Slashdot Log In
Preparing Computer and Cellular Networks For a Hurricane
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Aug 29, 2008 05:58 PM
from the disconnect-all-kites-from-your-network dept.
from the disconnect-all-kites-from-your-network dept.
CWmike writes "As Hurricane Gustav approaches the US Gulf Coast, IT lessons learned from the devastating Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that smashed New Orleans and other areas in 2005 are on the minds of many worried IT managers. David Avgikos, president of Digimation Inc., a 3-D digital animation software company in St. Rose, Louisiana, said, 'We don't have to be told twice.' Meanwhile, the nation's major cellular network providers say that they too are prepared, having learned from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Still, they offer some helpful tips for dealing with what is expected to be a category-three hurricane when it hits: use text vs. calling on your cell phone, and if you use a cordless for your landline, ditch it for a corded model so that it will still work if there are power outages."
Related Stories
[+]
How Telcos and ISPs Are Preparing For a Pandemic 107 comments
alphadogg writes "Network operators and IT professionals already worried about how hurricanes and financial meltdowns will impact their work lives can add another potential catastrophe to their list of concerns: a global pandemic. During a panel sponsored by the FCC in Washington, D.C. this week, representatives from telecom carriers and ISPs discussed what steps they've been taking to prepare for the mass outbreak of a disease such as influenza, and also described the needs and challenges they would have to meet to keep communications up and running during a major global crisis. The most important tool at ISPs' disposal during a serious pandemic, panelists agreed, was that of network and bandwidth management controls."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Talking... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It was a bitch during Katrina, you could not contact anyone in the 504 area code.
I'd never really ever used text messaging prior to that...but, I started receiving them, then discovered what T9 was....and have been a fan of it ever since..
For a month at least, or more...texting was the only way you could get through on a cell phone from NOLA. I wonder why they can do text, but, not voice?
Re:Talking... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
. I wonder why they can do text, but, not voice?
Even if they compress your voice down to 5kilobits/second, that's 500 characters per second. Even a reasonably long text message isn't going to be longer than 200 characters. -- more likely to be 20. ....
In other words, you can send about 10-20 average text messages full of useful information in the bandwidth it takes to say "Wazzup dood?".
(and, as qw0ntum noted, you don't even have to send the text message data in realtime... which makes transmission even easier on the provider)
Oh, and Text also fil
I use a more sophisticated strategy... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's Google's strategy.. seems to work pretty good for them ;)
From http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/pdf/ds_gsa_apps_whitepaper_0207.pdf [google.com] :
"The geographic locations of the datacenters were chosen to give protection against catastrophic events"
Geographically disperse full redundancy is also a major key factor.
None of that, of course, helps protect infrastructure in hurricane prone areas. To do that you need to bury power and data lines deep underground, shield them from vibration and moisture, and
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not really an option for New Orleans...hell, we can't even bury our DEAD below ground...water table is too high.
Re:I use a more sophisticated strategy... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I use a more sophisticated strategy... (Score:5, Informative)
Not really, I mean, the city is older that the United States of America...not like anyone in recent history chose where to put it.
And...not any more a problem than Amsterdam is...
Not to mention, it is here for a reason...MAJOR port for the US, for all the goods being shipped out of the middle of the US down the MS river..access to the Gulf for all that oil being drilled for, and imported in...gotta have all the fishermen supplying the US with a large part of its fresh seafood...etc.
Nah, while NOLA is a bit dangerouse (wouldn't be as bad if the wetlands could get restored), it is where it is for many important reasons.
Most everywhere in the US is in danger from all kinds of natural disasters. Heck, even NYC has a nighmare hurricane scenario...and they're WAY overdue.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
"Well", he said "the greater Vancouver region is in an earthquake fault zone, so the house is high enough on the mountain that it won't be hit by a Tsunami. It's built on solid rock, so it's nice and sturdy and it's on a knoll so that any landslides higher on the mountain are likely to go around the house."
