Effects of Cold Front on Internet Infrastructure - U.S. Midwest

Wed Jan 30 16:50:18 UTC 2019

Being a Minnesota native, I can tell you that while it is indeed cold, this is nothing new i the Great White North :)  I am amaze a how consistently the media overplays the severity of Midwest cold weather as some kind of unique phenomenon. They amplify this by reporting the wind-chill factor, which is the “what it feels like” equivalent in a cold and windy environment. But equipment feels nothing, so windchill is irrelevant.

For example, Minneapolis is -20F, but the news media instead reports “-60F wind chill”, which, while dramatic, is not meaningful for most purposes. I grew up in Minnesota with -30F and lower quite common, and we walked to school in those temperatures. You just have to dress well. Minneapolis is paved with tunnels and heated skyways to eliminate most outdoor walking downtown.

As far as networks go, none of the ISPs I know of do anything different than anywhere else in the country. Everyone has backup power. It’s already common practice everywhere to exploit cooler winter ambient temperatures to reduce HVAC requirements, so that’s not new either. But it gets as hot in the Midwest in our summer as it is in SA for you now, so everyone must still build out HVAC capacity to cover the hottest days.

 -mel beckman

On Jan 30, 2019, at 8:40 AM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu<mailto:mark.tinka at seacom.mu>> wrote:

For anyone running IP networks in the Midwest, are you having to do anything special to keep your networks up?

For the data centres, is this cold front a chance to reduce air conditioning costs, or is it actually straining the infrastructure?

I'm curious, from a +27-degree C summer's day here in Johannesburg.

Mark.
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