power

The Day The Electrons Stood Still

It started out an uneventful day, the third day in an entire week that I expected to spend in my home office. That’s something of a rarity in recent times. I was enjoying it, catching up on matters around here, and addressing tech support calls as they arose. I was on just such a call when, to my considerable surprise, the power went out.

The sudden loss of power is not enough to disrupt my phone call beyond my own expression of surprise. As I’ve documented elsewhere, I’ve taken steps to ensure that critical infrastructure around here is on a UPS. To paraphrase Frank Herbert, “The electrons must flow.” In fact, it occurred to me that this afternoon was an opportune time to ascertain just how sound my planning had been.

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Losing Cable Service During A Power Outage

Over at www.broadbandreports.com a VOIP forum member has noted an interesting problem. When he suffered a power outage he also lost his cable modem service. This despite the fact that he dutifully provided a UPS solution to keep his network gear running. We can infer that the CableCo doesn’t provide similar UPS capability in the local cabinets serving his area.

This is in stark contrast to Telco’s, who historically provide continuous service through power outages. They have put huge effort into achieving 99.999% uptime, and continuous power is a major consideration.

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Successful VOIP Over DSL, Part 5: Power Considerations

One of the great things about the traditional PSTN is that it keeps working when the power goes out. I’ve repeatedly read others recommending that people sustain traditional POTS service at least in part because of this fact. Their theory being that VOIP service isn’t sustained during a power outage. But this need not be the case given just a little forethought.

Prior to migrating to Asterisk we had been using a Panasonic KX-TG4000 KSU (seen left). This phone system has four FXO interfaces for analog lines.

It also featured a built-in battery backup so our phones stayed up through power outages. In migrating to VOIP within our home and office I felt it necessary to strive for this kind of reliability. It has certainly made my wife happier.

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When The Lights Go Down

A couple of days ago Garrett Smith posted on his blog entry stating, “One More Reason Pure VoIP is Not The Way to Go.” He goes on to describe a weather event that took out his power, internet access, and therefore his VOIP service.

I was born in the Niagara Region on the Canadian side of the border. I lived for 15 years in Toronto as well as 10 years in deep Northern Ontario. I’ve known winter in all its majesty.

In my former life as a kite enthusiast I made the drive from Buffalo, NY to Erie, PA through many a winter storm. And they certainly do get blasted from time-to-time in that part of the country.

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