[Outages-discussion] The Law Of Unintended Consequences

[Jay Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick at ianai.net>

> > As long as I can get gasoline, yeah, that's do-able.
> 
> 1) "So many people".
> 
> 2) "As long as I can get gasoline".
> 
> 3) If you can get gasoline, are you saying you can power the shortwave
> but not the cell phone? Weird....
> 
> I could go on, but I think everyone here gets the point. Grandma's
> cell phone battery will die eventually, and she doesn't have a gas
> generator, or a D-cell + soldering iron & resistor & etc. So she's
> screwed. But what exactly is the alternative?

Well, see, that's the rub.

As copper PSTN has been demoted in importance, and television has gone
digital, and, and, and... each of these items, obsoleted by newer technology,
has had a place in a complete architecture for communications in major 
emergencies (like Katrina and Sandy -- my definition of a Major Emergency
is something that has a major multi-day impact on 3 or more states)...

and that place has been, in many cases, lost sight of as the newer
technology steamrollered over the older ones.

Copper PSTN, for example, will generally stay up through damned near anything,
as long as you can keep the power play at the CO up.  In my metro, that's about
20-25 100KW gensets.  On top of the 48h or so that the battery plant will
probably hold out to begin with.

CATV Internet PSTN, on the other hand, is at the mercy of not only the
batteries in each house -- I can live with that; if I want to build a big
battery plant of my own, I can run longer -- but also *each outside plant
terminal between me and the headend.

We've made the Stupid Network by making all the parts in the middle smarter,
and because of that, they require power.  And unlike undersea fiber repeaters, 
we can't send them the power down the center of the cable at 14KV.

In short, what we have done is outsource the emergency preparation from the
carriers (like RBOCs) to the *subscribers*.  That is proving to have gone as
well as I would have predicted it would.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
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