All the AT&T pops usually have nice battery and gen sets. That's what I like.
Dee
In NJ, Verizon, MFS, and Telcove all install batteries.
We put them on our UPS and Genset anyway, however.
I wasn't refering to their POPs. I was refering to the customer location.
I've been wondering when the building codes will be updated. Currently
the building codes require backup generators for elevators in high-rise
buildings, but not for the telecommunications room in high-rise building
(other than the fire alarm). Instead of pulling individual copper pairs
from a POP to the high-rise building, a CLEC may install a fiber mux in
the basement and break-down individual circuits locally to copper. When
the building looses power, so does the fiber mux.
Of course, adding batteries to the fiber mux doesn't solve the problem of
PBXs or even modern pay telephones in office buildings not working when
power fails.
Who replaces the battery in your cell phone when it expires? How about
the battery in your cordless phone? Or the battery in your smoke alarm?
If you don't want to do it yourself, for a fee you can hire someone else
to do it for you. But then people would complain about the fee, and how
they could do it themselves for less.
Same with TWTC, at least here in N.C. If not nationally. I recently had
Bellsouth install a private ring into my facility, and I didn't see the
reason for a battery shelf if power to the datacenter floor was dead.
Anyway, we ended up having to add a battery shelf because the rectifiers
could not hold up the mux on replacement of one of the two rectifiers.
Fun things to learn 72 hours from turn-up....
-Justin
The corollary to this question:
If your data center has an adequate DC plant, will the carriers insist
on installing their own batteries and rectifiers? And how many of them
have redundant supplies to take advantage of an A and B feed from you?
Typically, because they're the phone company, if you offer them DC,
they'll insist on AC. If ou offer them AC, they'll want DC. And it
seems that wherever you want the MPOE/drop they'll have some reason to
install it as far away as possible. 
In NJ, Verizon, MFS, and Telcove all install batteries.
We put them on our UPS and Genset anyway, however.
The corollary to this question:
If your data center has an adequate DC plant, will the carriers insist
on installing their own batteries and rectifiers? And how many of them
have redundant supplies to take advantage of an A and B feed from you?
In a new center we are currently building, Telcove has (happily) accepted our A- and B- feed DC power. They were almost happy, it seemed, to not have to worry about this.
Typically, because they're the phone company, if you offer them DC,
they'll insist on AC. If ou offer them AC, they'll want DC. And it
seems that wherever you want the MPOE/drop they'll have some reason to
install it as far away as possible.
That only happens when you let them think. We don't. We (more or less) say, "put your stuff here, or don't sell to us."
If you are willing to sign some liability waivers, and maybe pay some
special construction charges, I've found most ILECs are willing to use
your plant. But remember, the ILEC is stuck with servicing that building
long after you may disappear. They learned that lesson over the last few
years when a lot of expensive, empty data centers are now being used for
other things. The bankruptcy auctioneers carted away the redundant
power supplies and back up generators. Needing to do a second
construction job to install the batteries and rectifiers later probably
wipes out any savings from not installing them originally.
Well, this seems akin to the old "FOB Point" conversation in wholesale and
retail sales: "what is the service point?" Or, more clearly: "whose
responsibility it is to make sure that the service is available at the service
point?"
It seems a contractual issue, to me, in those cases where it's not a
regulatory one.
Cheers,
-- jra
Even though it is fed with N+1 UPS power, Qwest put N+1 rectifiers & batteries for their fiber cabinet they installed for me a few years ago. At the time, batteries were required no matter what, and they say they will replace them every 5 years. A little-town independent telco however, refused to even install a data center fiber shelf unless I provided them with DC power. It just seems to depend on the whim of the telco.
As prices fall, so does level of service. NANOGers all know providing uninterruptible power in the current evolving networks is hard as the communications infrastructure continues to decentralize. Providing non stop power for long term power failures with generators scattered all over the place is insanely hard. Keeping them running during a widespread 'event' is even harder. Everyone wants (expects) "always on" dial tone. And everyone wants cheap calling and cheep bandwidth. Batteries, generators, and their maintenance/operation are expensive. A resilient built network is much more expensive than a non resilient one. Eventually the public will start to realize this, and start to demand laws to maintain certain minimum levels of service. It won't happen until some large disaster, or touching news story about some preventable tragedy brings it in front of the public. People will have to die for this trend to change.
The non-reliable VOIP as a lifeline, even if it's not intended as one, is the tip of this iceberg.
(by the way, like many other forms of regulation, the same goes for internet regulation.... if some shady network somewhere ever turns out to be the root cause of some incident where a number of deaths occur, regulation will soon follow)
Aside from human error, right now the weakest link in the net is the grid, and that is a link that isn't apparently getting any stronger.
There's no typical response. Here in QWest territory they drop their own cabinet and pull AC power for their own rectifiers and battery string inside the cabinet. (I helped lump the freaking batteries oy...)
As prices fall, so does level of service. NANOGers all know
providing uninterruptible power in the current evolving networks is
hard as the communications infrastructure continues to decentralize.
Providing non stop power for long term power failures with generators
scattered all over the place is insanely hard.
Aside from human error, right now the weakest link in the net is the
grid, and that is a link that isn't apparently getting any stronger.
It is interesting to note that one cause of the 6 hour Internet
outage in Moscow was their belief that oin-site generators are
not needed for telecom facilities. They felt that their AC power
generation system was robust enough that providing 3 seperate
power feeds into the M9 site contain MSK-IX was sufficient.
And the power outage did show that the Russian power system
architecture was indeed more robust than the American one.
Their cascading failure was contained to a small area and
power was restored faster than the August 2003 northeast
failure. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned here by
taking a closer look at what the Russian architecture is,
what they expected to achieve with it, and what went wrong
beyond the fact that old generators were not properly maintained
or replaced.
Is it possible to provide a municipal AC power grid for telecom
facilities that can reliably power those facilities without
recourse to on-site generators?
After all, if there are working circuits into a site that means
that there are undamaged paths which could be carrying AC current
into the site. And if there are functioning gas lines into a site
there are also undamaged paths which could be carrying AC current
into a site. Note that I am assuming that at least one of the
redundant power feeds into a site would be independent of the
power grid, i.e. a municipal generator that supplies only telecom
sites and data centers in a local area.
--Michael Dillon