Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Oh, that _is_ rich. ;-) I think a lot of people would love to know just how they plan to make that happen. :-) - ferg -- "David W. Hankins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: In a www.washingtonpost.com article: http://tinyurl.com/s2jpz It is said: President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific tasks for federal agencies, including [some stuff and] expanding Internet capacity to handle what would probably be a flood of people working from their home computers. That's not a lot of detail, and the article only cites www.pandemicflu.gov as a reference. They don't appear to have published any detailed plan that Pres. Bush is evidently about to sign there. What is published there feels like background information, and is vaguer still. Anyone with more information on what they're talking about? [snip] -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 10:07:38AM -0700, David W. Hankins wrote: > In a www.washingtonpost.com article: > > http://tinyurl.com/s2jpz > > It is said: > > President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic > influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific > tasks for federal agencies, including [some stuff and] expanding > Internet capacity to handle what would probably be a flood of > people working from their home computers. > > That's not a lot of detail, and the article only cites www.pandemicflu.gov > as a reference. They don't appear to have published any detailed plan > that Pres. Bush is evidently about to sign there. What is published there > feels like background information, and is vaguer still. > > Anyone with more information on what they're talking about? Not specifically, but i've seen various public-private groups talking about this for at least several months. I think it's quite interesting to have the hurricane season just a few weeks away and having this go by. (i've also seen people talking about preparations for the recovery efforts for any 2006 storms after what happened last year). I think it's important that everyone reading this realize that the internet is now "Critical Infrastructure" for the global economy. How many of the people here have heard of the NIPP or NRP? What preparations have you done for some sort of catastrophic event? (facility disaster, natural disaster, or some more basic challenges like loss of drinkable water/food for a week or two?) These aren't meant to necesarily be answered here, but what challenges would you face? Do you have any "mutual-aid" like agreements with your peers/competitors? (When there is a major ice storm or hurricane, you see all the verizon trucks in bellsouth territory for example, helping out). Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen as sometimes it includes the unexpected. - Jared -- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from [EMAIL PROTECTED] clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:05:41 -0400, Jared Mauch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such > an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen > as sometimes it includes the unexpected. > Quite. One case of bird flu in a major city and you won't need government intervention to make people telecommute -- large numbers will independently and spontaneously decide to do so. (Back in the days of dial-up, I had a lot of trouble connecting to Bell Labs on snow days. No rule, and the place was officially open for business. But everyone just did the rational thing.) --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
RE: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> (Back in the days of dial-up, I had a lot of trouble > connecting to Bell Labs on snow days. No rule, and the place > was officially open for business. But everyone just did the > rational thing.) I think the point is to start capacity and contingency planning now. Is your VPN infrastructure set up to have every employee connecting back to the office? Are your upstreams sized to take this load? Are you VPN concentrators sized to take this load?
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, David W. Hankins wrote: > In a www.washingtonpost.com article: > > http://tinyurl.com/s2jpz > > It is said: > > President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic > influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific > tasks for federal agencies, including [some stuff and] expanding > Internet capacity to handle what would probably be a flood of > people working from their home computers. > > That's not a lot of detail, and the article only cites www.pandemicflu.gov > as a reference. They don't appear to have published any detailed plan > that Pres. Bush is evidently about to sign there. What is published there > feels like background information, and is vaguer still. How about this idea... are your corporate VPN services (assuming there is one aside fromm 'ssh to the bastion host' of course) prepared to double/quadruple/more-uple their normal concurrent user counts? During the fallout of Katrina we observed this being a problem for some of the corporations in region :( I know that quite a few folks plan for 50% or less of their employees to be 'dialed in' :( If 100%, or some majority, how do the corp folks plan on supporting that? :( > > Anyone with more information on what they're talking about? > > -- > David W. Hankins "If you don't do it right the first time, > Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." > Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins >
