North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: BBN (GTE) Suffers another major power problem.
> -----Original Message----- > From: Jonah Yokubaitis [SMTP:[email protected]] > Sent: Friday, August 08, 1997 2:08 PM > To: Nathan Stratton > Cc: Matthew White; [email protected] > Subject: Re: BBN (GTE) Suffers another major power problem. > > > Incorrect. Stop using AC equipment in your pops. Use DC equipment and > get a _good_ DC Powerplant. Every carrier Class4/5 switchroom usually > has 10-20,0000 AMP/hours of standby power. 1 DSC or Nortel switch > sucks _quite_ a bit more power than even the largest of superpops. > Every carrier has _at least_ 4hours of battery plant (most have 8-12). > Relying on generators is a _bad_ idea. > > Its not hard to have 4-12hours of standby battery plant. > > Lucent/Lorain/Peco2 all make rather nice rectifiers, and > C&D/Lucent/GDB all make some nice vented batteries. By going DC you > also don't get hit with the inefficiencies of AC --> DC --> AC --> DC. > > You can bet that MCI/Sprint don't have a piece of AC equipment in > their facilities and most likely are laughing their asses off right > now. > Not quite as simple Jonah.... CO equipment is designed for 48v for many reasons. It's also designed to deal with concrete floors, inefficient HVAC, dust, etc. Unfortunately, a modern megapop consists of a lot of interesting equipment that doesn't come in 48v DC versions. Alpha 8400s, Large SGIs, and server like things (yeah, I know, there are companies who make retrofit kits for some of them, but they're not standard). The real issue is planning... MAE E and MAE W *weren't* designed for the things that MFS is stuffing in them. Most of the other pops have the same problem. It *is* possible to design a facility that is run off an inverter permanently, which is connected to a UPS, which is connected to utility power, and to a diesel generator, which *is* able to cope with extended failures of _utility power_ without affecting the equipment (routers, switches, modems, and servers) at all. And I think the modern facilities will be built that way. 4-12 hours of batteries is serious when you're talking about a large hosting facility. Sprint/MCI may be laughing, but they're haveing to scramble to build POPs capable of supporting server farms because they can't do that now. And another thing, batteries or not, *no-one* can easily survive a catastrophic event like a fire, an explosion, or even the wires that got eaten in BBNs Stanford center last year. (Didn't AT&T hose most of Chicago's loop area a few years ago, for more than a *week*?) I bet they had DC in their vault. Didn't help them much... Rodney Joffe Genuity Inc., a Bechtel company http://www.genuity.net
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