Just a personal experience with residential Internet:
Northeast power blackout of 2003
The power went out. Our PCs and cable modem were on UPS. I
brought the PCs down gracefully and waited.
After a half an hour, I started my generator and booted the PCs.
It was about an hour after the failure when the Comcast
broadband and their cable TV vanished.
No problem, I switched to my backup ISP with dial-up. I dialed
and got their modem to answer and connect. No response other
than the modem connecting.
(Just months before, I dropped my Earthlink two-way satellite
service because the Comcast was reliable. Sigh.)
Cell phone service (Verizon) was very spotty with occasional
connects.
The POTS worked fine.
Our local 800 MHz system was not fully implemented yet.
Few hams were on the 2 meter repeaters. We used ham radio to
coordinate generators for dialysis machines for patients, etc.
The local city had four radio stations (population about
30,000). They got a couple on the air after a while, but they
carried their satellite talk radio, music, and commercials. A
decade earlier their news departments would have been competing
to report; but they were acquired by one national company and
now had all their automated studios in the same building. We
kept listening to their news broadcasts, but there didn't seem
to be local, just national network items.
I hooked up an outside TV antenna (fringe) and was able to get
Detroit TV stations for us to find out what was happening.
I've heard that Comcast is now providing a local battery for
their VOIP boxes. We had AC power for our cable modem and TVs;
the problem was elsewhere in their system.
At the end of the second day I was starting to siphon fuel from
the vehicles to run the generator. I was glad we use the
"always above one-half tank" rule.
It was strange driving at night in the city with no stop lights
and no street lights, and all the businesses were dark; quite
disorienting. Traffic coming off the freeway was a big jam.
One friend observed that, even though there was heavy traffic
and he had to come to a full stop at every stop light for the
cross traffic, it took him less time to drive across town then
when the lights are working.
Nate Duehr wrote:
>
>
>
> Or more accurately, lack of a backup/redundant transport medium beyond
> the data center. The "last mile" has always been the problem.
>
> "Backhoe fade" affects the PSTN just as much as it affects the IP
> network. The PSTN is slowly moving over to IP transport as their "back
> office" connectivity as well... but they're paying big bucks for
> redundant underground routes, hardware that can handle switching to the
> backup routes, people to test that these backups WORK on a regular
> basis, and to design it in the first place.
>
> A residential IP connection meets none of the requirements for anything
> like that, but it is typically just as vulnerable to backhoe fade as the
> POTS line.
>
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