In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, commentators have all weighed in on the remarkable resilience and steadfastness of Internet communications during the storm. Failover steps were taken to reroute Internet traffic from the New York metro area to alternate locations like Ashford, Virginia; Washington D.C.; Chicago; and the West Coast.
With very little latency or interruption, Internet traffic seemed to flow seamlessly. This was due in large part to failover and resiliency measures that had been built into major service providers’ networks and switching equipment.
I witnessed this myself first-hand. Safely on the West Coast (and away from Sandy), I had anticipated that most of my New York communications would be nonexistent or reduced at the height of the storm. Instead, business and communications kept rolling at near normal levels. Yes, this was a testimony to Internet resilience and survivability -- but there were also other operable factors.
Remembering Katrina
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast with sustained 125 mph winds. Katrina’s widespread devastation, and the slow emergency response efforts, are well chronicled.
I remember Katrina because I was working with several companies in the New Orleans area. The focus was IT -- and maintaining operations and communications so the businesses wouldn’t risk long-term devastation from the storm, and also the potential loss of business that could result from their inability to maintain communications and services with their customers.
When I think back to Katrina, my natural impulse is to think holistically. No doubt, the same industry writers and pundits at that time could have proclaimed the Internet was resilient and available -- but that wasn’t the reality that many Katrina-stricken companies were experiencing.
Of the companies I was dealing with during Katrina, two had both wireline and wireless Internet ISPs. They were able to failover to wireless Internet service, which stayed up throughout Katrina -- and they didn’t miss a beat when it came to staying open and available for business.
Two other companies were less fortunate. They didn’t have multiple Internet access options in place, and when wireline Internet went out, they were out of business. One organization resurrected its business, although it took several years to do so. The other business never recovered, and ultimately failed.
Finally, there was the large enterprise that managed to fly out critical IT staff to its leased disaster recovery site in Pennsylvania, where it operated in failover mode and continued to do business. But even this company did not go unscathed. Many of its chief IT contributors could not get to work, or were burdened by anxieties because they didn’t know if family members were OK. In one case, an IT staff member was killed in the storm.
Enterprises today
No one who was affected by Hurricane Katrina and its impact on IT will ever forget it. Fortunately, we learned lessons, and the case studies of these “Katrina companies” became models for many enterprises as they developed their own Internet survivability strategies.
What companies learned from Katrina was that Internet survivability in itself was not enough. To further mitigate the risk of being offline for excessive periods of time, virtually every company today has multiple ISPs and multiple ISP access modes (such as wireless and wireline).
Enterprises have also revised their operational workflows so employees can now (thanks to a resilient Internet) easily work from home with an online broadband connection. During Hurricane Sandy, for instance, most of my New York contacts told me that their Manhattan offices had shut down, but that they were continuing to work from home.
So, what's the takeaway from this? That enterprises, and not just the Internet itself, have achieved survivability by morphing themselves into multi-ISP networks with operational failover contingencies like home offices that keep employees working. Sandy demonstrated this beautifully -- giving hope to those of us who still painfully remember Katrina that there will never be an IT disaster of Katrina’s magnitude again.
Yes Mitch true but I wont be surprised if some other countrie passes them in the near future since there are couple of other countries who have already picked up their pace and are right behind the Americans.
There's another lesson here, too. Organizations affected by Sandy do have an understanding public, at least for a while. Even the most hard-hearted were surely moved by the pictures of devastation from the area, of the homes and offices destroyed by the elements, and the estimates of how much it will cost people to rebuild.
But if your company is the sole victim - say a fire, a sprinkler malfunction, a network crash - then customers may not be as understanding. Your competitors will certainly take advantage of your weakness and inability to function.
Like most things that are desired or coveted, they don't just happen. You've got to work for it so that you can reap the rewards and experience the benefits when time comes. Internet resiliency is one of those. But based on success stories of those who were able to pull it off, it is truly worth the effort.
Ever since I read the book "Tubes: Journey to the Center of the Internet," I've been newly awakened to the realization that our metaphors of the Internet as an intangible cyberspace or cloud are just that -- metaphors. The reality is that the Internet is a globe-spanning physical machine or artifact. Like buildings, roads, railroads, and other physical artifacts, it can be hammered by the weather, and requires physical maintenance to keep up and running.