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
At 09:50 PM 4/17/2006, Christopher L. Morrow wrote: How about this idea... are your corporate VPN services (assuming there is one aside fromm 'ssh to the bastion host' of course) prepared to double/quadruple/more-uple their normal concurrent user counts? During the fallout of Katrina we observed this being a problem for some of the corporations in region :( I know that quite a few folks plan for 50% or less of their employees to be 'dialed in' :( If 100%, or some majority, how do the corp folks plan on supporting that? :( I don't know about the rest of the country, but in the northeast, there are MANY days during the winter when only a couple of people can make it to our office and a number of our clients have the same situation. On those days at Tellurian, everyone who can't make it in works from home. It is completely transparent to our clients. People in NJ may understand if we have a blizzard, but our clients in CA don't care and expect the same level of service. As an ISP/ASP, we have the bandwidth, phone lines, and VPN concentrator capacity available for our own use, but what about your clients who may only use their connection for email and web access and a few road warriors and sales folks normally. Perhaps 200-300 people can share a T1 with light to moderate use in one office, but with 200+ people connecting back in via VPN, a T1 isn't going to cut it. Scale up or down DSL to OC3 based on the client. I don't think it is something people design for and I know it isn't something most clients will pay for until they need it and don't have it. Then they will want more bandwidth installed immediately. -Robert Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection http://www.tellurian.com | 888-TELLURIAN | 973-300-9211 "Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
At 09:50 PM 4/17/2006, Christopher L. Morrow wrote: On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, David W. Hankins wrote: > In a www.washingtonpost.com article: > > http://tinyurl.com/s2jpz > > It is said: > > President Bush is expected to approve soon a national pandemic > influenza response plan that identifies more than 300 specific > tasks for federal agencies, including [some stuff and] expanding > Internet capacity to handle what would probably be a flood of > people working from their home computers. > > That's not a lot of detail, and the article only cites www.pandemicflu.gov > as a reference. They don't appear to have published any detailed plan > that Pres. Bush is evidently about to sign there. What is published there > feels like background information, and is vaguer still. How about this idea... are your corporate VPN services (assuming there is one aside fromm 'ssh to the bastion host' of course) prepared to double/quadruple/more-uple their normal concurrent user counts? During the fallout of Katrina we observed this being a problem for some of the corporations in region :( I know that quite a few folks plan for 50% or less of their employees to be 'dialed in' :( If 100%, or some majority, how do the corp folks plan on supporting that? :( Vendors like it because it's a revenue boost. It obviously requires build-ahead capacity and maintenance of overload capacity that will likely sit idle for 99% of it's life span. Who pays? [ ..hears ISP product managers scurrying to create "PriortyVPN" or "priority vpn" products as a result... heh -> implied trademark here] -M< -- Martin Hannigan(c) 617-388-2663 Renesys Corporation(w) 617-395-8574 Member of Technical Staff Network Operations [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> I think a lot of people would love to know just how they plan > to make that happen. :-) Well, they could require companies to test their ability to handle homeworking by having employees work from home on some kind of rota system. This would change traffic patterns quite a bit and that could cause ISPs to initiate upgrades. --Michael Dillon (working from home today) P.S. when I go to a web page today, the connection originates from the proxy service in the office, just like any working day. But there is now additional traffic between my home broadband connection and the VPN server at work. In other words, some portion of our internal LAN traffic is now going across an ISP network.
