louis martin
cns news &
features
One of the requirements of a robust
communication system is that it function at critical times. By
that standard Internet failed big last week during the storm.
The problem is that few
Internet access providers had backup power available for the
computer equipment that runs the Internet.
``It won't happen again,''
said Martin Levy, founder of Internet Connection in Santa Cruz,
an access provider for thousands of subscribers on the Central
Coast between Monterey and Santa Cruz. When power was lost at the
main Scotts Valley facility east of Santa Cruz, the system went
down for 6 hours.
Internet Connection was better
prepared than some facilities. It had limited battery backup and
it had a generator. But the generator had not been hooked up and
tested. When the power failed the generator could not be
connected.
The Mendocino Community
Network serves an area from Westport in Mendocino county to parts
of northern Sonoma county. It serves about 200 customers. MCN was
even less prepared than Internet Connection.
According Rennie Innis,
business manager at MCN, computers at the facility went down
Monday about 11 PM and stayed down till Wednesday about 5 PM. The
facility had no backup power. But said Innis, ``Most users in the
Mendocino area were without power themselves.'' So it made no
difference to most. But a few, said Innis, ``had expected to be
able to dial up with their portables even though they didn't have
power themselves.''
The failure prompted Innis to
got out on Tuesday and buy a generator, which he had wired up to
the facility by Wednesday. Come next time, Mendocino will be
ready.
Big storms, fallen trees, and
downed power lines are nothing new in Humbolt county. That,
according to Larry Goldberg, president of North Coast Internet,
is why his facility was prepared with UPS's--or Uninterruptable
Power Supplies--and a generator. This time, as it turned out,
they weren't required. Power only flickered once--at about 8 AM
on Monday at the facility in Eureka.
``We were not hit too bad,''
said Goldberg. They did lose phone access to some areas due to
the storm, however.
The node serves about 700
customers in Humbolt and Del Norte counties, and when the system
goes down, said Goldberg, ``We hear about it within 10 minutes.''
Some facilities just lucked
out. Mobius Net in San Francisco has no backup power, but their
part of the city had no power outage.
Able Technical Services in San
Jose has ``a lot of customer,'' said owner Howard Melworm, but
only short-term battery backup. Fortunately, his part of the town
did not lose power. South San Jose was not so lucky.
Melworm said that some access
providers ``can't afford to be reliable'' by purchasing backup
power systems. They can cost up to $100,000.
For that reason he doubts that
the Internet will achieve the reliability of the telephone system
prior to its bust up. When the phone system was one large
company, he said, it was affordable to build in reliability.
Said Levy of Internet
Connection, ``What happened last week was nothing.'' He said that
many of the smaller access providers don't have backup equipment
on the shelf for when equipment failures occur. Internet
Connection, despite last week's failure, does, he said.
Netcom Communications of San
Jose, one of the largest Internet companies, and Creative Net of
San Francisco failed to return 2 calls about backup power. Connex
Communications of San Francisco and Pacific Net of Ukiah also
failed to return calls.
(12/21/95)
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