I don't know that is true. I believe voice network was overwhelmed. Wireless data and sms had no issue or interruption whatsoever. Sent via Blackberry while presumably driving with one hand ----- Original Message ----- From: chris <tknchris@gmail.com> To: Sule, Mohammed <Mohammed.Sule@nbhn.net> Cc: nanog@nanog.org <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Tue Aug 23 14:37:41 2011 Subject: Re: East Coast Earthquake 8-23-2011 We had some cell tower issues here in NJ. chris On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 2:36 PM, Sule, Mohammed <Mohammed.Sule@nbhn.net>wrote:
A friend about 80 miles near the epicenter says phones are down but Comcast Internet, by way of some miracle, is up
Based on a sampling of thousands of cable modems, dsl, and cellular sites in the DC area: With a 10 second keepalive/30 second holdtime, I only saw, maybe, 2-3 sites disappear per thousand based on an endpoint in Ashburn, VA. I do see some delay cellular side, but it looks to be solely congestion (high pings, etc.). However, it was minimal and was a 15 minute occurrence which gradually peaked then dropped down to normal levels. I'm guessing it's usage based. The DSL/cable had no drops that I can find. Largely, it has had little to no effect for me. On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 1:10 PM, Chris <caldcv@gmail.com> wrote:
A friend about 80 miles near the epicenter says phones are down but Comcast Internet, by way of some miracle, is up
On 8/23/2011 12:43 PM, PC wrote:
I was watching the news reports on TV here in California. People were either being evacuated or elf-evacuating from building in DC, NYC, etc. As the cameras panned over the crowds, I would estimate 75% of the people had their phones out. Within fifteen minutes of the event, my wife either called or received a call from her family in VA and NY.
A 5.8 (or 5.9, I've seen conflicting numbers) really isn't likely to do all that much damage, even on the East Coast. In California, anyone who has lived here for more than 10 years probably doesn't even feel anything less than a 5, and, it takes a solid 6 to really get anyone's attention out here. Natives mostly won't change their behavior for anything short of a 6.5. I would presume that on the East Coast where you have a lot more masonry construction you might see some minor building damage and a few cracked walls here and there, but it's unlikely to sever any underground utilities or take out any facilities. I suspect the voice network is overwhelmed because it's probably a newsworthy event in that area, but that will probably die down in a few hours after everyone finally reaches their loved ones and hears that everyone is OK, but, boy wasn't that exciting… Owen On Aug 23, 2011, at 12:10 PM, Chris wrote:
A friend about 80 miles near the epicenter says phones are down but Comcast Internet, by way of some miracle, is up
On 08/23/2011 02:48 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
Raw magnitude is not a great indicator of shaking intensity. Our rocks are much more fractured out here on the west coast due to earthquakes, etc. A 5.9 back east is nothing to sniff at. Mike, not a geologist
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
A 5.8 (or 5.9, I've seen conflicting numbers)
Hi Owen, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/se082311a.html#det... Originally reported as 5.8. Briefly upped to 5.9. Now back to 5.8.
Two points: A. Our structures aren't built to seismic zone standards. Our construction workers aren't familiar with *how* to build to seismic zone standards. We don't secure equipment inside our buildings to seismic zone standards. B. The crust on the east coast is much more solid than on the west coast, so the seismic waves propagate much further. Los Angeles doesn't feel an earthquake north of San Francisco unless it's huge. New York City felt this earthquake near Richmond VA. So yes, we're seeing relatively minor damage... but we're seeing it over a much wider area than someone in California would. Regards, Bill -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
On Tuesday, August 23, 2011 06:13:02 PM William Herrin wrote:
We felt it, and it overloaded our seismometer, too. The link to the trace is at: http://www.pari.edu/about_pari/pari-photos/archived-photos/miscellaneous/aug... Live data is at: http://www.pari.edu/telescopes/geoscience/seismic-readings/readings/ Film at 11 (and 10; local TV station came by and interviewed....). We're 300+ miles away from the epicenter. At the time I wondered if anything near the IX's in that area might be impacted, almost posted about it, and figured that anyone who actually knew would be too busy to talk about it....