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On 4/18/06, Martin Hannigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Vendors like it because it's a revenue boost. It obviously requires > build-ahead > capacity and maintenance of overload capacity that will likely sit > idle for 99% > of it's life span. Who pays? > > [ ..hears ISP product managers scurrying to create "PriortyVPN" or > "priority vpn" products as a result... heh -> implied trademark here] > Probably sell them a product where b/w is burstable to a much higher level - at least for short periods of time, to deal with sudden use spikes (or to create extra capacity for those periodic trojan outbreaks that will otherwise simply max their pipe out)
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:34:45 +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian said: > Probably sell them a product where b/w is burstable to a much higher > level - at least for short periods of time, to deal with sudden use > spikes (or to create extra capacity for those periodic trojan > outbreaks that will otherwise simply max their pipe out) That works great if one customer has a trojan outbreak. Unfortunately, it's rare that only one customer at a POP has a blizzard outbreak. pgpj7NKu83IeZ.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 02:05:41PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote: > Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such > an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen > as sometimes it includes the unexpected. All the guidance suggests you're going to lose as much as 40% of your workforce. Well, what intrigues me, is: which 40? I don't think the virus is going to select sales, marketing, and Tech support in that order (unless it's an STD epidemic, har har). Were that the case we might actually look forward to such outbreaks. On the other hand, at *every* substantially sized network I've worked at, the Network Engineering types that might reasonably do something useful in such an emergency situation are generally: 1) A close-knit group, going to lunches together and cohabitating cubicles so as to avoid exposure to aforementioned sales, marketing, and tech support or customer service. Indeed, at a few places I worked, they even spent most every weekend together. For all the rest of the world decrying geeks as socially inept, they are highly efficient at social assimilation of their own kind. 2) Given a 'low desirability' office space. No windows, usually poor air circulation. It is often called "The Back Room" or similar, or is located in a space you wouldn't expect to find humans. This isn't (usually) anyone being mean: engineers seem to like dark corners, something about making it easier to read monitors, and locations that provide fewer interruptions due to unlikelyhood of foot traffic. 3) Better at taking care of their networks than themselves. Or at least, more willing to - too frequent is the case I see an engineer, hacking, coughing, and wheezing at his monitor, plucking away at the keyboard deep into the night. So there you have it. They're likely to come to work even though they're sick (presuming they don't know it's a lethal virus), where they work and spend all their face-to-face time in close quarters with recirculated air with the rest of the company's engineers. It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to be the most pessimal. So I think it's actually highly probable that a meatspace-viral vector would take out the entire engineering staff at most service providers I've worked at if only one of them caught the bug. I have to imagine this is representative of other work environments. We all seem to share the same collective experience in this sense, at least the folks I've talked to. And that loss would be way under 40% of the total company's staff, a mere blip really. So, which 40% can you afford to lose? How likely is it that the 60% that's left behind will be able to do the job? Will they need step-by- step instructions so that even an untrained monkey can muddle through? -- David W. Hankins"If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins pgpjTcTpih4qo.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Hello; On Apr 18, 2006, at 1:53 PM, David W. Hankins wrote: On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 02:05:41PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote: Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen as sometimes it includes the unexpected. All the guidance suggests you're going to lose as much as 40% of your workforce. Well, what intrigues me, is: which 40? I don't think the virus is going to select sales, marketing, and Tech support in that order (unless it's an STD epidemic, har har). Were that the case we might actually look forward to such outbreaks. The most likely disease vector is, from what I have heard, airline travel. Assorted people from all over are brought together for a meal (or, at least, bogus pretzels) in a confined space for a few hours, then released back into the general population. So the NANOG and IETF crowd would probably be the first to go. Since I travel a lot, and to the same meetings, I can't say that that this seems like a good idea to me. If any of this actually starts happening, we all may become very interested in video conferencing. Regards Marshall On the other hand, at *every* substantially sized network I've worked at, the Network Engineering types that might reasonably do something useful in such an emergency situation are generally: 1) A close-knit group, going to lunches together and cohabitating cubicles so as to avoid exposure to aforementioned sales, marketing, and tech support or customer service. Indeed, at a few places I worked, they even spent most every weekend together. For all the rest of the world decrying geeks as socially inept, they are highly efficient at social assimilation of their own kind. 2) Given a 'low desirability' office space. No windows, usually poor air circulation. It is often called "The Back Room" or similar, or is located in a space you wouldn't expect to find humans. This isn't (usually) anyone being mean: engineers seem to like dark corners, something about making it easier to read monitors, and locations that provide fewer interruptions due to unlikelyhood of foot traffic. 