It's a revelation, particularly for those who -- like me -- think that America doesn't make anything anymore. Of course, the Internet is the creation of most countries around the world, but American has been one of the leaders.
I've read that installations of stationary fuel cells successfully survived Sandy, both in the Bahamas and on some of the IT and cell equipment in Long Island.
There aren't many of these, but also I've noted that there is a change now from having battery UPS systems to running whole IT Operations centers just on fuel cells. This is because fuel cells can generate electricity indepedent of the grid, and if using hydrogen, can generate their own fuel indefinitely!
Ballard Fuel Cell Systems Prove 100% Reliable, Providing Backup Power During Hurricane Sandy
Ballard's seventeen ElectraGen™-ME systems, installed in the local telecom network, began operating automatically as grid power was lost when the storm hit on October 25th. During the three days that Hurricane Sandy passed over the Bahamas, each of the 5 kW systems operated flawlessly as needed to maintain consistent power. As a group, the seventeen systems provided the equivalent of one month of backup power over a concentrated seven-day period during and after the storm; producing more than 1,200 kWh of electricity.
I saw some reports about NYC companies that had colo facilities across the river in NJ. Those sites were impacted by Sandy, rendering the DR sites useless. It emphasizes the need to set up DR or backup facilities far away from HQ in order to decrease the odds of simultaneously being affected by the same manmade or natural disaster.
Interesting question about what powers backup generators, @bolingbroke. Living in Florida, we have a natural gas generator that automatically turns on within 30 seconds of the electricity going out. (We bought it after the year of four hurricanes, between hurricane 1 and 2.) It's a great investment, something that we actually use once or twice a year, no matter whether or not we have hurricanes! But I don't know what commercial buildings use. Our home system powers the A/C, kitchen (including stove, fridge, dishwasher), all home lights, office (no excuse not to work!), and most of the house. Everything, I believe, except the laundry (bummer!).
Out of the estimated $20-$50 billion that it'll take to recover, has anyone seen how much of that will be for IT infrastructure? I'm just curious what fraction of the damage was residential vs business.. and then how much of the business damage was IT-related. I'm guessing the IT-related damage from Sandy was relatively small compared to the residential and non-IT business damage.
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The average yearly tuition cost for brick-and-mortar colleges and universities in the US today is more than $20,000, an expense that has increased 1,120 percent since 1978. By comparison, students of all ages can often earn an online education for one fourth of this annual cost -- and more businesses are starting to acknowledge online degrees.
Subsidized handsets, rather than locked handsets, should be the focus of regulators. We're not getting good deals, not fostering innovation, and weakening our power as buyers.
A survey by JD Powers found that customer interest in product features is lessening as phones evolve. Rather than features, price is driving purchases, and that change could have a dramatic impact on how IT departments secure these devices.
With the advent of low-cost Web cameras and broadband network connections, home security systems have become a hot business. In addition to traditional security suppliers, like ADT, the market is attracting telcos, cable companies, and energy providers, thereby creating an area of increasing competition.
Watching TV is not healthy for you, according to conventional wisdom. Well, that may soon change. Comcast and United Healthcare are now delivering diabetes prevention videos on-demand to high-risk patients. The partnership illustrates how healthcare may be delivered in the future.
The amount of data traffic running over US wireless networks grew 123 percent from 2010 (388 billion MB) to 2011 (866.7 billion MB), according to the CTIA. Carriers have tried to prepare for the change by moving from 3G to 4G networks. But with data rates increasing so rapidly, will there be enough bandwidth to meet future demand? Doubtful!
A combination of an announcement by DT and a Pew survey is showing us what the next-gen Internet may look like, and why. The demand for flexible services, created by rewired, iPhoned, social brains, combines with cloud and optical technology to create something totally new!
Hundreds of thousands of mobile apps have emerged in a short period of time – and some of these include violent and sexual content. Consequently, the CTIA, an industry consortium of carriers, including AT&T and Verizon, has begun outlining a rating system that will label video game content, in a manner similar to that for movies.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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