[60762] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: East Coast outage?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Abley)
Fri Aug 15 16:29:47 2003
In-Reply-To: <200308151319.34154.dr@kyx.net>
Cc: Michael.Dillon@radianz.com, nanog@merit.edu
From: Joe Abley <jabley@isc.org>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:28:23 -0400
To: Dragos Ruiu <dr@kyx.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Friday, 15 August 2003, at 16:19PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote:
> This is the third such outage
> the American power grid has seen since dc isolated zones were set up,
> the first in 1965, the second in 1978. There was also another incident
> about half this size in 1996 in the western region, where most but not
> all of a region went out.
>
> The power system as a network probably counts as one of the most
> reliable
> things humans have ever built.
I don't recall any any incidents during which similar numbers of people
lost all internet access, or all telephone access, for as long as the
power has been out -- and it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which
that could happen (other than another widespread power failure).
Reliability is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
Joe
