rangerssuck wrote:

On Aug 30, 3:01 am, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
rangerssuck wrote:

On Aug 29, 6:57 pm, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:
rangerssuck wrote:

On Aug 28, 7:00 am, " ? wrote:
? On Aug 26, 12:17 am, rangerssuck ? wrote:
?
? ? I'm right in the line of fire (four mile drive from the George
? ? Washington Bridge), and I'm gonna hunker down and enjoy the show.
?
? ? Being this prepared, I fully expect the storm to be nothing more than
? ? a breeze a drizzle.
?
? It was pretty much a non event at our house. We did get a lot of
? rain, but not close to the prediction of 12 to 14 inches. The creek
? is up and out of its banks, but it has been higher as a result of
? thunderstorms. The power stayed on which is good as I can hear the
? sump pump running every once in a while. Still pretty breezy outside,
? but looking from the house I can not see any trees or limbs down.
?
? Dan

Our power was out 5am Sunday through 10pm Sunday. Cable ? internet
were out from about 11am to a few minutes after the power came back
(I'm thinking Time Warner doesn't have enough backup power).

All it takes is one failed UPS on a CATV system to take everything
down. BTDT, and repaired the pole mounted UPS in the shop.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense

The cable stayed up for about five hours after the power failed. I
don't think this was an equipment failure, I think it was undersized
batteries. Ever seen the batteries in a Verizon central office?
They're about as big as a small house. And next to them is the multi-
fueled generator.

Do you expect the cable company to have a generator every half mile?
Where would they put them so no one could steal them, yet be easy to
refuel and service?

What really burns me is that the Time Warner guy (in Buffalo, NY) who
ansered the phone last night, a full eight hours after the failure,
had absolutely zero information on the nature of the failure. Couldn't
tell me the size of the affected area, couldn't give me a clue about
who was working where to fix it, Nothing. This is the 21st century.
The Information Age. They advertise high-end, broadband, business-
class service (and yes, I am a business customer). They simply don't
know how to deal with this kind of event. And that's not acceptable.

Sigh. In a major outage it's difficult to determine the affected
area. The calls aren't taken by the people doing the work in the
field. I worked in CATV for four years, and despised the idiots who
interrupted my crews to demand that they stop what they are doing, to go
fix the outage at their house, when they are already working on the
outage.

What do you think they can do after major damage, and just how long
do you think the UPS batteries should last? They could make it
bulletproof, if everyone was willing to pay a couple thousand dollars a
month to pay for the equipment, and upkeep. Five hours is a lot longer
than the average power outage for a cable system, so you just have a
bunch of sour grapes.

If you don't like the way they do business, raise the capital and
build your own broadband backbone and TV headend. Figure a minimum of 20
million dollars to get started. Then there are the franchise fees, OSHA
to deal with, and all the utilities you'll have to share the right of
way with. You'll need some great corporate communications lawyers, as
well as ones who can work with the FAA and the EPA.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

They could run copper in parallel with their cable and supply power
from the head end. That what the phone company does. Have you ever
seen the backup power supply in a Verizon CO? You'd be impressed. Is
it expensive? I'm sure it is, but that's one of the costs of doing
business. I made damn sure that I had enough backup power to run my
business for days - Time Warner did not.


You have no clue about anything. DO yo know anything about how a
CATV system is powered? They run 30A at 60 VAC down their trunkline and
feeder lines. Trunk line is .750" or larger. Feeder is generally
..500". Now, how in the hell could they do what you propose with
hundreds of miles of trunklines and feeders?

As far as the batteries in a central office, I've seen them, starting
in the mid '60s. I've also see a warehouse full of dead and damaged
telco 'Rectifiers' that had been used to float charge those batteries.
I built CATV headends and designed distribution systems.




I'm not even remotely suggesting that I wanted them to drop whatever
they were doing and fix mine first. But the crews are dispatched by
SOMEONE to SOMEWHERE, and it would be a 30 second phone call, or, even
better, a couple of mouse clicks to get that information to the call
center.


Then find who to call, and call them yourself. If you are a special
customer, you can get the local system manager's home phone number. Or
even better, the CEO's home phone number. It just doesn't work the way
you want, especially with the economy in the toilet. Some crews are
dispatched to exact problem locations like a damaged pole or snapped
trunkline, while other have to find the cause. In those cases, we had a
list of homes at strategic points in the system where people would tell
our crew if it was working or not. That would break it down into about
three mile blocks. When they knew the first affected area they would
work their way back, to find the problem. Sometimes that included
looking into a bar to see if their TV was working.

Today, they track the outages through the cable modems that don't
respond. If too much of the system is down, the software can't handle
it since it's a secondary function. Answering more phone calls when
everyone is busy restoring service just isn't going to happen. Even
people in the offices are busy pulling supplies from inventory, and
calling around for things in short supply. You can use an entire year's
supply of some items in a day, after an emergency, and the crews can
only work so many hours without sleep.

Try calling to report a power outage, if you aren't the first in your
area. All you get is an automated message stating that they have their
crews busy on the problems. My electric was out for over a month after
one hurricane, and they wouldn't answer any questions, the entire time.


By the way, I have a commercial data account with Time Warner. My bill
is over $500 per month. When it works, it's OK, but their level of
customer service sucks. We recently ordered a larger block of static
IP addresses. They asked me when I wanted to make the switch, and I
told them it would be best to do it Sunday morning. Imagine my
surprise when they told me that they could only do it during business
hours, Monday - Friday. That guarantees a service interruption while
DNS servers propogate. Again, I'm not impressed.


Neither am I. if it's that critcal, you should have distributed
servers in multiple areas. If you don't like their service, then drop
them and find another provider. Time Warner was never known for
customer service, any more than they were as Warner Amex, or any of the
other names they used since they first entered the business. They were
the worst rated in SW ohio every year that I worked for another cable
company. After the first year I was there, we were rated #1.

Dig really deep in your wallet and pay for private fiber, or just
live with it. They provide the level of service that the average
customer accepts. It's your right to find another provider, or to move
the business to where you can get the level of service that you want.
Our company would do off hours work, but only if scheduled well in
advance. We only had one man on call after the office closed, since
most of the time they had nothing to do after hours.


Since you love Verizon so much, why don't you order a bunch of DSL
lines? I hear more horror stories about them than I do with people
using the Road Runner backbone.


--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.