Comcast outages continue even in areas with PG&E power restored

Mon Oct 14 22:38:11 UTC 2019

On 10/14/19 3:06 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
> That is not why people are surprised.  When the house doesn't have 
> power, and doesn't have home generator or UPS, (most) people are less 
> surprised their DSL or Cable modem and VOIP doesn't work anymore.
>
> The reasons I saw people angry on twitter was no Comcast service even 
> when they had power at the house (utility, generator, UPS). Their 
> Comcast service died quickly, even when the home had power but the 
> Comcast outside plant didn't seem to have any backup power.
>
> DSL modems also need power at the home, but the telco providers seem 
> to have more backup power in the outside plant or central offices.  
> That meant DSL worked as long as the house had power (or a home 
> generator or UPS).
>
So it turns out that our local telco/isp does keep dsl running via the 
same mechanism as they keep pots power backed up (i'm guessing it's a 
diesel generator at the co, but am not sure). It seems that a lot of the 
pedestals terminating the local loop these days do the conversion to IP 
right there with sip/h.248/mgcp/rtp. I'm not sure how they get power to 
the pedestal, but these were all a home run to the co at one time so it 
probably wasn't hard to power them from the co. For all i know, that's 
how they're all powered all the time, with a transfer switch at the co, 
rather than tapping the local grid next to the pedestal.

Of course this is a lot of conjecture on my part... be glad to be clued 
in by folks in know.

Mike