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Date:      Fri, 06 Mar 1998 10:02:52 -0800 (PST)
From:      Simon Shapiro <shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
To:        (marino.ladavac@siemens.at) <lada@ws2301.gud.siemens.at>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, julian@whistle.com, wilko@yedi.iaf.nl, dmlb@ragnet.demon.co.uk
Subject:   Re: SCSI Bus redundancy...
Message-ID:  <XFMail.980306100252.shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
In-Reply-To: <199803060729.IAA29905@ws6423.gud.siemens.at>

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On 06-Mar-98 marino.ladavac@siemens.at wrote:
 
...

> Honestly, don't you think you're overdoing it a bit here.  I mean, we're
> still talking ISP, right?  If the power goes, your modems are dead as
> well.

Nope.  There are ISPs and there are ISPs.  All the larger ones I visit are
taking their availability very seriously.  Many are already on 48VDC.  Many
co-locate equipment in NAPs and switching centers, which comply with Telco
standards.

Consifer a small ISP with, say 5,000 accounts which loses power during ruch
hour.  Can you count the number of support calls?
Consider a web server with 2,000 virtual servers.  Many used for OLTP, thus
directly generating revenue.  If I had my business run on such a server, I
sure would demand it is imunne to power glitches.

I found FreeBSD being seriously deployed,  or considered for deployment
serving 5,000 accounts and up.  All the way to 200,000 account (takes more
than 1 FreeBSD machine to do that :-).

> And if you want to UPS that, you're using motor-generator pairs with
> Diesel
> backup and don't really care about batteries (a 30 year old Diesel still 
> kicks in within a second and if your power supply cannot stand a few
> second
> intermittent failure then you have some seriously underdimensioned power
> supplies).

Wrong again.  Diesel generators have a 15-180 seconds switch over time. 
You use the diesels to feed the battery chargers.  The battery packs are
impressive.  If you are in the Portland Oregon area, call me and I'll take
you to a small switching center. Fascinating to see.

There ARE many ISPs who are still hacking it.  A lump of PCs, SPARCS, and
whathaveyou on picnic tables and Sportster modems stacked on each other
(Hey, I ran my local ISP service that way :-), etc.  But they will either
change or disappear as the role Internet plays in our life.  Internet, in
this context is an alias to a TCP/IP network, public, private, or otherwise.

Simon


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