Getting Ready for Pandemic: an IT Checklist

You're right, of course. People are often overlooked in this equation. To add to your comments I would say that the people that keep ISPs up and running could be out with the flu thus furthering the difficulties of getting an Internet connection from home. Or, from work for that matter. 

Even the best of preparations can't solve the entire problem.

people here have overlooked one point. The people.They will be laying in bed. Or going to the doctor. And someone who casn't read their email or get access to the latest budget report will be a terciary concern for the flu stricken IT person.

When Southern California wild fires strike, these localized catastrophies have proven that inet asccess, has not been adversly effected. Even though demand increased and more IT people were out to take care of their homes. Bussiness communication over the Internet never arose as an issue.

Respectfully,

Kurt

Robbie02494,

Excellent point!  Better hope the companies have already addressed this issue...

Where I work, to get VPN access we have to have it justified, approved, etc ad infinitum.  In a situation you describe, we'd be twiddling our thumbs if we didn't already have VPN access.

Geekess

Add to the readiness for home workers, is to make sure the Company network can handle that many VPN users. Citing from prior experiences, if everyone or almost all 50+ users of any office logged on via VPN, can the network handle that many DHCP requests? What about the firewall bandwidth?

A recent snow storm in my part of the country forced many users to log on and work from home...thus pointing out the need to make sure all of them could logon to the network without any problems.

While the points made in the report are right on target, what makes me laugh is that, hey, weren't companies supposed to be doing and thinking of all this stuff when we supposedly had the Bird Flu, SAR, etc starin' us in the face???

-Geekess

You've got it!

I'm saying, Modza, that unless that T-1 is "dedicated", in our experience, you won't be getting a T-1.  When companies get to carrier-grades and capacities like OC-3 and DS-3, they are sophisticated enough to measure what they receive.  And, contracts generally have quality thresholds built-in. 

We are way off the question of whether the Swine Flu will bring down the internet as we know it today.  Speed and capacity?  It is fungible?  Yes...

Modza and Bobby, I think the point of overwhelming internet is due to the fact that the work based traffic is also now travelling in the internet pipe hence overwhelming the bandwidth.  The traffic I am generating by googling and youtubing at work, might remain the same or incrementally higher because now I am working unsupervised, but what about the email traffic from my company's exchange server, database applications traffic etc.,  So far this traffic lived within the corporate walls (firewalls) that never was plugged in the internet, but now by a flood of sick workers working from home VPN-ed to my corporate network on internet backbone would certainly generate lot more volume at my ISPs. 

I am certainly not suggesting that GAO report is accurate but I certainly agree that traffic over internet is directly related to the number of pople working from home or inside corporate walls.

Thanks -- I think I get all that -- I certainly suffer for it at home. But just to be clear, you're saying that business service called "T-1" isn't any more likely to be a full delivery than the fraction we get at home. And what about OC-3, etc. -- the higher levels that larger companies enjoy? Also, while you're giving a tutorial, what might be the impact on not speed but capacity? Or are those fungible?

Modza,

A dedicated T-1 line is supposedly exactly that; a T-1 worth of capacity.  We find that companies getting T-1 lines are typically being sold a bill of goods.  In other words, ISP's are claiming you are getting say, 2 megs, when indeed you are getting way less, and worse on the upload side.  Dedicated T-1s should be symetrical, but ISP's monitoring usage will know who uses how much, in order to further "oversell". ISP's don't like to sell the symetrical, because they have to actually deliver it.  It can cost 3 or 4 times what a non-symetrical one does.

A major carrier recently told me, "sorry, we don't guarantee the level of service."  I said, "you sold me 10 megs down and 2 up.  I'm not getting 3 down and less than 650K up.  The nice young lady says, "well, upgrade to the 15 megs and you will be closer to the 10!"  Modza, this is what we are dealing with.

If you order a pint of beer at the bar, they bring your pint.  If itinternet they use, or need.  We see customers asking for 3 megs or 6 megs, when in fact they will never use even 1 meg.  But, they know to ask for more, because last time the 1 meg they "thought" they were getting, never was.

Home connections from the cable companies are generally much better, promising huge bandwidth, but delivering enough to keep most people happy.  DSL is so bad these days that the cable companies most often impress us.

Thanks for your comment.  ISP's have a finite amount of internet to dole out.  There is the rub.  Get it at home, or at the office, it doesn't matter.  When they get slammed, they get slammed.

Bobby Vassallo

http://citywirelessconsulting.com