Check in ...East Coast BLACKOUT

"David Lesher" wrote in message ...


The other possibility is you don't have ADSL but rather its cousin
SDSL that does not share the loop. It *IS* theoritically possible
to have ADSL without a phone using the loop, but there are several
reasons it does not happen -- one is Ma could never grok the paperwork
to assign a DSLAM port to that pair,

That is the primary stopper right there. It's hard enough to set up line sharing
even when everything is straightforward. I can't imagine trying to convince them
how to do line-sharing on a line which has nothing on it to share. What telephone
number ?

Ron Natalie wrote:

"David Lesher" wrote in message ...


The other possibility is you don't have ADSL but rather its cousin
SDSL that does not share the loop. It *IS* theoritically possible
to have ADSL without a phone using the loop, but there are several
reasons it does not happen -- one is Ma could never grok the paperwork
to assign a DSLAM port to that pair,

That is the primary stopper right there. It's hard enough to set up line sharing
even when everything is straightforward. I can't imagine trying to convince them
how to do line-sharing on a line which has nothing on it to share. What telephone
number ?

I'll check the network interface tonight, but I'm pretty sure that there's no filter anywhere
near the house. IIRC, the installer said something about fiber to the pedestal, and hooking
the Y-K pair at the pedestal right to the DSLAM. Several years back a company put fiber in
the neighborhood, then went under, then SBC bought the "cable plant" of the company. I know
that my neighborhood is *VERY* different than other SBC-served DSL areas. In fact, SBC
thinks I'm a "larger business customer", and occasionally tries to bill me the same. We've
gone round-n-round on days when they change my hookup from DHCP to PPPOE. And don't get me
started on the lunacy of the phone dweeb giving me the 1-800 number for LinkSys when I tell
them that the machine connected to the DSL modem is running Linux (say it out loud)...
*sigh*

Russell Kent

"Russell Kent" wrote in message ...

I'll check the network interface tonight, but I'm pretty sure that there's no filter anywhere
near the house. IIRC, the installer said something about fiber to the pedestal, and hooking
the Y-K pair at the pedestal right to the DSLAM.

Oh, one of those. You're danged lucky you have DSL at all. The areas around here that
ran fiber to the mushrooms can't get DSL because nobody wants to put the DSLAMs in
the mushrooms. You're right, you're not linesharing.

Russell Kent writes:


I'll check the network interface tonight, but I'm pretty sure that there's no filter anywhere
near the house. IIRC, the installer said something about fiber to the pedestal, and hooking
the Y-K pair at the pedestal right to the DSLAM. Several years back a company put fiber in
the neighborhood, then went under, then SBC bought the "cable plant" of the company. I know
that my neighborhood is *VERY* different than other SBC-served DSL areas.

Yep. That's FTTC - Fiber to the Curb. It uses a separate pair from
the curb to your house. (Since it's only the local drop, Assigning
Dept. does not have to track that at all.) That explains what you
are saying. It's not ADSL as the masses get at all. The data feed
to the miniDSLAM of some kind in the pedestal comes up separate
channels from the phone lines of you and your neighbors.

Such may use ADSL for the last 100m. The reason, I suspect, is the
cost of the CPE is so low.

As you observe, it makes little economic sense -- the costs are
sky-high and it still "looks" like ADSL to Jill Winecooler.


--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote:

Ron Natalie wrote:

That is the primary stopper right there. It's hard enough to set up line sharing
even when everything is straightforward. I can't imagine trying to convince them
how to do line-sharing on a line which has nothing on it to share. What telephone
number ?

BellSouth treats this as an order for a special service ("2W DSL") loop. The
loop is identified by cable and line pair, rather than telephone number. I have
no idea how it's billed, but I worked on a project for them which helps them set
up the order.

Well, in my case "how it's billed" is rather touchy. After NUMEROUS iterations (works,
doesn't work, works but you're billing me twice, ...), SBC finally resorted to marking my
residential account as a "major business customer" so that the ninnies would shy away
from touching it (for fear of getting reamed for screwing a big $ customer). Peace ever
since. :-)

Russell Kent

In article , Roy Smith wrote:

In addition, central offices and other switching facilities have
emergency backup generators. As soon as the commercial power goes down,
the generators are supposed to crank up and keep things going for as
long as the diesel fuel holds out.

Yup. I used to work in a central office (CO) building until earlier this
year. It was grand! The worst complaint we'd have is a momentary brownout
affecting the computer room power about once a year or so -- we have
certain machines that are ultra-sensitive to brownouts and logs unique
error (but easily identified) messages without loss of functionality
whenever a brownout occurs, so that's how we know.

But other than that, it just... works. In fact, the CO power people runs a
full test of their building (commercial) / UPS (we're talking *industrial*
sized UPS systems, not the kind you buy in stores -- I've seen a power guy
literally hanging off a crowbar with all of his 250 pounds trying to remove
a large electrical circuit for power work in the basement of the CO during
a 1am maintenance!) / cutover strategies.

Usually scheduled as a midnight-4am maintenance window... they spend the
first hour going through the whole building, room by room (I've been there
once or twice when it happens) to make sure all occupants are safely out or
have working emergency gear (eg flashlights) and knows the exact 'escape
route'. I can say that it is *very* different walking around in a
completely dark building even when you know the exact steps by heart! Then
with the flip of a switch, most of the building goes dark. Rooms (eg
computer room, switch room, rooms with MDFs, etc) on the internal UPS power
stays alive. So no interruption in phone or data services. Only
interruption is mostly with lights / computers of offices in building,
which is mostly why they do it off-hours. (The call center is also on the
UPS if I recall.)

They then run whatever individual tests they like. Doesn't take long. By
3am at the latest, they start restoring commercial power to various
circuits in a controlled and staggered fashion. Also, twice a year they run
a smaller scale version of that power cutover test to building UPS power
during a work day and hours, and nobody notices a thing when it *does*
happen (also been there then, too). Not even a flicker.

I've heard of other telcos including a competitor in town doing similar
sorts of full-scale tests every 6 to 12 months. It helps people spot issues
in the procedures, and keeps people current on how to respond.

That's a far cry from many (most?) places in general (non-telco) that may
have alternative sources of power but *don't* regularly actually _verify_
things are still good, before the need pops up for real in an emergency.

I've seen the huge diesel generator in the basement. I think I once heard
that the CO in question was required to ensure they had at least a 14 day
supply in case of serious emergency (which would also include blackouts --
typically due to ice storms, which is a familiar phenomenon in this part of
country).

(Presumably, by the end of 14 day window, there would be a way to ship in
additional diesel fuel, to keep going on... indefinitely -- as long as fuel
delivery can be guaranteed, until commercial power is back. COs are pretty
high on the list of places to get power restored due to public safety
considerations.)

So I don't usually worry about dialtone for landline phones in case of an
emergency. (The system is not perfect, and it *is* indeed possible to
lose that service as experience and human nature / fickle nature of Murphy
has shown us, but on the whole, it's pretty well designed and robust.)

-Dan

(For the big blackout of 2003 affecting the east: I was out at home from
4:11pm until about 11:15pm when my home router came back; I was at work
bringing systems back up carefully once power was restored and didn't get
home until 4:30am with last report written and sent at 6am. That night
sucked! Fire crew came by at work because of flooding in data center due to
sump pumps NOT being on the data center UPS supply and they were afraid of
arcing and other concerns... we quickly had that rewired in record time!)