3) Better at taking care of their networks than themselves. Or at least, more willing to - too frequent is the case I see an engineer, hacking, coughing, and wheezing at his monitor, plucking away at the keyboard deep into the night. So there you have it. They're likely to come to work even though they're sick (presuming they don't know it's a lethal virus), where they work and spend all their face-to-face time in close quarters with recirculated air with the rest of the company's engineers. It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to be the most pessimal. So I think it's actually highly probable that a meatspace-viral vector would take out the entire engineering staff at most service providers I've worked at if only one of them caught the bug. I have to imagine this is representative of other work environments. We all seem to share the same collective experience in this sense, at least the folks I've talked to. And that loss would be way under 40% of the total company's staff, a mere blip really. So, which 40% can you afford to lose? How likely is it that the 60% that's left behind will be able to do the job? Will they need step- by- step instructions so that even an untrained monkey can muddle through? -- David W. Hankins"If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On April 18, 2006 at 10:53 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David W. Hankins) wrote: > On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 02:05:41PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote: > >Back to the original question, how well could you cope for such > > an event? It's always challenging to think about what would happen > > as sometimes it includes the unexpected. > > All the guidance suggests you're going to lose as much as 40% of your > workforce. > > Well, what intrigues me, is: which 40? (rest of interesting note snipped because you know how to find it) (Warning: unnecessary and overly long speculation follows) Studies of changes brought on by major outbreaks of the plague in Europe tend to be surprised by the qualitative and unexpected changes which occurred. Many make sense only in retrospect. For example, there was recently an article floating around in the news about how the plagues of 1666 and thereabouts may've brought on the mini ice age thereafter which itself may've been in part responsible for motivating the US revolution against Britain in 1776, among other events, but that's a pretty big one in the course of modern history. The reasoning was that the plague so reduced both the farming population and consumption that it caused a lot of farmland to be abandoned to second growth forest which caused widespread carbon sequestering or something like that leading to the drop in temperature and its subsequent effect on European civilization (I won't try to actually argue that point here but it's intriguing.) So if you're really expecting something as macro as 40% of the population dropping dead I think one has to think much bigger and much more in the realm of unexpected consequences. As one guess, if 40% of the population dropped dead a more likely effect than having to continue on with the other 60% of the staff is that the company would just be unable to deal with the loss of customers and staff not to mention the services these people are trying to get to, they're collapsing for the same reasons, a cascade effect. Most would be closed in short order. Maybe all of them, kind of like the airlines trying to adjust to higher fuel costs, many just can't even if the desire to fly (demand) appears to be sufficient to keep them going the business models just cease working. Ok some airlines obviously weathered the change and even prospered but I hope you get my point that it's way beyond Delta or UA et al just cutting an appropriate number of flights and staff (which doesn't seem to have worked), a linear response to a linear problem (higher fuel costs), and required entire reworking of business models from (ahem!) the ground up, or dissolution. Most companies don't go under because they lose a lot of their revenue, they're often dead due to losing a relatively small amount of revenue (like 10-15%) due to fixed overheads. For example, do you think your ISP's landlords are going to let them out of their office leases just because they have so many fewer staff to seat? Particularly in the face of a sea of bankruptcies cancelling leases? Etc. You'd probably be smarter just going into the casket business or something like that, grief counseling perhaps. -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool & Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Barry Shein wrote: [snip] So if you're really expecting something as macro as 40% of the population dropping dead I think one has to think much bigger and much more in the realm of unexpected consequences. Uhh... I think, I _hope_ that we are talking about 40% of your workforce NOT SHOWING UP TO THE OFFICE for days or weeks, not dropping dead, not even necessarily getting sick. A 40% mortality rate among otherwise healthy adults, and we have much bigger issues to worry about. -- Crist J. Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Globalstar Communications(408) 933-4387
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Sorry! I should have said that my deadline was early this morning (EST.) On Tue, 18 Apr 2006, Crist Clark wrote: Barry Shein wrote: [snip] So if you're really expecting something as macro as 40% of the population dropping dead I think one has to think much bigger and much more in the realm of unexpected consequences. Uhh... I think, I _hope_ that we are talking about 40% of your workforce NOT SHOWING UP TO THE OFFICE for days or weeks, not dropping dead, not even necessarily getting sick. A 40% mortality rate among otherwise healthy adults, and we have much bigger issues to worry about. -- Crist J. Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Globalstar Communications(408) 933-4387 !DSPAM:4445419063511809929648!
