Battery Maint in LEC equipment

Tue Jun 7 20:34:49 UTC 2005

Even though it is fed with N+1 UPS power, Qwest put N+1 rectifiers & 
batteries for their fiber cabinet they installed for me a few years 
ago.  At the time, batteries were required no matter what, and they 
say they will replace them every 5 years.  A little-town independent 
telco however, refused to even install a data center fiber shelf 
unless I provided them with DC power.  It just seems to depend on the 
whim of the telco.

As prices fall, so does level of service.  NANOGers all know 
providing uninterruptible power in the current evolving networks is 
hard as the communications infrastructure continues to decentralize. 
Providing non stop power for long term power failures with generators 
scattered all over the place is insanely hard.  Keeping them running 
during a widespread 'event' is even harder.  Everyone wants (expects) 
"always on" dial tone.  And everyone wants cheap calling and cheep 
bandwidth.  Batteries, generators, and their maintenance/operation 
are expensive.  A resilient built network is much more expensive than 
a non resilient one.  Eventually the public will start to realize 
this, and start to demand laws to maintain certain minimum levels of 
service.  It won't happen until some large disaster, or touching news 
story about some preventable tragedy brings it in front of the 
public.  People will have to die for this trend to change.

The non-reliable VOIP as a lifeline, even if it's not intended as 
one, is the tip of this iceberg.

(by the way, like many other forms of regulation, the same goes for 
internet regulation.... if some shady network somewhere ever turns 
out to be the root cause of some incident where a number of deaths 
occur, regulation will soon follow)

Aside from human error, right now the weakest link in the net is the 
grid, and that is a link that isn't apparently getting any stronger.