[138187] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: What vexes VoIP users?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (TR Shaw)
Mon Feb 28 19:50:06 2011
From: TR Shaw <tshaw@oitc.com>
In-Reply-To: <21527951.396.1298939070702.JavaMail.root@benjamin.baylink.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:49:58 -0500
To: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Feb 28, 2011, at 7:24 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Joe Greco" <jgreco@ns.sol.net>
>=20
>> Yeah, um, well, hate to ruin that glorious illusion of the legacy
>> physical plant, but Ma Bell mostly doesn't run copper all the way
>> back to a real CO with a real battery room these days when they're
>> deploying new copper. So if you have a house built more than maybe
>> 20 years ago, yeah, you're more likely to have a pair back to the CO,
>> but if you've ordered a second line, or you're in a new subdivision
>> and you're far from the CO, the chances you're actually on copper =
back
>> to the CO drops fairly quickly.
>=20
> Ok, sure. But probably to an RSU, which -- as I noted to Owen just =
now --
> is engineered and monitored to quite a bit higher standards than I'm=20=
> betting Comcast or FiOS is.
Well, I have to go back to the hurricanes of 04 for a personal view of =
this "higher standards". =20
Cable went down because of cable cuts (expected) and because of no power =
backup longer than a short time with batteries. CO's faired a scoch =
better but when their battery banks went dry it was over because the =
gensets never autostarted and there was no one here on the coast in =
central Florida to intervene.
All cell phones were toast except old Bell South. Local worked through =
both Cat 3's and then LD came back later. Don't know whether it was =
towers with only short term batts or power to fiber was disrupted. 36+ =
hours after both Cat 3's all BellSouth wireless was back up but with =
load issues as you can imagine. Other carriers took days.
My home internet is wireless to my colo and then via 4 carriers out. =
All but one carrier died after 24+ hours of outage. Colo was fine an =
humming. Feedback later was that the problems were due to poor =
maintenance of generators and failover equipment and understanding of =
disasters. =20
Bottom line is my VOIP worked because I had luck or at least I was =
proactive and my cell worked because I was lucky.
Today, given the margins and the amount of reinvestment and maintenance =
I doubt that either cable or POTS would hack a disruption like this =
which is not out of the question. I doubt that they would do as good.
Tom
PS as for the comment that your mother wouldn't use VOIP, my mother in =
her 80's uses VOIP and loves it.