On Tue, 23 Aug 2011, Lamar Owen wrote:
At the time I wondered if anything near the IX's in that area might be impacted,
Although any Internet Exchange Facility can have bad luck (i.e. remember the Ashburn data center damaged by a hurricane/tornado in 2004), most of the major IX's in the US are built for above average hazards based on where they are located. Earthquakes are rarer on the East Coast of the US, but the buiding code still lists design earthquake requirements for essential facilities. The more difficult thing is probably convincing customers that don't want to bolt down their equipment cabinets in the data center. Of course it never ends. There is a hurricane forecast for the east coast later this week. I don't get to tour internet data centers as much as I used to, so I don't know how well they are doing now.
On 25/08/2011 12:27 a.m., Scott Morris wrote:
/me is also not a geologist, but does live in the east part of Christchurch, New Zealand. Our CBD has been closed for 6 months now as a result of a 6.3 on February 22, 2011. A number of factors effect impact on buildings from our experience. Depth is a big issue. A quake 80km deep at 5.8 will have far less impact than one 1km deep. When I read yours was 1km deep, I started looking for the impact stories. Direction of the movement is also a big issue. In our case the ground was going up and down under our tall(ish) buildings faster than the buildings. The ground would start coming up again before the building had finished coming down again from the last movement cycle. This just smashes buildings to bits. Our tallest building is 26 stories, will take a year to bring down and is on a lean. Interesting most of the damage was caused by the building next to it being hammered into the side. We have many ~10 story buildings to come down. Anyway enough about buildings... here's some comment on networks that I thought some might find interesting... Networks - Mobile Mobile traffic does go nuts. We have an average (iirc) of less than 30 minutes voice traffic per month per user. So out networks simply are not designed with a large load in mind. We also don't have the 'confirmation' aspect of the sms (texting) protocol turned on. This means that the senders mobile phone doesn't know if the message has been delivered to the receiver. In our case, we have 3 mobile networks in Christchurch. We discovered that we simply didn't have enough inter carrier capacity provisioned for sms traffic. While users could send messages 'same network to same network', they couldn't send them 'off network'. We also have full number portability. This means that senders don't know which network they're even sending messages to any more. +64 021 - Vodafone +64 022 - 2Degrees +64 027 - Telecom Fail - not any more. The up shot is that when disaster struck us, text/sms messages were not getting though and now one knew what the problem was. So people started to attempt phone calls (on a network provisioned for an average load of ~30 minutes a month - you can see how this is heading down hill fast!). The really ironic part of the lack of inter-carrier capacity for sms was that the 3G data capacity never failed for me. So while I couldn't send a 200byte message, I could send a 300kbyte email with photos. !!!POWER!!! Battery life also quickly becomes a problem for both network operator and user. As towers start shutting down, phones move to more distant towers, which mean everything uses more power. Telco's are then presented with the problem of getting generators to towers. "Remember your chains and padlocks!" - when disaster strikes, idiots think stealing telco generators is cool. You don't want to have to revisit a tower just to replace the generator. Home users quickly realise they have no way to recharge their mobiles. New, cheap, smart phones only last a day and even less when they're trying to talk to distant towers. (You should see the pile of hand held 'crank' torch/radio/mobile phone chargers that our local hardware store now has!) People are also asking about inverters on local message boards. Population Movement... Another problem we've found is that population movement causes load issues. Thousands of people left the city area to towns up to 3 hours away to escape the aftershocks. They take their phones and mobile broadband and then spent lots of time calling back into the city to local friends and family. Suddenly everyone's doing much more calling from small towns back into the city over the mobile network than normal. Networks - Fixed Our fixed lined networks did stay up reasonably well. (We have two separate copper networks in 50% of the city - Telecom & TelstraClear, and one incumbent who covers the whole city - Telecom.) However, the power went out (in many cases simply because the street side transformers have sensors in them to detect if the oil reservoir has moved. The earth quakes trip the sensors and they either go out for a while or you have to wait until someone comes and resets them I think - either way, it resulted in 9 hours with no power for me on the 22nd). Many many people use cordless phones and don't have a non-powered/corded phone any more. After the 22nd we had a national campaign to get old corded phones to Christchurch. 