Verizon FiOS - is BGP an option?

Sat Aug 4 16:09:04 UTC 2012

Once upon a time, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> said:
> I managed to get gasoline for my generator. I had to drive upwards of
> 5 miles and pass as many as 7 closed stations to get it. But it was
> available and if I'd planned better with respect to containers to
> carry it in I'd have had zero difficulty. Some stations did have
> generators. And some were in locations that didn't lose power in the
> first place.

Well, in North Alabama in April 2011, we had to drive a lot more than 5
miles (unless you left a 0 off the end).  Across the Tennessee state
line (a good bit north of it) they had power, but they quickly ran out
of gas (and had a several hour wait in line to get what they had).  I
was headed to Atlanta, and in 100 miles I drove past just one open gas
station (with very long lines) before I filled up in Georgia.

This was an exceptional event; it was the first time ever Huntsville
Utilities had lost all power.  TVA shut down a large nuclear plant
(Browns Ferry) not because of any problem at the plant (although they
also lost off-site power because of a close tornado, which by regulation
requires a shutdown) but because there was nowhere for the power to go.

> The kind of event which ends access to fuel tends to destroy the
> communications infrastructure anyway so that loss of power is not the
> main barrier to operations.

It depends.  Our problems were from tornados, which tend to cause very
localized damage in a relatively narrow path (it can be 50+ miles long
but not usually more than a half-mile to a mile wide).  Even a massive
outbreak didn't cause any damage at all to 90%+ of the population.  We
lost power because the distribution system was severly hit, but the
long-haul fiber all stayed up.  Most of the other problems were because
of the power failure (some local fiber rings dropped, especially one
CLEC's that puts their nodes in customer premises and were broken by
customers' power failures).

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.