Y'know... I do have to wonder whether Internet access is nearly as important as power and communications (traditional comms, such as the PTSN).
Granted, it'll be interesting to see how things shake out - but I just can't buy that getting the Internet working should/will be a really high priority.
Well being as for most intents and purposes, internet access is dependant on
power and telco... I think it will certainly be secondary.
Even if the infrastructure is lit up and working, it isn't going to do
residents or local businesses one bit of good unless they can access it. (And
that requires power and a way to connect to it)
And in all honesty, I think the focus there will be on whatever helps the
locals the most, as opposed to getting someone's colo box back online.
(As well it should be IMHO)
However, what kind of impact could this have for people peering through this
region?
Anyone familiar enough with the network topology related to this region to
chime in on this?
I think it would be good for the operations community to have some heads up if
we should expect some routing issues elsewere as a result. It could save
people from trying to chase down false leads if/when things start to go awry.
And finally, if you are reading this from inside said area... get the hell out
of there!
> Granted, it'll be interesting to see how things shake out - but I just
> can't buy that getting the Internet working should/will be a really high
> priority.Well being as for most intents and purposes, internet access is dependant on
power and telco... I think it will certainly be secondary.
Well, when I rode out my Hurricane (Bonnnie, South Carolina), I had Internet access as long
as I had a dial tone, which almost to eye passage and a good while after the local
radio stations went off the air. It was sure good to get those NWS predictions over a dial up
connection when there was no other source of news except looking around the room.
Even if the infrastructure is lit up and working, it isn't going to do
residents or local businesses one bit of good unless they can access it. (And
that requires power and a way to connect to it)And in all honesty, I think the focus there will be on whatever helps the
locals the most, as opposed to getting someone's colo box back online.
(As well it should be IMHO)However, what kind of impact could this have for people peering through this
region?Anyone familiar enough with the network topology related to this region to
chime in on this?I think it would be good for the operations community to have some heads up if
we should expect some routing issues elsewere as a result. It could save
people from trying to chase down false leads if/when things start to go awry.
A little bit of hurricane physics might be useful :
Hurricanes in the Northern hemisphere rotate counter-clockwise as seen from above.
Thus, a storm coming from the South onto a East-West coastline (like the coast near
New Orleans) will have winds coming on-shore on the East of the eye, going off-shore to the West of
the eye, when the eye makes landfall. Winds coming from the sea on shore
tend to push water onto the land, and also tend to be stronger (because they are not attenuated by
going over land).
Therefore, _as a general rule_, there is more flooding and destruction to the East
of where the eye makes landfall than to the West in a upper Gulf landfall.
So, you want the eye to pass to
your East, if you have a choice (in this situation). Your milage may definitely vary.
(Remember, also, a lot of the worst damage can come from tornados spawned by the big storm, which
can be anywhere within the storm.)
And finally, if you are reading this from inside said area... get the hell out
of there!
Yes. If you have doubts, Google camille pass christian 1969
--
Regards,
Chris Gilbert
Regards
Marshall Eubanks
A few years ago, we still had a model in which the Internet was layered on top of the traditional telecommunications network, and anything really important happened over voice calls, or at least over non-IP circuits of various kinds. Now, the two are becoming sufficiently intertwined that it's sometimes hard to know which you're using, and the days of being able to say the Internet isn't important in an emergency are probably coming to an end.
Granted, in a major disaster, the important thing is to keep people safe. When there's massive danger to human life, preserving infrastructure of any sort is not in and of itself a primary goal. However, we do want people to be able to get weather data in order to keep themselves safe, we do want people to be able to call for help, and we want rescuers to be able to coordinate their efforts. That means we need working telecommunications networks, whether it's IP to get to weather websites, TDM or VOIP trunks within the telco, or VOIP services to offices or homes. Yes, this all requires power. Hopefully, equipment that's necessary for emergency communications is on generators or batteries.
