[67917] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Converged Networks Threat (Was: Level3 Outage)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dave Stewart)
Wed Feb 25 13:12:26 2004
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 13:11:03 -0500
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Dave Stewart <dbs@dbscom.com>
In-Reply-To: <20040225155218.GA96789@puck.nether.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
At 10:52 AM 2/25/2004, you wrote:
>recommendation come out regarding VoIP calls. How long until a simple
>power failure results in the inability to place calls?
We're already at that point. If the power goes out at home, I'd have to
grab a flashlight and go hunting for a regular ol' POTS-powered phone. Or
use the cell phone (as I did when Bubba had a few too many to drink one
night recently and took out a power transformer). But I do have a few old
regular phones. How many people don't?
Interactive Intelligence, Artisoft and many others are selling businesses
phone systems that run entirely on a "server" that may or may not be
connected to a UPS of sufficient capacity to keep the server running during
an extended outage. These systems are frequently handling a PRI instead of
POTS lines, so there's no backup when the UPS dies. One the "phone server"
goes down, no phone service.
VOIP services have the same problem. Lights go out, that whiz-bang
handy-dandy VOIP phone doesn't work, either.
Sure, we talking about the end user, not the core/backbone. But the answer
to the question, strictly speaking, is that a simple power outage can
result in many people being unable to make a simple phone call (or at best,
relying on their cell phones... assuming the generator fired at their
nearest cell when the lights went out).