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 12:43:11PM -0700, Crist Clark wrote: > Barry Shein wrote: > >So if you're really expecting something as macro as 40% of the > >population dropping dead I think one has to think much bigger and much > >more in the realm of unexpected consequences. > > Uhh... I think, I _hope_ that we are talking about 40% of your > workforce NOT SHOWING UP TO THE OFFICE for days or weeks, not > dropping dead, not even necessarily getting sick. A slightly different aggregate: 40% of your workforce being unable to work. Some portion of that might be death, grieving, being sick, helping family or friends that are sick, fighting off zombies, or searching aimlessly for human brains to consume. That is to say that some of the remaining 60 may be working from home. -- David W. Hankins"If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:53:33 PDT, "David W. Hankins" said: > So, which 40% can you afford to lose? How likely is it that the 60% > that's left behind will be able to do the job? Will they need step-by- > step instructions so that even an untrained monkey can muddle through? As we all find out the hard way that Douglas Adams was right, and telephone sanitizers really *are* important. pgpR6dikPA4zM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On 4/18/06, Crist Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Uhh... I think, I _hope_ that we are talking about 40% of your > workforce NOT SHOWING UP TO THE OFFICE for days or weeks, not > dropping dead, not even necessarily getting sick. > > A 40% mortality rate among otherwise healthy adults, and we have much > bigger issues to worry about. Indeed. Estimates I've read on CNN in the past few days (I know, I know) say that if H5N1 were to be approximately as virulent and deadly as the 1918 flu, we would be looking at 90 million infected and 1.9 million dead in the US. -Rusty
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1 -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool & Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average > mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, > and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1 is this different if you run is-is as opposed to ospf? as is-is is not over ip, perhaps virii at the ip layer are less of a worry to larger isps (who mostly run is-is)? randy
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:55:11 -1000, Randy Bush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average > > mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, > > and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004. > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1 > > is this different if you run is-is as opposed to ospf? > > as is-is is not over ip, perhaps virii at the ip layer > are less of a worry to larger isps (who mostly run is-is)? > IS-IS can carry retroviruses, which are RNA-based. This discussion did start out with operational content --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> So there you have it. They're likely to come to work even though they're > sick (presuming they don't know it's a lethal virus), where they work and > spend all their face-to-face time in close quarters with recirculated air > with the rest of the company's engineers. That recirculated air is likely to be shared with the rest of the buildings inhabitants, not just the engineers. On the other hand, engineers tend to have already perfected the art of working remotely. Continuity planning people are likely to notice that skilled technical people are essential to smooth operations and will kick them out of the office before anyone gets sick. --Michael Dillon
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> So if you're really expecting something as macro as 40% of the > population dropping dead I think one has to think much bigger and much > more in the realm of unexpected consequences. > Most companies don't go under because they lose a lot of their > revenue, they're often dead due to losing a relatively small amount of > revenue (like 10-15%) due to fixed overheads. I remember a relatively minor court case in Los Angeles a few years back about police brutality. Nothing really unusual about it except that there was some published video footage. And the guy's name wasn't even Rodney King. That is a prime example of the unexpected consequences when many people feel highly stressed. Small triggers lead to huge consequences. I would urge people to think about other issues rather than just working from home. Will the water supply continue to come to your home? Will the food stores continue to function? Will you still have electricity or gas to cook your food? An epidemic on this scale could impact all those systems but advance planning can mitigate against all of these except a major electrical outage. But laptops with spare batteries and a solar recharger can go a long way towards keeping one of your key personnel in operational readiness. --Michael Dillon
