[41730] in North American Network Operators' Group
Alpha paging systems: any faults thus far?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Todd)
Wed Sep 12 01:17:34 2001
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Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 23:36:25 -0400
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: John Todd <jtodd@loligo.com>
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At least here on the East Coast (DC Metro region) there has been
significant difficulty with cell phone call completion during the
last 14 hours or so; this has been reported by various sources, and I
won't go into the reasons or solutions to that problem; see previous
posts today for various interpretations.
I'm wondering if anyone has experienced issues with their alpha
paging systems, which now for a large percentage of users ride along
the same systems as the voice traffic (i.e.: the alpha paging is
built into the cell phone carrier and handset.) It's also quite
possible that even the normal alpha paging systems that are
non-cellphone based have experienced higher than normal traffic,
leading to difficulties with completions or significant delays - I'm
speculating here. I'm sure that the NYC region has seen quite a jump
in two-way alpha paging activity today, as an example.
Brief experimentation showed that Verizon's email-to-cellphone
service for handsets in the MD/DC area is functional (sample size=1)
but it perhaps would be reasonable for others to chime in as to how
their service is performing, as many of us rely upon this system for
notifications. If we can establish if there are any faults in this
system it will perhaps save some of us more difficulty in the next
day or so. In the best case, it will create a number of test pages
going through the system so that you at least can say with some
certainty that it works/doesn't work, and if the latter you'll be
compelled to stick close to a nice warm screen this fine spring
night, staring at little green dots, waiting for them to become
little red dots.
Even a number of you who have NOC staffs 24x7 still keep something
tied to an electronic paging system of some sort. Good for you if
you don't; don't clutter the list with smug replies.
JT
