Katrina could inundate New Orleans

Mon Aug 29 08:09:15 UTC 2005

On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 12:10:54AM -0700, Steve Gibbard wrote:
> 
> And then, as others have pointed out, there's the question of whether 
> other places are dependent on infrastructure in New Orleans.  It's not a 
> place I've ever seen prominently figure on any ISP's nation-wide network 
> maps.  But, there are plenty of those I haven't seen, and I don't know 
> about the underlying infrastructure in the area.  Do circuits from Houston 
> to Florida pass through New Orleans?  Hopefully, anybody relying too 
> heavily on circuits that pass through the area has adequate capacity on 
> backup paths that go elsewhere.

Yes, most of them in fact. In some cases Atlanta too, but primarily New 
Orleans' only claim to Internet fame is being a repeater node between 
Houston and Florida heading west. If things get really bad (gear under 
water) you could expect to see a potentially significant loss of capacity 
from Florida heading west, or worse still Atlanta to Houston (if we're 
talking about the greater area and not just New Orleans proper), which 
could easily be a problem for some people. Probably the best way to bypass 
it would be having another way out of Atlanta heading North West, which a 
lot of people do. Of course if you don't (for example: 
http://www.cogentco.com/htdocs/map.php), the only way you're going west is 
through NYC/Boston. Expect a bad day in terms of latency if that happens. 
:)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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