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> Uhh... I think, I _hope_ that we are talking about 40% of your > workforce NOT SHOWING UP TO THE OFFICE for days or weeks, not > dropping dead, not even necessarily getting sick. During the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, and estimated 20 to 50 million people died worldwide. Every year, ordinary flu kills between 1/2 and 1 million people. Nobody really knows how many people the next flue pandemic will kill, and they don't really know when it will come. It could be next winter's flu season. Or it could be 10 or 15 years from now. Also, the impact of the flu is not just deaths. Many more people will be sick and will recover. But they won't be able to work. Many people will not be sick but they will want to stay home and care for their sick family members or friends because they know that this time, the flu is a SERIOUS ILLNESS. This is where the figures of 25% to 40% of the population come from. It includes all those who stay home through illness or through the desire to care for an ill person. What can't be predicted is how many will stay home through fear. In any case, if systems are in place to work from home, then the impact is reduced to those who are actually ill. In addition to percentage of people impacted, there is the timeframe. They estimate that the pandemic will last 3 to 5 months. And then there are the actions of local governments. In my city they plan to prohibit sporting events, conferences, theatre performances and similar events which attract crowds. They may shut down the public transport systems in whole or in part. This is where you need to coordinate your company's activities with local governments. Does your company's continuity planning department really know who are the critical people and what support they need? What if somebody needs to go to a PoP to replace cards in a router? Will the police let that person travel? Is that person registered as a critical employee who needs to be supported, not hindered? What if your mayor declares that the police will not allow anyone on the streets without a facemask? Will your critical employees have the facemasks that they need or will the police force them back into their cars at gunpoint? You need to work through various scenarios with your continuity planning people and make sure that they liaise with local officials. Everyone knows that the telephone company is important, but it is not as widely known that Internet infrastructure is as important. --Michael Dillon
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
> According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average > mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, > and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1 All of this pandemic planning is *NOT* about the H5N1 virus. Even though H5N1 kills 66% of the people who get it, there is nothing to worry about. This is a bird disease and the only way to catch it is to handle sick birds. The pandemic planning is about an unknown human flu virus that will arise at some point in the future. They expect that the H5N1 bird virus will learn how not to kill its human hosts by joining forces with a human flu virus. The new virus will have RNA from both predecessors and *WILL* be contagious among humans. Like other flu viruses, it will sweep around the world, and if it inherits the worst parts of the H5N1 then it will create a dangerous pandemic. There are still a lot of ifs there. --Michael Dillon
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 11:57:01AM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > That recirculated air is likely to be shared with the > rest of the buildings inhabitants, not just the engineers. I'd say it's 50/50 from the buildings I've worked in. The Commonwealth Building in Portland Oregon actually put the air handler in the wiring closet. http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/?id=122627 I know this because when it would start up at 0600, it would brown out the electrical power. Our equipment was on a UPS that detected this and bridged the gap - but customer equipment on another floor wasn't. I was standing next to it, fancy borrowed ethernet protocol analyzer attached to the customer line...at 0600 when they described the problem would manifest, when the air handler startup noises succeeded in scaring the living daylights out of me. It didn't help that the UPS was beeping at the same time and the protocol analyzer was registering a flood of collisions and generally spitting out red text and flashy lights. As I remember the ducting, it ran from plenum, to air handler, back to our plenum (there was no false roof in the wiring closet, it was just sort of open where the neighboring office walls ended). It would be good to know for certain. And the point is kind of moot if your company is large enough that they've centralized your engineering groups into a single building (as has also been the case at some places I've worked). We had things much worse than that in the Commonwealth building however... > On the other hand, engineers tend to have already > perfected the art of working remotely. Continuity planning > people are likely to notice that skilled technical people > are essential to smooth operations and will kick them out > of the office before anyone gets sick. If I ever had one of those watching over me, he never said "You fool! You look like you have flu symptoms! Go home!" I have on rare occaision had the converse said due to some impending deadline... I suspect by the time it's an epidemic it's probably too late. -- David W. Hankins"If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins pgp7asnTmB7p9.