5,000 were collected. (Now when you consider the country has a population of 4m and Christchurch has ~360k, 5,000 phones is quite a few). We are moving forward into an FTTN/H world. This means that homes need power to keep voip units up. Simple rule - when disaster strikes, mobile is going to be 'it', so make sure you've got enough capacity provisioned! Our road side FTTN cabinets only have battery life for between 4 to 8 hours. Each cabinet services ~200 customers. So you can see a new problem unfolding... how do you get generators to those? The FTTN nodes currently do midpoint injection, so the PSTN stayed going but DSL failed after time, expect where the 'E' side cables where damaged. The newer TelstraClear fixed network is a combination HFC/UTP POTS network delivered over head or in street ducting. Interestingly the HFC didn't miss a beat. The POTS did eventually drop out, and when it came back on line, the system only seemed to have a basic configuration and the lines wouldn't support appliances like dialup EFTPOS machines any more. (This was fixed a few days later.) - oh how I long for a total IP world! :) EFTPOS is very important in local socio-economic high crime areas. Small local store owners start to stress when they start to collect to much cash in the till as it makes them a target. EFTPOS means they can 'give out cash' at the same rate they collect it. Many people on public benefits, such as the old age pension, also don't have cash and use a plastic card to buy something as simple as milk. While people had 'money in the bank', they couldn't get to it to spend it end they needed to. IP EFTPOS means you can transfer the terminal from a fixed service to another network or mobile solution quickly. My local store owner only had fixed lines from the one provider whos service failed, so I had to string cables down 4 buildings to get a working phone service from 'the other network'. (We were lucky that one building in the block did still have a working service from 'the other provider'. $5 difference a month means that 70% of customers in the area are using the cheaper provider). Ground Cables --- The older Telecom network is 'direct bury' and the cables in my area are ~60 years old. This causes a number of problems. With 7,000 after shocks since our 7.1 quake on Sept 4, 2010, the cables are getting pulled apart and pulled away from street side termination. We now have holes on our road because of earthquake damage and holes in our foot paths from telco contractors digging up bits of cable all over the suburb to trace faults. While the old cables are armoured, you only have to touch them with a digger and you get 4 nice cable techs parked out side your house for 2 days drinking your coffee while they dig up and fix 85 pairs. (Which I might note only supplies service to 1 customer now) City wide we've had many buildings pulled down. This also causes problems where cables run across buildings. Local techs told me that they've had many call outs where the cable to an adjacent building has simply been removed when a building is demolished in a hurry (because it's likely to fall on someone if there's another aftershock.) We also had inter-exchange load issues. People could call 'out of town' but not exchange to exchange - oh how I long for a total IP world! :) -- Don Gould Christchurch, New Zealand
Don Gould wrote:
So the "old corded phones" were to be distributed to those who have copper/POTS service? Kinda' off-topic, but what was the situation like regarding radio/television coverage during the event? --Michael
On 25/08/2011 12:18 p.m., Michael Painter wrote:
So the "old corded phones" were to be distributed to those who have copper/POTS service?
I assume so. I honestly don't know where the phones went exactly. Most people still have a copper pots service here (though that is changing).
Kinda' off-topic, but what was the situation like regarding radio/television coverage during the event?
