neighbors coming
> over to use the internet and phones as at least on Mercer Island, most
> of the cellular coverage went away until the portable generators got
> pulled out to the cell sites.
> 
> I think it might be worth pointing out, that assuming one is not using
> cable internet, it is actually reasonably rare to loose internet access
> in a storm or power outage.   The cable networks are _far_ more
> venerable to both power outages and failure as a given node has to have
> its own supply of power which can be put onto the coax for use by the
> various amplifiers.   One major piece of down coax, run over by a car or
> broken by a tree can short-out a whole node. 
> 
> 
> John :)
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net
> [mailto:talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net] On Behalf Of Todd Boyle
> Sent: Friday, December 22, 2006 6:12 PM
> To: talk at seattlewireless.net
> Subject: internet outages
> 
> Hundreds of thousands of people emerge from the
> storms with heightened awareness of internet, and
> communications in general.
> 
> The amateur radio people have always captured the
> public imagination with emergency communications.
> 
> Do you think any company who offered a self-configuring
> wireless node with a UPS under it, might find some
> customers now?  The physical node could be a utility box
> on a mast with a marine car battery on the ground.
> It could be marketed through community associations or
> local government, or other ways of getting some critical mass
> in a neighborhood.
> 
> Geeks tend to be either unaware or have undeveloped concepts
> about these organizations.   Many of them have been doing
> various degrees of emergency preparedness activities anyway.
> 
> And the node itself may be more salable to nontechnical
> users if it comes with some minimal application interface
> for the laptop, etc.
> 
> Of course the cellphone people kept their stuff online... but
> a lot of people are not looking for "civil defense" police stuff.
> We are looking for continuity in Internet access, and this
> should be constructed as an edge network to enable
> verizon/comcast users to share whatever connections
> we have, with the dark areas of the city.
> 
> Todd
> 
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