North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images

  • From: Simon Waters
  • Date: Thu Sep 01 04:42:00 2005

On Wednesday 31 Aug 2005 5:34 pm, Peter wrote:
> Simon Waters <[email protected]> wrote:
> [...]
>
> > I guess there may be a need for some updates of DNS services due to
> > the incident itself, or similar elsewhere, but in almost all cases
> > this can be overridden further up the chain of DNS authority.
>
> I live just a mile down the road from the ISP I work at.
>
> Given the choice of sitting at home (no power, probably no roof), or
> hiding in the NOC (warm, internal room with no windows, has a shower
> and cooking facilities) and being *paid* for it, I'll "heroically" man
> the ship (as opposed to cowardly hiding at work).

I think the issue is not staying at home or work, but rather deciding whetehr 
or not to follow advice to evacuate an area, where you risk becoming a 
liability for other rescue and recovery workers.

I understand the need for handling some telecommunications differently from 
other services. 

But certainly in the Carribean, companies like C&W have established hurricane 
procedures, and will deploy staff (like the Red Cross did) in key areas close 
to the affected areas ready to step in and repair stuff without undue risk to 
their own employees and contractors.

For organisations like registrars there are plans in place for the loss of key 
organisations (mostly intended for business failure rather than catastrophic 
failure).

Obviously easy to comment with hindsight from a nice comfortable location.