"In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency? Cell phone circuits filled up during 9/11 attacks and in the wake of hurricane Katrina very few victims can make contact with their families, despite the fact that they have all those mobile phones. The Red Cross is looking to deploy satellite equipment From the article: to restore communications in affected areas."
"Katrina made landfall in Louisiana early this morning with sustained winds of 145 mph, but veered just enough to the east to spare New Orleans a direct blow. Even so, flooding, power outages and heavy damage to structures were reported throughout the region. The Red Cross tomorrow expects to begin deploying a host of systems it will need, including satellite telephones, portable satellite dishes, specially equipped communications trucks, high- and low-band radio systems, and generator-powered wireless computer networks, said Jason Wiltrout, a Red Cross network engineer."
Keep this in mind when trading in your POTS service for VoIP service over the internet. Discounting the local loop which is often the same in both cases, POTS is extremely reliable while VoIP over the public internet, well, isn't. But apparently people that switch to VoIP don't mind the reduced likelihood of being able to make calls during the next large scale emergency.
Yes! I agree 100%. The key words in that above statement were "cheap commoditized." The reason satellite phones work in big disaster areas (other than the fact that the entire infrastructure in the affected area is comprised of a solar powered satellite and a subscriber's hand set with a remote base station(s) somewhere else in the world) is simple; not everyone and their cousin has one to use.
Why? Because they're too expensive!
Cell phones have trained the public in to accepting lower levels of phone service. Low cost equals high market adaptation, and in most cases, lower QoS.
>>"In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and
>>advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make
>>contact during an emergency?
>
>Simple: it's too expensive.
>
>Keep this in mind when trading in your POTS service for VoIP service
>over the internet. Discounting the local loop which is often the
>same in both cases, POTS is extremely reliable while VoIP over the
>public internet, well, isn't. But apparently people that switch to
>VoIP don't mind the reduced likelihood of being able to make calls
>during the next large scale emergency.
Yes! I agree 100%. The key words in that above statement were
"cheap commoditized." The reason satellite phones work in big
disaster areas (other than the fact that the entire infrastructure
in the affected area is comprised of a solar powered satellite and a
subscriber's hand set with a remote base station(s) somewhere else in
the world) is simple; not everyone and their cousin has one to use.
Did I miss the memo announcing the Slashdot commentary section had been
extended to the NANOG mailing list? It is one thing to expand on a story
with useful insights, but this entire thread is just restating the obvious
for the sake of hearing your own voice (or the digital equivalent
thereof). If I wanted to read the uninformed reactions of random people to
random news stories wondering why cell phone circuits fill up during
natural disasters I would go to slashdot and click "Read More...". This
stuff doesn't even come close to being NANOG worthy, let alone on-topic or
appropriate.
I couldn't agree with you more, I've been concidering unsubscribing from
the day I subscribed. The reaction to your post was even worse then the
messages themselves. Perhaps it is time to leave.
Sorry for the interruption but I wish just once I could follow a
topical list where 50% or more of the traffic wasn't people posting or
arguing about how this or that post was off-topic!
The meta-banter gets worse than the banter; the latter at least
usually touches on some possibly interesting subject such as phishing
policies or Katrina or FCC/VOIP issues, unlike the meta-banter.
A SUGGESTION (this isn't just more meta-banter)
A committee (of one or more) with an alias who become generally
understood as being the SOLE SOURCE of polite "that's off-topic"
postings, and an alias others who wish someone would point out that a
thread or post is off-topic can send that suggestion to rather than
any number of people buzzing the entire list with their complaint.
I realize it won't be perfect and there'll be leaks but maybe it'll
come to be a commonly accepted convention with some prodding and
routine announcements etc.
Sorry for the meta-banter and no I'm not volunteering mainly because I
honestly don't think I'm qualified to judge what is on/off-topic as
this note amply demonstrates.
This is absolutely the right place to make your opinions heard about mailing list policy, about blog entries or news articles being pasted onto the list, about exactly what is and what should be off-topic on the main list, and about the opportunities for venting frustration if someone says you're off-topic when you swear you're not. And all kinds of other stuff that ideally would never show up on the main list.
I imagine it will make the lives of the over-worked, volunteer mailing list administrator team much easier if these meta-threads could head to nanog-futures right away.
It would also make this particular SC member, speaking personally, very happy if the discussions could move there rather than simply ceasing. This is all important stuff to hear.
From: Joe Abley <jabley@isc.org>
Subject: the right list to use for talking about nanog is nanog-futures
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:20:27 -0400
To: NANOG list <nanog@merit.edu>
> Sorry for the interruption but I wish just once I could follow a
> topical list where 50% or more of the traffic wasn't people posting or
> arguing about how this or that post was off-topic!
As Randy alluded earlier, the right list to use for this kind of meta-
nanog discussion right now is nanog-futures@nanog.org.
echo "subscribe nanog-futures" | mail majordomo@medit.edu
This is absolutely the right place to make your opinions heard about
mailing list policy, about blog entries or news articles being pasted
onto the list, about exactly what is and what should be off-topic on
the main list, and about the opportunities for venting frustration if
someone says you're off-topic when you swear you're not. And all
kinds of other stuff that ideally would never show up on the main list.
I imagine it will make the lives of the over-worked, volunteer
mailing list administrator team much easier if these meta-threads
could head to nanog-futures right away.
It would also make this particular SC member, speaking personally,
very happy if the discussions could move there rather than simply
ceasing. This is all important stuff to hear.
Joe
the nanog-futures@nanog.org mailing list is broken. evidently,
this has been the case for some time. maybe nanog has no future
:-).
over the last 24 hours, the steering committee has made a number of
urgent requests to merit to fix this problem asap. our apologies.