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To: jack bittner who wrote (6108)	11/28/1999 9:33:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Hi Jack, The line of sight systems from TGNT, WCII, etc. are more limited in bandwidth relative to the LU OpticAir system's, but since they operate in the RF region they are far more reliable, if distanced properly, than those based on Infrared. One needs to assess the tradeoffs and the probabilities of inclement weather's effects on operations in determining the actual levels of risk for any given situation. If the Infrared link is only required during rare occasions, such as those which are designed for disaster recovery, then one can make some assumptions that the likelihood for both systems (main and backup) being down at the same time is low. But even this assumption is fair game, subject to treatment by Murphy's Law, from time to time. Very rare, but I could tell you some stories of other backup schemes which have disappointed during the moment of truth. In fairness, however, "bad weather" is but one form of threat. Optical systems running through central offices may find their own form of "bad weather" in the form of administrative error at the hands of craftspeople, system failures, etc. In other words, there are no entirely failsafe systems out there. None that I am aware of, in any event. But if I had to grade IR against those of fiber and other wireless forms, today I would have to rank IR last in terms of reliability, despite their many other advantages outside the realm of meeting strings of nines (e.g., 99.9999% uptime). Even though much higher speeds can be attained through the Infrared system approach, even for day to day use, one must take into account the maximum period of time that they could sustain their ongoing operations at the reduced speeds, or forego the IR link altogether, during severely inclement weather. If the much higher speeds are only required for several hours per day, say, for backups of servers and NAS files, then perhaps IR offers a viable solution, if there is some slippage allowable in the scheduling of these tasks. But if the criticality of a link is such that it cannot be down for more than a couple of minutes before it begins to impact the bottom line, then... well, you can take if from there. Regards, Frank Coluccio

To: jack bittner who wrote (6108)	11/29/1999 12:21:00 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 12823

Jack, re backup snafus, here's a case in point which popped up on my NANOG Radar. It happened only yesterday: everquest.station.sony.com Since this message will very likely scroll, soon, I'll post it below. Regards, Frank Coluccio ==== Snip Begins: Network Status Sat Nov 27 16:15:57 EST 1999 Hi folks, We sincerely apologize for the downtime today. Here's what happened: 1) At 6:15am PST San Diego Gas & Electric shut the power off in our building. This was a planned outage, except they weren't supposed to turn the power off in our Building. It came as a great surprise for a lot of people in our building. 2) Everything switched as it should to backup power, but it caused many network problems because only major things get backup juice, and some of the minor things became problems. The cutover to the generator isn't as quick as anyone would have hoped (it's supposed to be immediate), 3) As of right now everything is up and running on a backup Gasoline generator (you would have to see this thing to believe it). We are prepared for emergencies, but a few things we weren't ready for bit us where it hurt. Strangely enough, the biggest problem we had was that our Security system which is supposed to have 12 hours worth of backup battery failed and we were stuck outside of our own building (we went outside temporarily to make sure the Gas Generator was ok). We just got back in (don't ask) and everything is ok now with the exception of Brell which is down for emergency hardware maintenece. I realize this sounds pretty bizzare, and let me tell you it was. On the bright side, even with power cut off to our building (actually the EQ servers are located in 2 different facilities both of which have backup juice) everything is back up now. Again, we apologize Sincerely. <delete> ------End Snip

To: jack bittner who wrote (6108)	12/3/1999 7:46:00 PM
From: mrknowitall	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

jack - I wouldn't call it doomed, but the reality of economics enters into the equation rather abruptly when you start talking about redundancies and capacities. Free-air optical systems have some interesting applications, and wireless technologies offer some neat mobile possibilities, but you have to remember that someone has to make money off all of this - which means someone has to pay to use it. As long as the wire is as ubiquitous as it is, and as long as technology keeps making fools of all those who said no one would ever see dial-up speeds beyond 9600BPS, most people are going to be at the mercy of that wire. AND - what many people don't take into consideration - the fact is as we build the network with more and more bandwidth, we're going to start seeing hosting bottlenecks, which will just start another never-ending round of faster/cheaper developments on that end. What a great economic engine! Mr. K.