Web expert on his 'catastrophe' key for the internet

Wed Jul 28 03:52:16 UTC 2010

> On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:37:57 -0400, Joe Greco <jgreco at ns.sol.net> wrote:
> > Relatively speaking, at&t's Enterprise Paging (which appears to just be
> > enterprise SMS with a TAP/SNPP gateway) has been a lot more reliable.  I
> > have no idea how reliable it'd be in a major telecom crisis, of course.
> 
> I'd expect it to work as well as the cellular network, since it's riding  
> on it. (read: it stops working when your cellphone does.)

Right, I think I pointed out it was basically SMS, despite being billed
as "enterprise paging," which brings us back to the previous question....

Or are you saying that there are SMS networks out there that aren't part
of the cellular network?  :-)

> SkyTel *used* to have satelite pagers.  I don't think anyone runs such a  
> network anymore... the pagers were bulky and the network is quite  
> expensive to run. (just look at Iridium.)

Yes, fun.  The downside of the evolution of capable cellular devices.

It's still an interesting issue, though.  As data and telecom become
impossible to tell apart, how do you go about arranging for notification
services that work when some particular layer/portion of the Internet's 
broken?  What parts of any virtual circuit from your monitoring server 
to your belt device are impacted by an Internet failure?  By a worm that
manages to take out gear that handles both Internet traffic and private
network VoIP?  Etc.  What happens in twenty years when at&t-the-legacy-
telco has been spun off, gone all VoIP, and has gotten out of the long 
haul biz and rents IP capacity from some other major backbone?  The 
potential for interdependence in the future could be a very complicated
issue.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.