> On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:37:57 -0400, Joe Greco <jgr...@ns.sol.net> wrote: > > Relatively speaking, at&t's Enterprise Paging (which appears to just be > > enterprise SMS with a TAP/SNPP gateway) has been a lot more reliable. I > > have no idea how reliable it'd be in a major telecom crisis, of course. > > I'd expect it to work as well as the cellular network, since it's riding > on it. (read: it stops working when your cellphone does.)
Right, I think I pointed out it was basically SMS, despite being billed as "enterprise paging," which brings us back to the previous question.... Or are you saying that there are SMS networks out there that aren't part of the cellular network? :-) > SkyTel *used* to have satelite pagers. I don't think anyone runs such a > network anymore... the pagers were bulky and the network is quite > expensive to run. (just look at Iridium.) Yes, fun. The downside of the evolution of capable cellular devices. It's still an interesting issue, though. As data and telecom become impossible to tell apart, how do you go about arranging for notification services that work when some particular layer/portion of the Internet's broken? What parts of any virtual circuit from your monitoring server to your belt device are impacted by an Internet failure? By a worm that manages to take out gear that handles both Internet traffic and private network VoIP? Etc. What happens in twenty years when at&t-the-legacy- telco has been spun off, gone all VoIP, and has gotten out of the long haul biz and rents IP capacity from some other major backbone? The potential for interdependence in the future could be a very complicated issue. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.