Needless to say, he was a very good engineer. If I was going to build a data center, I wou
IT disaster preparedness lesson #1 (Score:3, Informative)
1. 3-M Blackwatch tape Fed Ex'd to some safe place north.
Other than that, unless your facility is 100ft underground, resistant to groundwater, and with lots of fuel for the generator, I don't think you can do much in the midst of a really big hurricane. Doesn't sound like this one is going to be the biggest of types though.
A category-three + hurricane is likey to take the (Score:2)
A category-three + hurricane is likey to take the phone lines, data lines, towers with the power so get out of there.
Text vs. Voice (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait a minute, did I just hear the cellular providers admit that text uses less resources than voice? When is that insight going to make it to the pricing on my calling plan?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, that particular insight is marked "for emergency use only."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point is that text can queue and be delivered when it's ready (the most obvious example being you can text someone when their phone is switched off with no issues). Voice doesn't, so is unsuitable for a network with questionable reliability.
Re: (Score:2)
We used to.. At least most providers used to give free incoming texts. Now they charge you. They charge you for outgoing too. Several years ago, my texts were 5cents each, with free incoming. Now their 25cents each way..
Answer: not for a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, people incorrectly assume that prices are tied to costs, and that when costs go down, prices go down. That's a lie that businesses have been foisting on the populace for decades because they aren't telling you the whole truth. Economics shows us different.
Prices are tied to supply and demand. When demand goes up, prices go up. When demand goes down, prices go down. Supply is the opposite. Supply is up, prices down, supply down prices up.
The supply for text messages is basically near infinity, and is not changing. Therefore only changes in demand will change prices. Now, have you noticed that prices are going up lately, plans are getting higher, and they are looking at 15c a message rates now? Demand is going up, of course. The cell phone market is saturated, but text messaging is still a growth sub-industry as more teens get phones and more people try texting.
We are willing to pay these rates because the market will bear it. What's worse is that they still easily allow overages. I put a block on my son's cell phone for texting, because the monthly unlimited rate to text on verizon is outrageous and he can't control his texting. We got him a new phone to replace his old one, and we found out he had texting back and had started texting again. He ran up a $64 bill on texting alone! We called Verizon and they found out the block was "accidentally lifted" with the new phone and they refunded us the money. Of course they refunded the money, because they conveniently dropped it "by mistake" and they got caught being sleazy. How many people would just pay the bill? And how many people are willing to pay $20 a month just so they don't have to pay $64 a month? All the major telecoms take advantage of this on purpose, and it goes to their bottom line.
To fix this problem, you need to choke off demand. The market will have to saturate the with texting so that there are no more new customers. Instead of competing to get more new customers, they are competing to get customers away from other companies. That's typically when prices start coming down. Right now Verizon and Sprint offer $100 talk and text all you like plans, and there is a company that just came into the area called MetroPCS which offers the same plan for $40. The cell phone market is saturated, so now you are going to see some price competition. Because texting piggy backs on phone plans, you'll see that begin to drop.
The process would accelerate if we had more competition, and if they would stop allowing phones to be tied to a specific carrier and forced companies to allow us to chose the phone and the plan. The justice department and the SEC need to put some pressure on and stop allowing cell phone company mergers.
Parent
Katrina + Gustav (Score:2, Funny)
Nah (Score:3, Interesting)
The most important thing you can do in preparation for a hurricane is pick the paint out of the screws holding your doors on.
Been there, cursed while the screwdriver spun uselessly, and never painted over a screw since.
Re: (Score:2)
Why is this important?
(It might be something obvious, but I've never lived anywhere where hurricanes are a danger so I don't know what it is.)
Incidentally, one technique with a painted screw is to try and tighten the screw first, then if you damage the screw as the paint comes off you can still undo it.
