solar flares effecting anyone else?

Thu Apr 12 04:07:01 UTC 2001

At 4:45 PM -0400 4/11/01, Jim Mercer wrote:
>i've got an E1 circuit that goes:
>
>Toronto -> Amsterdam (fiber)
>Amsterdam -> Islamabad (satelite)
>Islamabad -> Karachi (fiber)
>
>for the last couple days, my router has been seeing an abnormally high number
>of "carrier transitions".
>
>a parse of the log shows 400+ UPDOWN syslog messages from the cisco for
>today (4:pm Eastern), and some 400 for yesterday.
>
>prior to that maybe 0-10 a day.
>
>i've openned a ticket with the circuit provider, but by asking the list, i
>was hoping to be prepared for a "must be solar flares" excuse.
>
>--
>[ Jim Mercer          jim at pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.ca ]
>[          Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood          ]
>[ aka                        jim at reptiles.org              +1 416 410-5633 ]

 From a terrestrial perspective, the recent solar flare activity would 
have a much more noticeable effect on circuits that have long, 
inductive (copper) loops that collect those pesky electron charges. 
In North America, I imagine that this is mostly local loop issues, 
since the majority (everything?) that is of any appreciable distance 
is fiber.  It is perhaps the case that the Canadians and Alaskans may 
see more of an issue even on their short local loops, since the more 
polar segments of the Earth bear the brunt of the storms (if I recall 
my astronomy courses correctly.)

(Extra credit:	I know that solar flares cause more havoc the further 
North one goes.  The British Isles/Scandanavia about the same 
latitude as parts of Quebec, which has had past problems with the 
power grid and solar flare activity.  Do any IP providers in those 
areas (NA and EU) build solar events into their contingency plans? 
Hint: drag this conversation to the datacenter mailing list.)

The relative (not complete) immunity that the North American networks 
see may not be the case in fiber-poor areas such as Pakistan, where 
despite your carrier's claims of fiber it is very possible that 
you're on copper for quite a distance, more than would be expected in 
NA.

Were you asking about satellite or terrestrial issues?  It's very 
difficult to determine from your comments if you think that this is a 
satellite or "other" issue (I'll assume you know it's not the fiber.)

As a datapoint for satellite:  Over the many, many hundreds of 
Ku-band satellite earth stations that my current employer runs, there 
have been no measurable (or at least statistically significant) 
changes in our error counters, over several continents, latitudes, 
and satellite/transponder sets.

Ku is quite a high-frequency spectrum range; lower ranges will see 
more errors and noise due to the nature of the physics, so I can't 
speak for those people who push IP across those other frequencies.

But none of this matters, since we all know that the Internet was 
designed to be hit by nuuuucleahr bombs and keep on workin', right? 
What's a few billion trillion electrons to the Internet?

JT