[121386] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Katrina response, private and public
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Brunner-Williams)
Sat Jan 16 07:48:56 2010
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:48:12 -0500
From: Eric Brunner-Williams <brunner@nic-naa.net>
To: Bill Woodcock <woody@pch.net>, NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Cc: MB Williams <wampum622@yahoo.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On 1/15/10 11:52 AM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jan 2010, Eric Brunner-Williams wrote:
> > After the Katrina landfall a diverse group of wireless
people started
> > organizing a relief effort...
>
> There are quite a lot of us working on it, is there something specific
> you're volunteering to do?
>
> -Bill
>
>
>
Thank you Bill,
As I'm in Geneva this morning so the only thing I can share that is
immediately accessible is the experience of living for four of the
past five years off-grid.
My best generator was the Honda 2000 watt, 120V, super quiet, 15
hours/gal unit. My second best was the (PRC knock-off) Pony 1000 Watt
120V super quiet. Everything begins at the generator. Gas is useful.
For batteries a series of 6V AGM. A single 6V AGM can power a VSAT
(HughesNet) for several hours. With three and even a 1000 watt 120V
genset a VSAT link can be kept up a large part of 24/7. They are heavy
and never pre-positioned (gensets aren't either), but they are the
stable, long-term uptime must have.
An efficient pure-sine wave inverter completes the electrical basic of
a mobile programmer's electrical infrastructure. Non-pure-sine eats
voltage and phase delta sensitive gear.
Learning about Electrical Cost of Link Characteristics (ECLC, a low
energy pun on the PILC WG abbreviation) was the most important thing I
learned going off-grid.
Some of these points are made within the larger ICT donor framework,
at
http://www.inveneo.org/download/Inveneo_ICT-Sustainability_Primer0809.pdf
, the Inveneo ICT Sustainability Primer, which is worth the read
(particularly on why "donated kit" and Windoz are wicked expensive to
field), see pages 2 and 3.
Things overlooked in the Inveneo paper is the role of portable
generators, 6V battery management, and VSAT, which are what I see as
the "off-grid" critical toolkit.
I had educational and medical requirements in addition to my
always-connected-to-my-racks-in-Maine needs.
I'm wicked pleased to see the NSRC kit in route, and as I'm in Geneva
I'll start on our IRC PoC and our own donor commit. When I get back to
Cornell I'll start there too, as I know there is an interest at
Cornell Law in the Maison des Infants de Dieu orphanage in Port au Prince.
Eric