Re: (Score:2)
Its important because you don't always get advance warning that a hurricane is heading your way, and taking doors off serves the duel purpose of making it less likely your house will be destroyed and providing you with a makeshift shelter in a hurry.
I had less than an hour during the hurricane event in question, and it wasn't easy dealing with the multiple layers of ancient paint on the screws I had to undo.
Re: (Score:2)
Idk if your doors are the same, but for most of the doors in my house you can actually just pull the pins out of the hinges with a flathead screwdriver and a pair of pliers - takes half the time compared to unscrewing the hinges.
What about cable triple play ... (Score:2)
... where even the corded phones won't work after a few hours when the power goes out?
Voice vs Text? (Score:2)
Use text? (Score:3, Funny)
With messages costing as much as they do? Maybe if there is a hurricane discount, but AFAIK that only applies for category 4 and higher.
Wait, surely they aren't saying that the cost to the network of providing SMS services is lower than voice? Because the way they price it, it's cheaper to get data from the Hubble Space Telescope.
text vs. calling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Pricing is a function of demand, not a function of how much it costs to provide. The underlying costs only serve as a price floor below which they won't offer the service. Texting is very popular, so they can get away with charging the high prices. What they should do is charge nothing for texting from the time the hurricane hits to a week after it leaves. But of course they won't endanger their profit margins.
Re: (Score:2)
Texting is free on most plans these days... Costs the earth on pay and go of course, but so does calling.
Re: (Score:2)
Not if you don't use a lot of minutes. My PAYG runs $17/month, total. Any regular plan is at least twice that.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't seen a major provider with text included in the plan in the US. The only one I can think of off the top of my head was the older iPhone plan that included 200 texts, but with the new plan they increased the price and removed the 200 texts.
Avoid the mistake a hospital or two made in Katrin (Score:5, Informative)
I know a better one (Score:5, Interesting)
In the 1970's the Council of Oxford, England built a nuclear bomb shelter beneath one of the buildings they owned.
During a briefing to the towns various community leaders they explained that they would have no problems with water supply because the shelter had a water tank, situated on the roof of the building which housed the shelter.
I know this because my uncle was one of those community leaders. He tried to question this somewhat bizarre design decision, but apparently the representative making the presentation failed to understand the problem.
Parent
Dead Center (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing about cordless vs. wired telephones really won't matter much if you really get hit by a hurricane. Simply put there is no one to call at all. Police, fire and rescue serves are all unavailable for quite some time both during and after a hurricane. Until crews get the roads cleared and that is after the roads are no longer rivers, then and only then can emergency responders get through to aid you. As far as cell phones go the cell towers go out of whack as soon as the storm starts. The same is true of cable systems.
The best way to ride out storms is elsewhere.Evacuate and go to Vegas and gamble or something. And as far as IT functions it would be great to have a second central hub that could take over for any site under the wrath of a hurricane.
What went right in Katrina: ham radio (Score:4, Interesting)
Technocrat reports [technocrat.net]:
Ham Radio works because each it's a heterogeneous mesh network of intelligent agents using agile frequency hopping to provide connectionless redundant relay of messages. Yes, we do that [wedothat-radio.org]!
Leigh/WA5ZNU
Cat 3 ?! (Score:2)
what is expected to be a category-three hurricane when it hits
Category 3 ? Where the hell did they get that idea from.
Look at the storm path, it couldn't possibly get more time over warm open water than what the current path projects. Katrina was a cat 5 and started above the islands, Gustav is starting below the islands.
here is how to fix it. (Score:2)
I believe all cell phones should be equipped with emergency failover frequencies to function in the event of an emergency or natural disaster The US government should be maintaining cell equipment to handle overflow calls should the main cell providers be overwhelmed in the event of a natural disaster. The government should have discretion on activating this failover network. Cell providers should be required to pay for the operation of this failover network if it needs to be used. They should not be ab
Re:here is how to fix it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except such an emergency communications network already exists, with their own frequencies and emergency communications capability. Activation is automatic, so the government doesn't have to do anything, and testing is done on a regular basis during non-emergencies. And the participants pay for the equipment, testing, etc. themselves.
