| Author |
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Jack Gillis
Guest
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 Posted:
Sun Jan 16, 2005 5:19 pm Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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"w_tom" <w_tom1@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:41EA228A.CB725CAC@hotmail.com...
| Quote: | Never use (post 1970) AT&T as an example of quality or
reliability. Once the telcos broke up, AT&T took the MBAs;
phone people went with the baby Bells. Numerous regional and
nationwide blackouts by AT&T throughout the 1980s demonstrates
how bad AT&T became. Look at their top management. Business
school graduates without product experience. No experience
working where the work gets done. Therefore AT&T preached a
lie - the purpose of a business is it profits - the customer
be damned. That mentality explains why AT&T even blamed their
own unions for blackouts created by technically naive AT&T
management.
AT&T is an benchmark example of how to run an unreliable
business. Their top management does not come from where the
work gets done and blames everyone (except top management) for
their failures. Best example of this was Robert Allen.
Classic example of a business based upon principles taught in
business schools - where the product is only a messy
necessity.
BTW, where does innovation not happen? In companies that
use those same business school principals - such as AT&T.
Again, product people went with the baby Bells; business
school graduates (experts in business finance) with AT&T. Who
had growth? Who instead blames everyone except their
management? AT&T demonstrated what type of management creates
failures.
Bert Hyman wrote:
This was true when there was just The Phone Company (AT&T) [or at
least they ->said it was true], but since the system's been
fragmented, is there still the same sort of commitment?
AT&T used to make it sound like working for them was almost a
religious calling. |
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Robert Redelmeier
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Jan 16, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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w_tom <w_tom1@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: | Never use (post 1970) AT&T as an example of quality or
reliability. Once the telcos broke up, AT&T took the MBAs;
phone people went with the baby Bells. Numerous regional
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First, the AT&T breakup was ordered in 1984.
Second, people are referring to the AT&T "MaBell" philosophy
which persists in the BabyBells who provide DSL.
-- Robert |
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wkearney99
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Jan 16, 2005 11:27 pm Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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| Quote: | I'm in NYC and was one of the later areas to come back. My DSL modem
and linksys pox were/are on UPS with my desktop system. When the
lights went out I shut down my big system and preceeded to use a
laptop, with the USP to use the internet. never dropped a beat.
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Here in DC last summer we lost electricity for nearly a week. The DSL line
as well as the POTS line it shared stayed live the entire time. That and
the telco repairs to lines of neighbors were repaired much more quickly than
cable or even electric. YMMV of course.
There are any number of additional variables to consider. Mainly just how
wide a disaster are you talking about? If it's just your building going up
in flames that's one thing. But if it's an outage spanning an entire region
there are a whole range of other issues to consider. As in, if all your
customers are local it won't do you much good to be up and running if
they're still out of service.
As for which technology to use I'd go with telco-based DSL. The
infrastructure for telco is generally geared toward much more reliability
and maintenance than that of broadband cable. If repairs are being made for
phone service it's likely any telco-based data services will benefit at the
same time. Cable, on the other hand, doesn't generally have the same degree
of commitment to service or anywhere near the same level of personnel geared
toward maintenance.
-Bill Kearney |
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w_tom
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Jan 17, 2005 1:02 am Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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Do baby Bells only install enough fiber optics to meet the
load - no backup spares? When one fiber optic in Newark is
accidentally broken, then the entire NYC long distance fails -
no spare capacity. Is baby Bell management so ignorant of how
the power backup systems work as to switch over to
batteries? Four hours later, even the Concord must land at
another airport with a runway slightly too short because,
again, all NYC AT&T service is lost. Would the baby Bells
then blame unions before learning why the failure happened?
Do the baby Bells install upgrade software that was never
tested so that the entire nation's long distance service
cascades into a crash? Would they so mismanage their satellite
operations as to let their birds be damaged by a solar event?
And when these failures happen, does the corporate president
(Robert Allen) quickly go to the press blaming the unions?
Did the baby Bells sell more cell phones knowing full well
that they did not have sufficient cell phone towers in NYC to
support all those phones? Go from one cell to another, get
cutoff because that other cell has too many users. AND not be
able to call back that so important client. This also was
AT&T.
Did the baby Bells buy two cable companies? Then learn,
after the fact, that all wiring in those cable networks was
electrically insufficient. The entire cable network had to be
completely replaced. AT&T did not have the money. So did the
baby Bells sell off those cable companies for hundreds of
millions of dollars less than they originally paid? Notice
the numbers. Notice failures repeatedly traceable to AT&T
business school trained management. Failures in AT&T that the
baby Bells do not create.
There exists a night and day difference between the baby
Bells and AT&T. AT&T philosophy has always been based upon
the business school principles (because AT&T is dominated by
people with MBA degrees). The Economist Magazine once stated
no other company in the history of free market economics
destroyed shareholder value more than what AT&T did to NCR.
