TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: We Live in a World of Redundancies

Re: We Live in a World of Redundancies

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
8 Sep 2006 10:10:30 -0700

Paul wrote:

> Even though there is supposed to be standby power all the way, when I
> have a power outage at home, the POTS line from Verizon fails within
> about 10 seconds (probably at the SLIC across the street), while the
> other line, from the cable TV service (not VOIP), keeps working.

How often do you have power failures at home to observe this failrue?
Your battery TV works but the phone doesn't? I assume you're using a
standard plain phone, not a cordless.

I am really surprised that is the case and as far as I know, that
should be extremely rare. Have you reported that to the phone
company? What is their response?

mc wrote:

> The reason for having the telephone separate from the computer network (and
> even the electric power connection) is so that it will still work when the
> others don't.

> Imagine being completely incommunicado during a computer network failure.

That is very true.

The telephone network has 100 years of experience behind it. That
means they have made their mistakes over time and learned from them,
from dealing with weather and storms to equipment shortages to
untrained technicians and fires in C.O.s. In the 1970s they had
equipment failures and "blue box phreaks" and learned to deal with
that as well by separating control signals from the voice channel. I
don't think IP has any protection like that whatsoever, given all the
crap that flows through "filters".

Short of everyone lifting their handset at once or a critical cable or
C.O. being destroyed (which happens), the system is extremely
reliable. All components (except the phone sets) are built to very
heavy standards.

The IP computer network is new and constantly evolving. It is full of
malicious attacks and sabatoge that are a long way to being resolved.
It is full of bugs. It crashes all the time from numerous software
and hardware failures. A few months ago my employer was completely
knocked out by sabotage (an email virus). That happens to people all
the time. You want me to depend on something like that?

To suggest we abandon this network is ludicrous and irresponsible. The
IP geeks have a long way to go toward reliability and have their heads
in the sand if they believe otherwise.

Some proponents of this sort of thing are probably young techies who
have little experience in the real world out of the classroom. Others
are businesspeople who want to be the first to sell a new
service/product at a high markup regardless of its technical merits.

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