August 2003 - Test - lists.nanog.org

NERC: power outage update August 16
by Sean Donelan 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

The bulk electric transmission system in the United States and Canada has been restored and is operating reliably. Many of the generating units that tripped off line during the outage have returned to service and additional generating units are expected to return to service over the weekend. Virtually all customers have been returned to electric service, although some customers will continue to experience rotating outages due to generating capacity availability. Some rotating outages may also be necessary on Monday depending on the status of the generating units returning to service and the electrical demand. http://www.nerc.com/pub_doc/8-15-03-outage-announcement-update.pdf

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AOL modem banks rely on local power
by Sean Donelan 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

AOL's modem banks, which relay data over phone lines in New York City and Detroit and other affected regions, had gone down after local electricity grids blinked off Thursday evening. AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. "Most of the power at our modem banks rely on local power supplies." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63923-2003Aug15.html

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Re: East Coast outage?
by Steven M. Bellovin 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

In message <oydr83m2w1m.fsf(a)bert.cs.rice.edu>, Scott A Crosby writes: > > >I don't know, but at least reading this IEEE Spectrum article: >http://www.ece.umr.edu/courses/f02/ee207/spectrum/Grid/ implies that >long distance transmission is full of strange and nonlinear effects >such as 'reactive power', voltage support, and other technical >concepts that made me conclude that there are nasty details that are >not widely known. > Precisely. Or, to put it in NANOG terms, would you trust a power engineer to design BGP 5? After all, we all know the limitations of BGP 4, and it seems pretty obvious how to do routing -- just look for least-cost paths... --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb

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Re: East Coast outage?
by odlyzko＠dtc.umn.edu 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

Let me add yet another $0.02 worth, weighing in on the side defending the electric power industry. Let's take a very high level economic point of view. Should oodles of money be spent improving the power generation and transmission grid? Suppose that the current system were judged likely to produce blackouts such as this past week's about once every 10 years. How much does that cost the economy? To be extremely conservative, suppose that an entire day's production is completely lost. Well, in a $10 trillion economy with about 250 working days in a year, that comes to a loss of $40 billion. But if that happens just once every 10 years, the annual cost is only $4 billion. Hence before calling for giant new construction programs, make sure they will not cost more than $4 billion per year. In fact, the $4 billion per year figure is a gross overestimate. Short disruptions such as blackouts appear to have practically no effect on the measureable output of the economy. This is one of those mysteries that economists have not fully explained. However, it is well tested, since we have had a number of snowstorms that paralyzed large parts of the country for a day or two, and in every case, while there were month-to-month variations, on an annual basis the economy simply continued chugging along. (Hurricanes that did a lot of property damage, and long-lasting if minor depressants of economic activity such as SARS tend to do much more to lower economic output.) There is a lot of resiliency in the economy. It does have costs (the economic activity that is lost because of the disruption is made up later, presumably at a cost in longer working hours, etc.,), but those are hard to measure. Hence the true economic cost of suffering a blackout once every 10 years is probably more like $400 million per year. That does not buy much generating capacity or transmission lines. Now we simply will have to build more power plants and transmission lines, since electricity demand is rising. However, this costs much more money than putting down fiber, and causes much more political opposition. Given these constraints, the electric power industry appears to be doing an excellent job. Andrew Odlyzko

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Re: East Coast outage?
by Brandon Butterworth 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

> But what if the huge distribution systems used DC the UK - France interconnect is DC http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/activities/other/mn_interconnectors_france.h… though a relatively short distance it does provide isolation brandon

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RE: microsoft.com
by Jason Baugher 16 Aug '03