It's called "amateur radio".
Primary purpose is providing emergency communications. During off times, the equipment is tested by regular communications, contests, and field days (the latter basically practicing "roughing it" - generators, portable antennas, etc).
For local communications, there's the VHF/UHF and other bands, and the HF bands to help pass communications long distances easily. (Only problem with the HF bands is BPL, which disables the receiver from being able to receive and pass on messages...)
Costs the government nothing, and emergency messages passed from surviving families to relatives outside the area are often passed on cost free (absorbed by the message-passer).
Parent
Datacenter Blog from Hurican Katrina (Score:4, Informative)
The blogger Interdictor, Michael Barnett, has a detailed blog of what they had to do and deal with to keep their datacenter operational despite being located in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. His blog was a very good read during the hurricane and its aftermath as it happened in August/September 2005.
Blog: http://interdictor.livejournal.com/?skip=300 [livejournal.com] Start reading from this link and go forward through the posts.
Pictures: http://sigmund.biz/kat/ [sigmund.biz]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have an example of a cordless phone that works when the power is out? I've never seen one. Keep in mind it's all well and good to have a battery in the phone, but the base station needs power to be able to transmit too.
Re: (Score:2)
shhh you might disrupt his impeccable logic.
Re: (Score:2)
What, you've never heard of a UPS?
Yaz.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you missed the point -- the backup power should be for the base station itself.
I'm a home VOIP user, and have a UPS solely for powering my cable modem, cordless phone, and routing equipment. Should things be worse than a simple blackout, I also have two portable power packs with DC->AC inverters. If I could (and especially if I lived in an area that is hurricane prone), I'd have a gas powered generator in the mix as well.
My existing setup has been very good so far for moderate power outages (
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of Vtech's cordless phones have a backup battery in the base station. I think it only lasts a few hours, but I have 8 handsets so I can swap in a fresh one a couple times a day and still have phone service for probably as long as the phone company's backup power would last. I have to remember to remove the batteries from all the handsets before the handsets use them up though.
With a little wiring I could probably rig it up to use some alkalines or RC car batteries. And if the power brick is 6V or 12
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Beyond that, I'd say always have a simple brainless corded phone in the house. Wireless is nice, and battery backup is good if the power's only out for a couple of days -- but if things are bad for a while, or your phone battery just HAPPENS to be almost fully discharged the day the disaster hits (because of a 4 hour support call), it's nice to kn
Re:power not really the whole problem (Score:5, Funny)
If Atlanta was hit by a hurricane, and you were in Nebraska at the time, wouldn't you want your 404 area code cell phone to still work?
Yeah, but it would probably not be found.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
When we migrated to VoIP, we lost the redundancy we had with landline POTS since POTS has its own power system. If power goes out, so is VoIP. Cellular service is required to recapture that redundancy, in my view, for anyone with VoIP service.
If you set up the VOIP phones with PoE and have enough capacity (UPS *and* generator) in your infrastructure backup, you still have redundancy. For all of the power-backed computers and laptops out there, you get the added benefit of data redundancy as well.
I guess it all doesn't matter if your facility is 5 meters under water though...
Re: (Score:2)
The VoIP modem from the cableco has a battery backup that's supposed to run for at least 2 hours.
Re: (Score:2)
for POTS, you've got power effectively indefinitely. I worked for a term at the local telco (Sasktel) and the backup power set up is fairly impressive. The batteries alone will run the entire phone infrastructure for 24 hours at maximum load (that is, practically everyone in the city using the phones, to the limit of exchange equipment.), and to shore that up, a diesel generator the size of my car with roughly 2 weeks worth of fuel (if you can't get more fuel by then, things are REALLY fucked up and resid