[152611] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: VoIP vs POTS (was Re: Operation Ghost Click)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Lassoff)
Thu May 3 15:33:28 2012
In-Reply-To: <20120503192552.GD9744@luke.xen.prgmr.com>
Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 12:32:28 -0700
From: Jonathan Lassoff <jof@thejof.com>
To: "Luke S. Crawford" <lsc@prgmr.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Luke S. Crawford <lsc@prgmr.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 10:59:47AM -0400, Brandt, Ralph wrote:
>> One of the first things cellular companies can do is stop overselling
>> cellular. =A0The second is end or raise the price significantly on
>> unlimited plans, both voice and data. =A0Go to what the landlines called=
,
>> USS, that is you pay for every minute.... =A0Even if that charge is smal=
l,
>> it will drive usage down.
>>
>> Otherwise on a bad day people will die waiting for the yackers to get
>> off the call phone so they can call 911. =A0Hopefully it will not be on
>> VOIP and the internet is down.
>
> A few years back, I was working late on the top floor of one of the Yahoo
> mission college buildings during an earthquake. =A0It felt really dramati=
c;
> I was on the 9th floor and the lights were swinging back and forth and
> yeah. =A0 So, I went outside (who knows how bad it was) =A0figured out it
> wasn't that bad, and so before going home, I decided to call some people
> to tell them I was okay. =A0Of course, it was as you describe, I couldn't
> get through.
>
> what did I do? =A0I sent a text message. =A0It got through and I got an
> answer back in about the usual amount of time it takes someone to respond
> to a sms text.
>
> It seems like SMS might be a reasonable backup during these periods of
> high load.
Good point. SMSes seem pretty congestion friendly since they're
usually riding control channels anyway, and can be queued up and
delivered when capacity is there (no channel reservation needed).
--j
