Information about the national test of the Emergency Alert System

Thu Sep 28 04:08:42 UTC 2017

Went through this AM. Here in the SF BA, alerts went out on the airwaves around 11:20am today.

-Mike

> On Sep 27, 2017, at 21:01, Aaron C. de Bruyn via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> 
> I didn't see a blip on my TV, or hear anything on the local radio
> stations.  I didn't even get an alert on my cell phone.  Did I miss
> it, or did it get cancelled?
> 
> -A
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 9:03 AM, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:
>>> And your upstream(s) to work. And their upstream(s) to work. etc. If 90%
>>> of the stations in the EAS web are down you may end up with nothing working.
>> 
>> 
>> 6% of TV stations are operating in Puerto Rico
>> 15% of radio stations are operating in Puerto Rico
>> 
>> Nationally, there are about 28,000 cable systems, radio and television
>> stations.
>> 
>> This test will not use the FEMA primary entry point system, so its only a
>> partial test of the national EAS.
>> 
>> Today's national test of the Emergency Alert System will be the same as the
>> 2016 national test.  It is a partial test of the EAS, using the FEMA IPAWS
>> system over the internet (i.e. Akamai and Cloudfront are used as CDNs) to
>> the distribute the emergency test message. Cable, radio and TV stations need
>> a working Internet connection as well as radio receivers and transmitters
>> for IPAWS and EAS.
>> 
>> Although the national test was scheduled back in July, its still a good test
>> opportunity to see how the internet and EAS works in Puerto Rico and the
>> U.S. VI with so much damage to the infrastructure. The one minute national
>> test should not intefere with disaster recovery efforts in PR or USVI.
>> 
>> For more information:
>> 
>> https://www.fema.gov/news-release/2017/09/19/mandatory-nationwide-test-emergency-alert-system-be-conducted-september-27
>> 
>> https://www.fcc.gov/document/nationwide-emergency-alert-system-test-planned-september-27
>> 