16 Aug '03

Actually faster than usual here, probably due to akamai: Non-authoritative answer: www.windowsupdate.com canonical name = windowsupdate.microsoft.nsatc.net. windowsupdate.microsoft.nsatc.net canonical name = windowsupdate.microsoft.com.edgesuite.net. windowsupdate.microsoft.com.edgesuite.net canonical name = a822.cd.akamai.net. Name: a822.cd.akamai.net Address: 166.90.148.198 Name: a822.cd.akamai.net Address: 166.90.148.199 Name: a822.cd.akamai.net Address: 166.90.148.215 Name: a822.cd.akamai.net Address: 166.90.148.233 Name: a822.cd.akamai.net Address: 166.90.148.246 Name: a822.cd.akamai.net Address: 166.90.148.247 Jason Baugher -----Original Message----- From: up(a)3.am [mailto:up@3.am] Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 8:46 AM To: Huopio Kauto Cc: 'nanog(a)merit.edu' Subject: RE: microsoft.com Yeah: 7 sl-gw29-nyc-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.13.16) 8.728 ms 8.674 ms 8 sl-ft-10-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.171.90) 12.338 ms 11.911 ms 9 P13-0.NYKCR2.New-york.opentransit.net (193.251.241.30) 37.556 ms 10 P2-0.NYKBB5.New-york.opentransit.net (193.251.241.230) 12.385 ms 11 81.52.249.16 (81.52.249.16) 13.164 ms 19.364 ms 12.446 ms Interestingly, there's no reverse dns for 81.52.249.16 and it shows as being RIPE space...allocated to Akamai...do you suppose this is to minimize embarassment to MS that they would have to use Akamai? On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Huopio Kauto wrote: > > It seems that Microsoft is Akamai'zing as we speak.. > > --Kauto > > Kauto Huopio - kauto.huopio(a)ficora.fi > Information Security Adviser / CERT-FI -coordinator > Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority / CERT-FI > tel. +358-9-6966772, fax. +358-9-6966515 > CERT-FI duty desk +358-9-6966510 / http://www.cert.fi > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Bryan Heitman [mailto:bryan@bryanheitman.com] > Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 8:48 AM > To: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: microsoft.com > > > > Several networks I have talked to are reporting they can't get to > www.microsoft.com > > Has the virus began? anyone? > > > Bryan > James Smallacombe PlantageNet, Inc. CEO and Janitor up(a)3.am http://3.am ======================================================================== =

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Northville and Ann Arbor, MI back on utility power
by Daryl G. Jurbala 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

I'm getting happy pages about my sites in those areas since about 21:30 EST. Looking much better. Daryl G. Jurbala Introspect.net Consulting Tel: +1 215 825 8401 Fax: +1 508 526 8500 http://www.introspect.net PGP Key and Adobe Digital Signature: http://www.introspect.net/pgp

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Re: East Coast outage?
by Joe Abley 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

On Friday, 15 August 2003, at 16:19PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote: > This is the third such outage > the American power grid has seen since dc isolated zones were set up, > the first in 1965, the second in 1978. There was also another incident > about half this size in 1996 in the western region, where most but not > all of a region went out. > > The power system as a network probably counts as one of the most > reliable > things humans have ever built. I don't recall any any incidents during which similar numbers of people lost all internet access, or all telephone access, for as long as the power has been out -- and it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which that could happen (other than another widespread power failure). Reliability is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Joe

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RE: East Coast outage?
by Matthew Schlosser 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

I guess the Department of Energy disagrees. http://www.eere.energy.gov/wind/ > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of > Iljitsch van Beijnum > Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 5:28 PM > To: Petri Helenius > Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: Re: East Coast outage? > > > > On vrijdag, aug 15, 2003, at 23:49 Europe/Amsterdam, Petri Helenius > wrote: > > > And solar nor wind are good for base energy production so > we´re stuck > > with other methods unless you want to move IP packets only > when it´s > > windy. > > Or only have cooling when the sun shines. >

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Re: East Coast outage?
by George William Herbert 15 Aug '03

15 Aug '03

>> >Then run parts at 105-110% and it gets really hard. >> >> The power industry designs a grid that runs so close to capacity that if^W >> when something big fails, the whole grid shuts down in a cascade. They >> know it: > >Rubbish again. > >Welcome to the wonderful world of physics. Ask your favourite physics >professor what does > > E1 = E2 > >in context of yesterdays events. That's not really answering the question, and it's also not entirely right. For one, even if we naively accept sum(Eproduced) = sum(Econsumed), that says nothing about the amperage which can safely traverse parts of the grid intertie wiring, switching facilities, etc. If *those* are running at or slightly over capacity, and in particular of all those facilities don't have at least N+1 and preferably N+M redundant actual capacity, then a single point failure will produce a fatal cascading failure in the system. That appears to be what happened. For two, most of the things that consume power are not in fact consuming exactly a fixed amount of power. Light bulbs go dimmer if you reduce voltage; electrical motors will produce less power (torque X rpm) if voltage drops, etc. Minor blips are happening all the time in major grids, and the voltage is continuously varying up and down slightly. If we had to keep voltage exactly constant, a real AC power system would be nigh-on impossible to build. Our concerns with electrical capacity in terms of the interchange grids having N+1 or N+M capacity, and having systems with enough robustness and graceful failure modes, and having systems with enough reserve generation capacity are all legitimate. A lot of other people are looking at that now, too. But you *can't* just simplify this to Ein = Eout. -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com

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