Battery Maint in LEC equipment
Jerry Pasker
info at n-connect.net
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.
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