During the rolling blackouts on Monday and Tuesday, one of the complaints was the lack of notice before the lights went out. Would it be useful if you received advanced notice before a rolling blackout? Or would you do nothing different, and wait for it? Cal-ISO, PG&E, etc have said they don't give warnings because they don't have a way of contacting lots of people at the same time. The net has a system for relaying messages to thousands of systems in a few seconds. People tweaked NNTP to forward messages almost instantly, across multiple links. NNTP is a tried, and well-known protocol. Multicast and other multi-user messaging systems also exist. If we got early warning from PG&E, Cal-ISO, etc is it worth the effort to provide advance notification to NOCs? Or do most providers not care?
Cal-ISO, PG&E, etc have said they don't give warnings because they don't have a way of contacting lots of people at the same time.
They could notify radio and TV stations. There's a whole emergency broadcast infrastructure in place... They might not want to though, as it would also be notifying thieves about affected areas.
The net has a system for relaying messages to thousands of systems in a few seconds. People tweaked NNTP to forward messages almost instantly, across multiple links. NNTP is a tried, and well-known protocol. Multicast and other multi-user messaging systems also exist.
I'm going to assume you mean the Internet community specifically. There are lots of other industries, not sure that worrying about this one in particular is any more important than any of the others. Setting up an NNTP hierarchy is not something that most people non-tech industries are going to be paying attention to. Multicasting doesn't work in most regional ISPs, and it would need a new app anyway, which again not many non-tech orgs would know to use. Mailing lists would probably be the most effective, but not sure that spamming all known mailing lists is a good idea when an outage is only goint to affect a specific area, and nobody will maintain yet another subscription on a list that never gets any traffic. Gets back to radio/tv, which probably have the most visibility for the relevant people, and which is also constrained to geographically relevant areas by default. But they don't seem to like giving explicit notice, as I said, perhaps because they fear resulting criminal activity. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
On Wed, 21 Mar 2001 22:09:38 -0800, "Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com> wrote:
Mailing lists would probably be the most effective, but not sure that spamming all known mailing lists is a good idea when an outage is only goint to affect a specific area, and nobody will maintain yet another subscription on a list that never gets any traffic.
One possibility: (1) Utility Co creates a mailing list for each geographical region. (2) Those customers who want notification subscribe to the list for their region. (3) The customer creates an email filter that catches email from that list, & triggers the customer's preferred notification method. (SMS message, pager, squawk from their workstation, UPS triggerered power down, etc.) You could possibly include PGP sig's on the mailout, to prevent hoax notifications. If the system fails, you're no worse off than you are now. Doesn't seem all /that/ difficult, & wouldn't inconvenience anyone who didn't want to opt in to it.
Gets back to radio/tv, which probably have the most visibility for the relevant people, and which is also constrained to geographically relevant areas by default. But they don't seem to like giving explicit notice, as I said, perhaps because they fear resulting criminal activity.
Or fear of creating a (greater) public perception of poor service. -- W . | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because \|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est ---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 22:09:38 -0800 From: "Eric A. Hall" <ehall@ehsco.com> Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Cal-ISO, PG&E, etc have said they don't give warnings because they don't have a way of contacting lots of people at the same time.
They could notify radio and TV stations. There's a whole emergency broadcast infrastructure in place...
They might not want to though, as it would also be notifying thieves about affected areas.
The outage blocks are announced as soon as they are placed by the utility, so thieves know that very quickly. That is of limited value in that the information of who is in which block is NOT public information. And the "blocks" are not contiguous areas but fairly small areas scattered all over the utility's service area (and over other utility's areas which get their power fed through the utility. the idea behind this is that the crooks will only know that block 'x' is off, but not what physical locations are in block 'x'. Reality is that the local news panning over San Francisco after sunset from Mt. Sutro makes the area without power quite obvious.
Mailing lists would probably be the most effective, but not sure that spamming all known mailing lists is a good idea when an outage is only goint to affect a specific area, and nobody will maintain yet another subscription on a list that never gets any traffic.
A mailing list per block seems a good idea. That way customers could subscribe to the list(s) in which they have equipment. The problem is that PG&E has been shutting down PORTIONS of a block. The next shutdown will be "within block 14". So a notification that block 14 is going down would only mean that your power MIGHT be going out. :-( R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634
On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Kevin Oberman wrote:
A mailing list per block seems a good idea. That way customers could subscribe to the list(s) in which they have equipment. The problem is that PG&E has been shutting down PORTIONS of a block. The next shutdown will be "within block 14". So a notification that block 14 is going down would only mean that your power MIGHT be going out. :-(
Or simply a smarter mailing list which applies additional selection criteria to the mailings. That might include block number, whether they have interruptible contract, etc. John A. Tamplin jat@jaet.org 770/436-5387 HOME 4116 Manson Ave 770/431-9459 FAX Smyrna, GA 30082-3723
I actually asked the CAISO folks to set up a notification mailing list. This was their response:
Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 16:09:26 -0800 From: WebMaster <WebMaster@caiso.com> Subject: RE: Emailed Market Notices
Thank you for your interest in energy conservation. The ISO is currently investigating direct notification of the end-user community. There will be a general announcement if the ISO implements such a program.
Although services such as the one you mention are interesting, the ISO must be concerned about the security of any system it establishes. We have already had reports of "sham" notifications of electrical emergencies in the Sacramento area and possibly in other areas.
I offered to help them set up a PGP-signed system, but got no response. --Lloyd On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, John A. Tamplin wrote:
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 11:10:28 -0600 (CST) From: John A. Tamplin <jat@liveonthenet.com> To: Kevin Oberman <oberman@es.net> Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Early warning system
On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Kevin Oberman wrote:
A mailing list per block seems a good idea. That way customers could subscribe to the list(s) in which they have equipment. The problem is that PG&E has been shutting down PORTIONS of a block. The next shutdown will be "within block 14". So a notification that block 14 is going down would only mean that your power MIGHT be going out. :-(
Or simply a smarter mailing list which applies additional selection criteria to the mailings. That might include block number, whether they have interruptible contract, etc.
John A. Tamplin jat@jaet.org 770/436-5387 HOME 4116 Manson Ave 770/431-9459 FAX Smyrna, GA 30082-3723
On Wed, Mar 21, 2001 at 09:56:46PM -0800, Sean Donelan wrote:
The net has a system for relaying messages to thousands of systems in a few seconds. People tweaked NNTP to forward messages almost instantly, across multiple links. NNTP is a tried, and well-known protocol. Multicast and other multi-user messaging systems also exist.
<speculating> As seen in many households across California: You have Mail! <sound of everything in your house losing power...> -- Jeff Haas NextHop Technologies
Unnamed Administration sources reported that Sean Donelan said:
During the rolling blackouts on Monday and Tuesday, one of the complaints was the lack of notice before the lights went out. Would it be useful if you received advanced notice before a rolling blackout? Or would you do nothing different, and wait for it?
ISTM: The folks who would benefit the most are not NANOGites, but rather the people then NOT caught in elevators.. (But I worry that if you gave a mass warning, and everyone turned off her/his PC, etc... would there then be a surplus so ISO cancelled....etc. etc.) -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
participants (8)
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David Lesher -
Eric A. Hall -
Jeffrey Haas -
John A. Tamplin -
Kevin Oberman -
Lionel Lauer -
Lloyd Taylor -
Sean Donelan