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Re: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Jim Duncan 19 Jan '01

19 Jan '01

Shawn McMahon writes: > X amount of power takes Y amount of money to produce. > > You can either pay it to a state-sponsored monopoly, or you can pay it to a > private company competing freely, or you can force artificially low prices > through pseudo-private companies operating under cap that generates Y minus > N amount of income, and watch X minus N amount of power be generated. > > No amount of legislation will make Y minus N amount of money produce X amount > of power. No company that is truly competing will charge Y minus N, because > they make more money if they charge Y. Are we gonna be graded on this later? They didn't cover this in Engineering Economy last semester. Jim -- Jim Duncan, Product Security Incident Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc. <http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/sec_incident_response.shtml> E-mail: <jnduncan(a)cisco.com> Phone(Direct/FAX): +1 919 392 6209

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Re: Favorites (Re: UUNET peering policy)
by Hal Murray 19 Jan '01

19 Jan '01

> Peering is about "equal value". Consider the pure content provider > co-located witht he pure eyeball provider, where neither have a long haul > network (eg local providers, similar bit/mile cost on each side). The > costs are equally distributed, both get similar "value" from the > interconnection (and indeed, can't exist without each other in the pure > case), but the ratio may well be 10:1. Nobody has mentioned a key step. How do you decide what the value is to each player? I assume everybody here expects the free market to make that decision. I see no reason to assume that each side of a connection is getting an equal value just because traffic is ballanced or the conditions meet somebody's peering checklist. Letting the market make that decision gets complicated if one of the players is a 900 pound gorilla. Note for example, that the price of old newspaper changes from positive to negative as market conditions fluctuate. If something is scarce, it's valuable scrap and people will pay you for it. If there is too much, it's trash and you will have to pay somebody to haul it away. The guy who runs the trucks may be a broker too, trying to make a buck any way he can. I could easily imagine that the price of eyeballs and content would fluctuate in a similar way - or that a backbone would could play broker.

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RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Mathew Butler 19 Jan '01

19 Jan '01

Los Angeles rates have stayed the same, and they're not having any problems. (It's a public utility, and thus wasn't forced into competition at the same rate as the private companies.) -Mat Butler -----Original Message----- From: Miles Fidelman [mailto:mfidelman@civicnet.org] Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 11:12 AM To: Roeland Meyer Cc: 'Sean Donelan'; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: > What's wrong with this picture? I see the generators, holding a shotgun at > PG&E's neck, and telling the state that they'll pull the triggers if the > state doesn't come up with the dough. They're not even wearing a mask! Yet, > no one is seeing anything wrong with this and they're acting like it's > PG&E's fault. Is the situation any different in the LA area, where Los Angelas Water and Power is city-owned, and they own a big chunk of their own hydro capacity (or were they forced to divest that)> Miles Fidelman ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman(a)civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" **************************************************************************

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RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Roeland Meyer 19 Jan '01

19 Jan '01

Actually, my understanding was that it was a forced sell-off. PG&E had no choice. They weren't allowed to keep the generators. > From: mdevney(a)teamsphere.com [mailto:mdevney@teamsphere.com] > Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 3:11 PM > > On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: > > > What's wrong with this picture? I see the generators, > holding a shotgun at > > PG&E's neck, and telling the state that they'll pull the > triggers if the > > state doesn't come up with the dough. They're not even > wearing a mask! Yet, > > no one is seeing anything wrong with this and they're > acting like it's > > PG&E's fault. > > > Also note that: > > Half of these generators used to be owned and operated by > PG&E; they were > spun off quickly after deregulation in an effort to boost > profits. Had I > been out of diapers at the time, I would have seen this day > coming back > then. > > Root cause, then: PG&E can't get us electricity because they decided > profit was more important than assured service.

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RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Roeland Meyer 18 Jan '01

18 Jan '01

> From: Kavi, Prabhu [mailto:prabhu_kavi@tenornetworks.com] > Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 2:25 PM > To: 'Sean Donelan'; nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts > > From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] > > > The US and Canada are still divided into essentially three > electrical > > grids: East, West and Texas. Texas choose not to join the national > > grids because they objected to some policies of the Federal Energy > > Regulatory Commission. > > And since some Texans think they live in a separate country, > this makes sense. > > Prabhu (who once spent a lot of time in Texas) Texas *is* a separate country... Roeland (who spent a lifetime, in TX, one year)

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RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Kavi, Prabhu 18 Jan '01

