MAE-East still no generator

Sun Sep 8 16:16:18 UTC 1996

Andrew Partan writes:
> > In other words, its silly for them not to have UPSed AC available.
> 
> They do, its just that they are a telco & this is a telco facility
> they have *lots* more DC than AC.
> 
> Telcos have been around for 100 years; they know how to do DC; they
> do it quite well; you might as well use what they got instead of
> wasting time fighting for what is 'right'.  Its not like its all
> that hard to get the gear that ISPs use to run off of DC.

I readily agree that if one has no choice one can get 48VDC
equipment. The problem, as I see it, is that the overall cost of the
facility providing battery backed up AC and people using standard mass
produced equipment is substantially lower than the cost of the users
all finding oddball power supplies and the facility providing
DC. Furthermore, there is the issue of dramatically lowered
convenience.

Perhaps the telco folks don't have experience providing anything but
48VDC, but this really isn't rocket science. Besides, standby
generators generally produce AC, and thats what one guesses one would
have to go to if the area got hit by a hurricane or some such. Sure
you can rectify AC, but again, why bother?

Perry