Again more facts based upon numbers. When it comes to bad -
really bad - companies, then a benchmark is AT&T. Literally
every business that AT&T touches is a long term loser. AT&T
routinely stifles innovation. One need only review the
history of a chief scientist for AT&T, David Isenberg, to
appreciate how much AT&T business school management fears
innovation:
http://www.isen.com
AT&T even and repeatedly fears to innovate - a symptom of
decisions based upon spread sheet analysis.
During the 1980s breakup, AT&T took the business school
graduates because AT&T was going to develop new businesses.
AT&T MBAs even stifled Unix so aggressively that AT&T's Unix
operation was begging POSIX creators to return to System V
Unix. Eventually AT&T had to even sell off UNIX.
The product people went with the baby Bells. Therefore the
baby Bells develop new and profitable businesses.
AT&T repeatedly tried to buy into new businesses only to
sell off those struggling businesses later to mask financial
losses. To cover up those losses, AT&T even had to sell off
their Basking Ridge NJ headquarters. AT&T needed the money.
AT&T is a prime example of how business school philosophies
(people who use MBA education) destroy businesses. First and
foremost, AT&T is a prime example of how innovation is
constantly stifled by those business school principles. Above
is only an abridged list of glaring examples. AT&T has been
that bad for multiple decades due to their 'MBA school'
philosophies - that stifle innovation.
Robert Redelmeier wrote:
| Quote: | w_tom <w_tom1@hotmail.com> wrote:
Never use (post 1970) AT&T as an example of quality or
reliability. Once the telcos broke up, AT&T took the MBAs;
phone people went with the baby Bells. Numerous regional
First, the AT&T breakup was ordered in 1984.
Second, people are referring to the AT&T "MaBell" philosophy
which persists in the BabyBells who provide DSL.
-- Robert |
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wkearney99
Guest
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| Posted:
Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:05 pm Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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| Quote: | Four hours later, even the Concord must land at
another airport with a runway slightly too short because,
again, all NYC AT&T service is lost.
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The Concorde no longer flies.
Your points about AT&T management, or lack thereof, probably need to find a
different newsgroups instead of this one. |
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David Ross
Guest
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| Posted:
Wed Jan 19, 2005 3:10 am Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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| Quote: | We are going to install a backup data line in an off-site location in
case of disaster at our main office. The bandwidth can be relatively
low, as it would probably be connecting 10 people at the most to the
internet.
Is there any significant difference in the level of service/resiliency
of the network in general between dsl and cable? If a medium to major
disaster were to hit the area, would one infrastructure be better able
to handle the increased traffic/possible damage than the other?
An thoughts/opinions are appreciated.
|
Keeping in mind what others have said about how the networks are
implemented, where are you and what are your likely disaster cases?
Here in central NC, Ice storms are the most frequent cause of no power
and downed lines. Followed by tornadoes and hurricanes. Each of these
can take you down for a long time. Or not. I work out of my home. My
house is both on the 1st leg of the power system back to the substation
and for some strange reason my transformer is tied directly to the
"high" line, not the fused sub-feed line. And because of my neighborhood
I've never gone more than 24 hours without power. Even when there are
100' trees lying on the lines on my side streets. Phone have rarely been
down for more than a few hours, cable a day or two. Now 3 houses away on
a side street they can be down a week.
Next on the list of issues is thunderstorms and lightning. While not as
widespread, it can do enormous point damage. But if you have good
backups and replacement gear is available at reasonable cost, maybe you
don't worry much about this.
My point is you have to look at where you are located and what the
likely sources of trouble will be and then decide first if you want to
move and 2nd how much you to spend to avoid the troubles. Hurricanes,
tornadoes, and lighting damage in Manhattan can be treated as 100 year
events if that. For me they seem to average once a year. |
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no one in particular®©
Guest
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| Posted:
Sun Jan 23, 2005 7:37 am Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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"w_tom" <w_tom1@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:41E8A0A8.14CC2EF5@hotmail.com...
| Quote: | Trace the wires yourself. Cable center is often nothing
more than a metal shack located on some back lot surrounded
with a chain link fence. No power backup. No security. No
apparent (serious) surge protection. Furthermore, the cable
is dependent on amplifiers on utility poles - also no security
and no power backup. Cable only provides what is is minimally
required to provide service and is completely dependent on
every part of the electric company system working.
Intermediate amplifiers in selective sections of town without
power can take out your cable service.
The phone company, as others have noted, are in hardened
brick buildings (some were hardened for war), with battery
backup (for four hours), and with generator backup (for days
of power). Furthermore, DSL and ISDN is already being
obsoleted with a dedicated fiber optic from your building to
theirs (no intermediate amplifiers), terminates inside the
same hard building, and with days of backup power.
Of course both solutions (cable or telco) require you have
on site power and support that is just as reliable.
Cable has no intent to provide such resiliency. Telco takes
such resiliency seriously.
|
Okay, and now for an answer from someone who works cable AND DSL
BOTH.
It is a tremendous falsehood to say that cable doesn't have any
resiliency. I know, because I've worked system projects from the maps
that will tell you down to the foot where any given piece of equipment
is. The maps are fairly LITTERED with power sites where power is handed
off to the system from the power company and they DO have battery
back-up AND the cable company DOES stock generators which are trotted
out to the power sites whether ground/pedestal style or pole mounted if
the outage will outlast the batteries.
