Verizon FiOS - is BGP an option?

Sun Aug 5 04:14:42 UTC 2012

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 6:50 PM, Andy Koch <gawul00 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 4, 2012, at 11:56, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>> 100 miles isn't a serious logistics problem with 500 gallons of fuel
>> tank in the bed of a pickup truck. That buys you 8-12 hours for 100
>> fiber huts with $500 gasoline generators before you send the next crew
>> for more.
>
> Your expectations are way off here.  With a 100 mile drive, even
> if that is round trip mileage, you can expect that trip to exceed
> 5 hours not including waiting in line to fuel up. Then when you
> return, distribution can take well over 3 hours, meaning that
> some locations will not get refueled before they run out.

Then one group is on the gas run, fetching 500 gallons to a staging
location while another group is on genset runs, topping the tanks of
with the fetched gas.

Or hey, if you're prepared then you have a contract in place with an
oil company to divert one of the 9,000 gallon tank trucks from the
non-functional local gas stations to your local distribution site.
Then base your genset fueling runs from there. Few thousand bucks
ahead of time to set up a box at the edge of one of your parking lots
that can connect to the tanker's standard hose and pump gas.

>> Hell, local Verizon couldn't even keep the 911 center online. Both it
>> and its backup collapsed.
>
>So, rather than focus on repairing 911, you want these technicians
>to drive for hours and distribute gasoline to keep your home data
>service running?

The E911 facility was supposed to be five nines. You don't get five
nines with a focus on repair, you get it with prevention. This year
Verizon'll achieve two nines. That's shameful. Shameful!

I don't expect five nines from my residential Internet service. But I
think two nines on the last mile cable and three nines on the
aggregation system is a reasonable expectation for a primary
first-world suburban communications service. It wasn't achieved.

> Does the spider web of cables include power distribution?
> If not, why the exception?  If so, why not ostracize them
> for failing to keep power to the "critical infrastructure"
> in your neighborhood?

Dominion can't seem to keep my local substation powered. Not my house
per se, but the substation serving 611 power customers. They've missed
3 nines for at least 6 of the last 10 years without a single tree over
the lines between me and the substation. And that's the last I'm going
to say about it here because this isn't a forum for discussing the
power companies' operational failures. It is, however, a forum for
discussing network providers' operational failures.

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 10:26 PM, Nathan Eisenberg
<nathan at atlasnetworks.us> wrote:
>> Residences aren't critical infrastructure, no matter how angry the owners get.
>
> 911 access isn't a critical service?  Fire and security panels aren't critical services?
> If basic life safety and property protection aren't critical services, I'm not sure what is.

Whether each individual's residence contains critical infrastructure
is a decision best left up to that individual. By necessity that makes
the upstream aggregation components critical infrastructure. No
different than it was for POTS 20 years ago.

The Internet isn't just a toy any more. It's the primary
communications channel in to many folks homes and well on its way to
becoming the primary channel period.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004