18 Jan '01

> -----Original Message----- > From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] > The US and Canada are still divided into essentially three electrical > grids: East, West and Texas. Texas choose not to join the national > grids because they objected to some policies of the Federal Energy > Regulatory Commission. And since some Texans think they live in a separate country, this makes sense. Prabhu (who once spent a lot of time in Texas) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Prabhu Kavi Phone: 1-978-264-4900 x125 Director, Adv. Prod. Planning Fax: 1-978-264-0671 Tenor Networks Email: prabhu_kavi(a)tenornetworks.com 100 Nagog Park WWW: www.tenornetworks.com Acton, MA 01720

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RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by mdevney＠teamsphere.com 18 Jan '01

18 Jan '01

On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: > > What's wrong with this picture? I see the generators, holding a shotgun at > PG&E's neck, and telling the state that they'll pull the triggers if the > state doesn't come up with the dough. They're not even wearing a mask! Yet, > no one is seeing anything wrong with this and they're acting like it's > PG&E's fault. > Also note that: Half of these generators used to be owned and operated by PG&E; they were spun off quickly after deregulation in an effort to boost profits. Had I been out of diapers at the time, I would have seen this day coming back then. Root cause, then: PG&E can't get us electricity because they decided profit was more important than assured service. As usual, I blame capitalism. (Yes I am a pinko.) Matthew Devney Teamsphere Interactive

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Re: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Steven M. Bellovin 18 Jan '01

18 Jan '01

In message <9DC8BBAD4FF100408FC7D18D1F092286039B05(a)condor.mhsc.com>, Roeland Me yer writes: > >The "gamble", as you put it, was changed significantly when deregulation >moved the goal-posts. It was dependent on the utilities retaining control of >generator costs. The de-regulators were supposed to cover that scenario. >They didn't. If an indivudual tried this, with another individual, they call >it extortion and the individual in queston would be rotting in jail. The >salient fact is that the generators are threatening to bankrupt PG&E unless >the state pays the extortion amount, by midnight. > >Does anyone have a clue what would happen if the state doesn't pay? Would >the state have to step in and start operating PG&E? IMHO, if this isn't >corrected, todays rolling blackouts will be trivial, compared to a total >PG&E collapse of services. If PG&E files for bankruptcy, control of the company passes to a federal judge. If you subscribe to the NY Times site, see http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/18/national/18ENER.html Here's the first paragraph: LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17 - Politicians and power company executives have bickered for months about how best to solve California's energy problems, but ultimately it may come down to this: a bankruptcy court judge may be the only person with the authority to ask for the rate increases and cost cuts that a growing chorus of analysts say are necessary, but that nobody in the state has been able to agree upon. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb

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RE: Second day of rolling blackouts starts
by Richard A. Steenbergen 18 Jan '01

18 Jan '01

On Thu, Jan 18, 2001 at 02:11:35PM -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > On Thu, 18 Jan 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: > > > What's wrong with this picture? I see the generators, holding a shotgun at > > PG&E's neck, and telling the state that they'll pull the triggers if the > > state doesn't come up with the dough. They're not even wearing a mask! Yet, > > no one is seeing anything wrong with this and they're acting like it's > > PG&E's fault. > > Is the situation any different in the LA area, where Los Angelas Water > and Power is city-owned, and they own a big chunk of their own hydro > capacity (or were they forced to divest that)> The city of LA DWP currently has extra power and is selling their reserves to the rest of the state. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras(a)e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/humble PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)

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California controlled service interruptions suspended for now
by Sean Donelan 18 Jan '01

18 Jan '01

Cal-ISO has suspended the rolling blackouts, but may begin again around 4pm PST. The www.caiso.com web site served by Pacific Bell Internet Services has been very congested throughout the day. It has been difficult to reach, but I understand it has been up all the time. I can't reach it right now. PBI is reporting a few DSL problems (surprise!) but nothing out of the ordinary. So far it appears most of the Internet Service providers made it through this wave of rolling blackouts in California. I received only one report of some customer racks being affected at a hosting provider. Its not clear if it was related to the rolling blackouts, or due to an internal issue. Overall, the Internet operators seem to be doing a good job. The only FCC major outage reported was in Idlewood, Texas. A service technician accidently disconnected an OC-3 circuit carrying the SS7 control circuits, resulting in 43,000 customers being isolated for 42 minutes. There have been no FCC major outage reports due to the rolling blackouts in California.

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