This is ESPECIALLY true in areas with cable telephony. We've had
every field tech above I/R (const., line, system engineer) tasked with
delivering generators.
Cable goes back to nodes, and FIBER from there to a local hub and
from that aggregation point to the head end and that's where you find
the satellite dish farm. Sometimes they take their feed from fiber from
some other head end even farther away. Depends on the operator and the
services they've deployed. Here they are very reliable. No outage I've
had has gone longer than a couple days EVER. I had SNET phone service
out an entire week with the phone company unable to figure out where the
break in the pair was in UNDER 5500 ft..
Phone service is SUPPOSEDLY a "five nines" service but is as with
any human endeavor prone to error and breaks in the chain of service.
Phone service CAN and HAS been out to customers for DAYS or even WEEKS
with nothing better than buck-passing excuses. This DESPITE battery and
generator coverage at the CO. I've seen SDSL and T1 lines go down and
not come back for three weeks. SLAs are TARGETS, and NOT guarantees
written in stone. Humans are required to honor them or give money back
for services not rendered. They are NOT going to be there if someone
screws up and people in telecom DO.
What needs to be asked is, "how important is this back-up line?" If
very important, then what in the world is your MAIN line? I would
predicate my choice of back-up on the main line to that site. For
instance, if I had a T-1, I'd try to get the fastest thing I could
without going over that speed and cost. After all, we're talking
back-up. So either SDSL or cable. Too distant for straight copper, then
definitely NOT IDSL or ISDN given cost versus speed. A cable modem
business account can do as much as 1Mbps upstream depending on the
provider. In pre-DOCSIS days, I had a modem doing 4Mbps upstream as a
residential user. I get the much downstream regularly now.
If I had a DSL line already, I'd go with cable so as not to have the
same point of failure, whether CO or RT. And vice versa. Right now, I'm
looking at a pair of bonded SDSL lines to compliment cable.
If you've got line of sight and the bucks, you can get a VSAT link
which then is only dependent on your remote site's power and not the
cable or phone company.
At the bottom of speed would be something like Starband or DirecWay.
But like VSAT these are dependent on your site's power and not subject
to lines being disturbed.
There's no quick answer on DSL versus cable. But don't simply buy
the line about DSL being superior to cable because the arguments aren't
thorough. It's largely a draw technically and billing gives the edge to
cable. But if you want to avoid physical layer delivery issues,
satellite beats both. But it costs. So you've got a lot of weighing to
do.
-Wayd Wolf |
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Tim Keating
Guest
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| Posted:
Mon Jan 31, 2005 12:29 am Post subject:
Re: dsl vs. cable for disaster recovery |
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On 14 Jan 2005 15:34:18 -0800, "steve" <steve_tyrol@hotmail.com>
wrote:
| Quote: | Hello
We are going to install a backup data line in an off-site location in
case of disaster at our main office. The bandwidth can be relatively
low, as it would probably be connecting 10 people at the most to the
internet.
Is there any significant difference in the level of service/resiliency
of the network in general between dsl and cable? If a medium to major
disaster were to hit the area, would one infrastructure be better able
to handle the increased traffic/possible damage than the other?
An thoughts/opinions are appreciated.
|
Any particular cable segment may serve upwards of a couple of
thousand customers. To facilitate that service the cable co installs
dozens of pole or ground mounted amplifiers and translators.
Generally, the battery backups for these devices last no more than
a few hours without power. Some last longer, some shorter as time
passes and the batteries naturally loose capacity.
Thus, operation of your cable service is dependant on power and
connectivity being supplied to ALL the cable co devices servicing your
particular connection.
(In a nut shell, cable co connections are the worst of the worst,
where Connectivity == function of power to all amps/translators+ long
over head run of coax cable. )
=============
DSL is Better.. but still vulnerable, .it's reliability depends
greatly on the type of phone lines used and how far they are run above
ground. A falling tree knocking down and breaking phone cable makes
for a long repair time. Underground cables at risk if their is
extensive flooding.. (Enough to flood Junction or other boxes).
-----------
DSL serviced by RT.. is a bit better than cable, usually only one
battery to go down.. Overhead wiring at risk, Pad mounted boxes
subject to flooding.
A friend who had phone service via SLIC s lost dial tone, after 6
hours. Phone line intact, hurricane & tropical storm conditions
lasted for several days, during which no repairs were attempted.
After a couple of days the phone company rolled out a diesel genny to
power the SLICK and restore phone service.
Note: I don't recall the phone co going out their way to power any
stand alone RT's(DSL) boxes.
----------
DSL serviced by CO is better yet (Battery + full time genny),.
overhead wiring still at risk, Junction boxes still at risk of
flooding.
I had DSL to CO and /internet connectivity through out Hurricane
Frances despite having lost neighborhood power for over 4 days.
==============
Lastly, even if you have local connectivity.. how about your ISP?
If their routers are not up, your data is going nowhere fast. What's
their connectivity look like, do they have genny's? |
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