First, I wouldn't consider that off topic given where our media and internet is heading... :) Radio - That was very interesting to observe. Clearly radio stations don't have disaster broadcast plans in place for content. When you're crying out for information about what's going on, the very last think you want to hear is an inappropriate advert break. The number of stations that kept broadcasting adverts for 'exciting things in Christchurch' was un-nerving. It's my view that media news desks also need to remember to listeners who are in the middle of the disaster area and are hanging on every word of their 'emergency radio'. To hear that my city is 'devastated by a MASSIVE earth quake and hundreds of people have been killed' every 10 minutes in the 'over hyped' news reader voice gets very alarming. It was interesting to observe later in the day the whole tone of broadcast changed. It seemed the media started to realise that this was in fact a very serious disaster and not just something they could/should beat up for ratings and ad revenues. Many stations are now all broadcast out of Auckland (over 1000km away and completely unaffected by the quake) We were told by health staff to stop watching and listen to the media because of the potential PTSD impact. The radio stations did mostly consolidate down to two main transmissions. One local station was interesting to listen to as the announcer almost refused to leave the building, stayed on air and continued to take phone calls. We have had one new local radio station establish as a result of the quake. A group further down the country brought a caravan of equipment and set up a temporary transmitter in the most impacted part of the city. The result was so successful that the station has stayed on air. TV coverage was amazing. Not only did we never loose TV (though that's not much of a surprise as Christchurch is a flat plane at the foot of a big hill, so there's 1 transmitter for the whole area), but the coverage was very clearly edited. While people in the .us saw shots of cars with dead bodies, we didn't see any dead people that I can recall and content was very filtered. Clearly some very careful consideration was given in the TV broadcast space. Having said that, the presentation was still disturbing and running almost 18 hours a day for a while, you have to turn off the TV. But what was really the most interesting was www.press.co.nz. For weeks it streamed a constant source of information that was far more up to date that any other news source. The Press is the local news paper. What is amazing is that their building was destroyed and staff were even killed. Their ability to keep news flowing on to their web site was just something else. In my house the Press web site was our main source of information and it was updated with a full range of stories faster than other media sites. Impact on the media did become evident over the following two weeks. One broadcaster simply lost the plot at one point. It became evident that media presenters were becoming more effected by the disaster as time went on. I can understand this. Being told "Hey, stand there... because it will be a 'money shot'" takes some real guts when you consider that 'there' is in front of a building that could fall on you in the next aftershock. IPTV. Moving into an IPTV world is going to be very interesting in the disaster space in my view. We currently have FTA DVB-T & S and still have analogue transmission. So a 12volt inverter in your car and you can keep watching media. But what's going to happen in an IPTV world where most of the heavy data lifting is done via fibre? Like many places around the world, consumers here are looking for 'more, faster, cheaper'. Regulators are wanting 'more competitors'. 50 years ago we had 1 provider with 1 TV channel. Today I have lost count of the layer 1 providers in my area. IP is our Future... In my mind, IP is very clearly our future disaster proof technology if it's used properly, or a disaster in it self if it's used incorrectly. While I did loose text messaging, I never lost my telephone service or email connection. My phone service is on VoIP. I have a client on my mobile phone. So my service just transferred to my mobile even though my home lost power. When the mobile data 3G net failed, I then flicked to 2G GPRS data, then when that failed my power was back and we returned to the HFC cable. WIRELESS IS FASTER. One thing I will note is that once you're all 'IP', wireless technology becomes a much faster way of getting back on line. We had to relocate over 50,000 workers out of the CBD. Many businesses have commented that their only data choice was a point to point wireless solution. They were very surprised to discover how quickly those services could be commissioned and how much more performance they could get for the same money they'd been paying for fixed line service delivery. D -- Don Gould 31 Acheson Ave Mairehau Christchurch, New Zealand Ph: + 64 3 348 7235 Mobile: + 64 21 114 0699
Commercial, nationwide-broadcast radio stations are not going to (by their very nature) broadcast disaster-information on a continuous basis as a significant proportion of their listener base may not be directly affected, and dont necessarily need the trauma. There's a psychological hit in this, and value in keeping up the norm as much as is reasonable. On the other hand I expect that Radio New Zealand was one of the better transmitters involved, and to a lesser degree any radio station whos focus is talkback is going to be better value than someone who plays pop music.
This is a cynical approach to what happened, in my (Auckland based) opinion. In the early stages information would've been relatively hard to come by, responders were very much in an all-hands-to-the-pump running-on-instinct phase and the scale of the incident means that regional and national emergency response needed to be spun up. As resources arrived from outside the immediately affected area, information began to be handled in a more structured fashion and the picture became clearer. I watched the live coverage as much as I was able from the office when the quake struck, but the truth is that it was a few hours before solid data (that didnt mean repeating the same several datapoints) was forthcoming in any major volume.
This is a success story in my opinion; I imagine it'll have value during the recovery phase but I expect it'll remain relatively small, assuming theres any intention to continue with it long term. Local radio stations seem to be going the way of local-anything; being superceded by larger organisations that can benefit from scale. The ISP world is no different.
filtered. Clearly some very careful consideration was given in the TV broadcast space.
Emergency Services and the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management have dedicated media liason for exactly this reason, and clued-up mainstream media are not stupid. Im more impressed that there wasn't more carnage published on Youtube, etc, from joe-insensitive-camcorder.