I don't know much (if anything) about infrastructure in New Orleans. I suspect it's one of those places where IP packets go to Dallas, Miami, or Ashburn to get across town, and I suspect most of the VOIP providers that claim to serve it don't have local infrastructure, so keeping long distance circuits there working would be pretty important. Then there's local infrastructure. We can hope the buildings with routers and telco gear in them are designed for this, although some of them probably aren't, and some that are probably won't work as planned. Outside, cables that are up in the air may get blown over, while cables that are underground may flood. And, even for stuff that doesn't get flooded or blown over, there's likely to be equipment getting fried and needing to be replaced due to power surges.
And then, as others have pointed out, there's the question of whether other places are dependent on infrastructure in New Orleans. It's not a place I've ever seen prominently figure on any ISP's nation-wide network maps. But, there are plenty of those I haven't seen, and I don't know about the underlying infrastructure in the area. Do circuits from Houston to Florida pass through New Orleans? Hopefully, anybody relying too heavily on circuits that pass through the area has adequate capacity on backup paths that go elsewhere.
-Steve
Yes, most of them in fact. In some cases Atlanta too, but primarily New
Orleans' only claim to Internet fame is being a repeater node between
Houston and Florida heading west. If things get really bad (gear under
water) you could expect to see a potentially significant loss of capacity
from Florida heading west, or worse still Atlanta to Houston (if we're
talking about the greater area and not just New Orleans proper), which
could easily be a problem for some people. Probably the best way to bypass
it would be having another way out of Atlanta heading North West, which a
lot of people do. Of course if you don't (for example:
http://www.cogentco.com/htdocs/map.php), the only way you're going west is
through NYC/Boston. Expect a bad day in terms of latency if that happens.
Dave Stewart:
Y'know... I do have to wonder whether Internet access is
nearly as important as power and communications (traditional
comms, such as the PTSN).Granted, it'll be interesting to see how things shake out -
but I just can't buy that getting the Internet working
should/will be a really high priority.
Back when I was running ISPs, we had several county and city Emergency
Operations Centers as customers... Either on T1 or frame relay for their
primary service, or as their "backup" dial-on-demand ISDN provider. These
connections were how the EOC got river gauge data for planning flood
evacuations (at the time, no other source other than having the numbers read
off from the state-level agency office over the phone if they weren't too
busy), USGS earthquake epicenter (also available over EDIS) and shake map
(Internet only) data, weather service radar and satellite images (backup was
TV broadcasts, if still on the air), and in some counties, the only access
to the hospital emergency room status tracking system used for
multi-casualty incidents... While there's more private data networks online
now, there's also more Internet-available data that the EOCs would like to
have access to, I'm sure (I know that some cities are using
Internet-connected webcams to do security monitoring, look at shorelines,
etc.)
In many incident scenarios (and a few actual incidents), the priority was
that the radio system stayed up, then Internet access, *then* PSTN (and
having cellphone access to people in the field to supplement the radio
system was more important than landline calls to anywhere else). And power,
of course, is easily generated locally, so not a big priority at all.
Interestingly, almost none of the agencies told sales what the connection
was going to be used for... Only when engineering made a followup inquiry
would we learn that, yes, in an emergency, they'd like theirs fixed first
please, and yes, they'd need first dibs on the backup power if we didn't
have enough to run everything.
Matthew Kaufman
matthew@eeph.com
Hi.
Y'know... I do have to wonder whether Internet access is nearly as important
as power and communications (traditional comms, such as the PTSN).
I've found that my computer running a VoIP app is more useful than a POTS
line. Why? Because dialing in or out on my POTS line, or any other POTS line
in New Orleans or any of the surrounding parishes, even as far away as
Houston, is very hard to do because "all circuits are busy". Thus it is
easier to call far away than close by.
Since my VoIP calls terminate in New Jersey, I can quite often connect this
way.
John, in New Orleans
John Souvestre - Southern Star - (504) 888-3348 - www.sstar.com