The broadcasters are human. The Christchurch quake is the single biggest event of our generation (in NZ) and most of the broadcasters had never seen anything that big or signficant. The human cost hits home. Ithink it's cynical to think of 'money shot' type approaches... whilst every journo and cameraman wants good footage, you make them sound more callous than I expect they were.
I personally feel that low-complexity analogue systems work well as the lowest common denominator, and despite the fact i'm an IP engineer I harbour some concerns about the movement away from basic, tried-and-true technologies that involve substantially fewer OSI layers. However, TV in NZ will be pure digital in the next year or two and that's going to add an additional dependency for Television. Broadcast radio will be a ways behind I expect, as there isnt as much competition for the spectrum. Im certainly in no rush to see us move to Digital Broadcast Radio.
This isnt necessarily a success story. All of the above has a heavy dependency on mains power. You're probably lucky that you retained sufficient battery endurance for the time you had no mains power. Yet another observation; the trend toward Smartphones is also a trend toward devices that you're lucky to get 2 days of standby on, in comparison to older, more basic handsets that might give you a week between charges. Another risk. I see VOIP as more risky than copper POTS due to the inability to rely on the service 'just working'. Where the exchange - a decent facility with significant investment in redundant power - can backfill power needs for an extended period back along the copper pair, this has got to be better than the average VOIP user who probably has no redundant power option at all. The corded-phone harvest would be no good for anyone who was fully on VOIP... even those end-nodes that have gel-cell batteries fitted for service during a power-failure would only be good for a few hours at best. How many residential properties have a Generator available?
Wireless, especially on unlicensed spectrum, has nowhere near the SLA that a typical fibre (or even copper business-grade) service can provide. You have a fight for spectrum, and latency/jitter figures that dont compare. It has its place though and ive no doubt that folks will be more open to a service than can be uplifted and moved relatively easily, especially at the moment with many businesses operating in temporary premesis while their red-zone office spaces have their futures decided. I would also not be surprised to see many of these folks tend back to fibre type services once theyre established in new permanent premesis. One wireless last-mile provider I spoke to a few weeks ago was describing to me how one of their key transmission sites was the roof of a red-stickered building thats now marked for demolition. The very geography that works well for large, high powered transmission (ala TV) does not lend itself to shared-spectrum, nodal stuff such as wireless IP. You still need adequately connected locations that you can place RF kit on, with sufficiently-decent antennas to provide the right mix of directionality and coverage to ensure you can use and re-use your relatively limited spectrum to support the highest number of customers possible. Wireless is a mixed bag, but it is indeed better than nothing. Mark.
On Thu, 25 Aug 2011, Mark Foster wrote:
I neglected to mention that Radio NZ's IP data volume exploded during and in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch quake, and a substantial amount of the load was international - friends and family, and folks out of town, wanting to check up on the situation and unable to receive local TV or FM broadcasts. If you host a broadcaster on your network, be warned.... (For little ol' NZ, International Bandwidth is the expensive bit...) Mark.
On 25/08/2011 9:58 p.m., Mark Foster wrote:
Yes. I understand this. I wonder if I didn't word my thoughts very well? :) I don't know much about how radio is run. I recall thinking at the time "I wish they'd tone down the hype... this is VERY real". It was my observation that the radio hype toned down later in the day. I think you're right that the reason was they had more concrete information to talk about. Reflecting on it later, I wondered if they have a disaster policy? I wondered if they really understood the impact they were having on people. Perhaps my views are cynical. I know I turned to the radio for a sense of comfort that afternoon. A feeling of being 'informed' while I shovelled barrow loads of silt away, that rose up under my home, was important to me.
The broadcasters are human.
Totally.
Sorry, that was not my intention at all. My impression is that these people were proud to do the job as best they could. To me, a 'money shot' isn't just about how much they can push the ratings, it's also about doing your job well to tell the story. News guys are passionate about what they do. But they are human, and I think we lost sight of that at one point in the weeks that followed as one of our best started to crack. I recall earlier in the year we had another disaster down here, a mine exploded. It was a media feeding frenzie. But that's what it was, a frenzie, none of the media were in any danger of getting hurt. But this was very different. The media were in harms way. Frankly their professional level was amazing to watch.
Yes. I now have an inverter permanently in my car so we can charge phones.
A growing number of homes have generators now as a result the the quake. A number of my friends have generators now as well. We are moving to an IP world, like it or not. That's how I see it anyway. I like POTS, it's simple and will run over just about anything, but it's expensive and my experience showed that it can't be relied on as well as my VoIP. +64 3 348 7235 - It just rings. My neighbour on the incumbent lost his service for 3 days when the sewer guys damaged the lines and the telco simply wasn't able to get service to him because they couldn't figure out what was wrong. My other neighbour lost his pstn, and I suspect it was because of issues in the city exchange that controls all the nodes. But what ever caused it, it was down for days with no way to get calls moved in a cost effective way.
Yip... agree. Fibre - "Sorry 6 weeks..." Copper - "Sorry it's been 6 weeks... may be next week..." Wireless - "After lunch tomorrow, but your phone calls might chop a bit..." What's an 'SLA'? What I will say is that the wireless option was a very useful tool to get a hurry on sorting the copper services. ;)
Agreed.
I would also not be surprised to see many of these folks tend back to fibre type services once theyre established in new permanent premesis.
Why? If the price point is right then they might. But I suspect that the price point is going to have to be right for many.
Agreed. It's no where near as simple as just digging a hole, pushing in a fibre and knowing you can deliver 300Gbit without much effort, just the right head ends.
Wireless is a mixed bag, but it is indeed better than nothing.
100% agree with that. If you want your business back on line fast then wireless is the only way to do it in my view after seeing what I've seen in the past 6 months. Having said that, the guys who I've been talking to locally about it, are using a lot of fibre to aggregate data around the city. They're not using long reach wireless, they're using it to do short hops and taking care to manage resources carefully. D -- Don Gould 31 Acheson Ave Mairehau Christchurch, New Zealand Ph: + 64 3 348 7235 Mobile: + 64 21 114 0699
On Aug 24, 2011, at 8:55 AM, JC Dill wrote:
Tornados can happen anywhere, there's no excuse to fail to build/secure for tornados. [Etc.] Things that cost money are not done unless the probability of the danger is higher than vanishingly small. This temblor - at 5.8 with no injuries or fatalities - was the largest earthquake on the entire east coast in 67 years, and the largest in VA in well over a century. Think of the _trillions_ of dollars which could have been put into healthcare, public safety, hell, better networking equipment :) we could have used instead of making all buildings on the east coast earthquake safe. -- TTFN, patrick
Indeed, we are not going to be building earthquake proof buildings in London for example. Riot proof maybe.. -- Leigh Porter ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011, Leigh Porter wrote:
Indeed, we are not going to be building earthquake proof buildings in London for example.
Of course there is no such thing as earthquake proof. The Earth is still a single point of failure :-) Essential facilty design usally takes the "standard" design probabilities for various hazards (heat, cold, wind, rain, earthquake, etc) and multiplies it by a larger safety factor. It doesn't mean designing for the most extreme situation possible anywhere. You've got to rely on the geologists and structual engineers to know their stuff. In any case, its still just a probability. No matter how small the probability, any facility can still have a failure. Have a backup plan somewhere else with a different set of hazards.
On 8/24/2011 7:18 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
Many years ago I was taught that "earthquake proof" means the building doesn't kill the occupants and not that the structure survives unscathed.. As examples, they used a hospital that was damaged in the magnitude 6.6 Sylmar quake of 1971 The building was basically destroyed but only four people were killed.
On Wed, 24 Aug 2011, Roy wrote:
Architects tend to use the term earthquake resistant now. Also there is a expected performance difference between "Essential Facilities" and "Ordinary Facilities." Essential Facility: Buildings and other structures that are intended to remain operational in the event of extreme environmental loading from flood, wind, snow or earthquakes. Relatively few facilities in a community are considered essential facilities such as police, fire and hospitals with emergency rooms. Internet Exchange Facilities are usually not considered "essential facilities" by local building codes. So it would be a voluntary upgrade by the facility owners (and their customers) to meet higher building standards. Your cloud provider may have a different view of acceptable risk than you. As always consult with a licensed architect in your jurisdiction.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
False economy. That argument was valid *before* the Internet became a Generally Mission Critical Utility. It is now. And, alas, commerce being what it is, it's not deployed to be *nearly* as failover redundant as it was designed to be,[1] Cheers, -- jra [1]Anyone who wants to debate either half of this, change the subject line. :-) -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On Aug 24, 2011, at 12:41 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
The original quote was not limited buildings which house Internet infrastructure. As for whether it is true for "Internet", I would argue the point, but ain't got the time. -- TTFN, patrick
On Aug 24, 2011, at 9:44 20AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
It's more complex than that: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/east-coast-earthquakes/ And eastern cities can experience quakes of a magnitude noteworthy even on the West Coast -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston,_South_Carolina#Postbellum_era_.2818... --Steve Bellovin, https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
----- Original Message -----
From: "Seth Mattinen" <sethm@rollernet.us>
I'll scratch "no earthquakes" off the list of benefits for the east coast over the west coast. ;)
A very early blogger buddy of mine owned a stake, for a while, in a colo in Knoxville TN, which was, they said, out of *all* the hazard planes: too far inland for hurricanes, not in the tornado belt, too far south to freeze solid, not in the flood plains, and not near any fault line. Dunno how accurate an assertion that was. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On 24/08/11 2:46 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
Knoxville might not be in the "tornado belt" but it definitely gets tornadoes: <http://www.wbir.com/news/article/167651/2/Tornado-warnings-issued-for-much-of-East-Tennessee> Significant-damage-causing earthquakes in California are a once-every-30-to-100-years type of event for any given location. You need to build and plan for them, but they don't occur with anywhere near the same frequency as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, ice storms, etc. Plus, you don't have to deal with hours or days of warnings, or false warnings (as is often the case with hurricanes, which may change course, after hours or days of warning people "in the path" who end up entirely unscathed). Just get prepared, stay prepared, know what to do if^W when it happens. jc
On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 05:55, JC Dill <jcdill.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
I am not sure the original statement is completely accurate. At least for commercial construction, there are (now) seismic standards. It is true that the right coast did not change the building codes until (as I recall) the mid (to) late 1970s to account for earthquakes. I believe there are some differences in those codes from the left coast standards, to reflect the type and intensity of the quakes likely to occur (and the liquefaction issues are presumably different when the granite bedrock is practically under your feet). However, there are a *lot* of older buildings that predate the newer codes, and in general no monies are allocated for seismic retrofits (except, as in many jurisdictions, when you do major modifications and you then have to upgrade the building to the current codes). As far as securing equipment, I do remember some safety person coming around suggesting it at one point as a possibly improvement when I worked in that region in the 90's, but, not surprisingly, they were more worried about other safety improvements (like snow and ice removal, and repair of cracked sidewalks and stairs). Priorities for safety improvements will always be made. Gary (I am also not a geologist)
----- Original Message -----
From: "JC Dill" <jcdill.lists@gmail.com>
There's a reason NEBS is so strict; there's a reason NEBS is so expensive. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
A 5.8 (or 5.9, I've seen conflicting numbers) really isn't likely to do all that much damage, even on the East Coast.
A 5.6 quake in Newcastle, Australia in 1989 caused, according to Wikipedia, "13 fatalities, 160 people hospitalised, 300,000 people affected. 50,000 homes damaged, 300 buildings demolished. Damage estimated at $4 billion". I left Newcastle in 1997, and even then there were will houses that had not been fully repaired from the damage caused. A smaller 5.2 quake in 1994 "only" caused $35 million worth of damage. So whilst it's not unusual for 5.x quakes to pass without causing any real damage, there's a lot more to it than just the magnitude... Even the 3.6 magnitude one in CA last night was enough to cause my mini-UPS at home to jump onto battery for a few seconds. Scott.
participants (21)
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Alex Rubenstein
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Chris
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Don Gould
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Gary Buhrmaster
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Jay Ashworth
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JC Dill
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Lamar Owen
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Leigh Porter
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Mark Foster
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Michael Painter
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Michael Thomas
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Owen DeLong
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Patrick W. Gilmore
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PC
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Roy
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Scott Howard
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Scott Morris
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Sean Donelan
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Seth Mattinen
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Steven Bellovin
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William Herrin