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:53:33AM -0700, David W. Hankins wrote: ... > It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to > be the most pessimal. ... If you know the word "pessimal" [malus, pejor, pessimus = bad, worse, worst], you should know that "most pessimal" is redundant - perhaps allowable for emphasis - and that "optimized to be pessimal" is so much an oxymoron it must be deliberate. But why not just say "pessimized"? ;-) -- Joe Yao --- This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 08:29:10PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote: > > According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average > mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, > and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1 But this is of cases that were (a) bad enough that the person went to a doctor [mostly in countries where this is rare anyway] and (b) were identified as something other than "drink plenty of chicken [or plomik] soup, and it will go away in a few days". Is there a report which extrapolates the UNREPORTED cases and estimates the mortality rate from that? [And does anyone have any basis on which to make these guesses?] -- Joe Yao --- This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Joseph S D Yao wrote: On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 08:29:10PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote: According to the wikipedia's quote of WHO the weighted average mortality rate, which would be across 50 human cases, is 66% in 2006, and 56% across all 194 cases reported since 2004. Is there a report which extrapolates the UNREPORTED cases and estimates the mortality rate from that? [And does anyone have any basis on which to make these guesses?] Let's extrapolate from an event that I know of, and remember. In 1976, a particularly dangerous strain of flu, Victoria, was the influenza du jour. As in most strains, there were two versions: Victoria-B, where your life sucked for a few days, and then you got on with it, and Victoria-A, which was life threatening, and BTW, yet another "bird flu" entry. I'm not going to post a bunch of links, but if you want entertainment (or validation) "influenza victoria 1976" in Google will give you hours of interesting data. I had the A strain, and was gravely ill. My lungs are scarred as though I had had tuberculosis, and I'm grateful that was the only damage. In just the area I lived in, there were multiple deaths reported. The outbreaks were localized, but quite dramatic in those geographical areas where it took off. I don't mean to add to the hysteria, but I also would prefer that you not discount it. Much will depend on your local area, on whether people are tightly clustered (NYC, LA), or thinly populated (Wyoming, North Dakota). -- "You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to Baghdad yesterday. ...No Comment
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
Joseph S D Yao wrote: On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:53:33AM -0700, David W. Hankins wrote: ... It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to be the most pessimal. ... If you know the word "pessimal" [malus, pejor, pessimus = bad, worse, worst], you should know that "most pessimal" is redundant - perhaps allowable for emphasis - and that "optimized to be pessimal" is so much an oxymoron it must be deliberate. But why not just say "pessimized"? Oh, stop being such a pessimist. :-) -- Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - [EMAIL PROTECTED] NetLojix Communications, Inc. - http://www.netlojix.com/ WestNet: Connecting you to the planet. 805 884-6323
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 07:51:06AM -0700, Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: > Joseph S D Yao wrote: (stuff) ... > where it took off. I don't mean to add to the hysteria, but I also would > prefer that you not discount it. Much will depend on your local area, on > whether people are tightly clustered (NYC, LA), or thinly populated > (Wyoming, North Dakota). E.S., I apologise if I sounded like I wished to discount any danger. There is a possibility of danger. There often is. I may just be tired of people making noises as if this particular danger were guaranteed. Although it is guaranteed that SOME disaster will befall us, at SOME time, and so we should in general prepare for A disaster, there is no guarantee that this is that one (nor that it isn't!). I also have enough trouble fully comprehending the entire theory of statistics that I feel it necessary to question when a study based on the 50 worst cases is used to extrapolate to the entire population. And I am a mathematician by nature and training. Just, it would seem, not THAT kind of a mathematician. ;-) -- Joe Yao --- This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 08:06:25AM -0700, Jay Hennigan wrote: > Joseph S D Yao wrote: > >On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:53:33AM -0700, David W. Hankins wrote: > >... > >>It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to > >>be the most pessimal. > >... > > > >If you know the word "pessimal" [malus, pejor, pessimus = bad, worse, > >worst], you should know that "most pessimal" is redundant - perhaps > >allowable for emphasis - and that "optimized to be pessimal" is so much > >an oxymoron it must be deliberate. But why not just say "pessimized"? > > Oh, stop being such a pessimist. :-) Optimally, it would be so. -- Joe Yao --- This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.
Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 07:34:19AM -0400, Joseph S D Yao wrote: > On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:53:33AM -0700, David W. Hankins wrote: > ... > > It's like someone intentionally optimized this function specifically to > > be the most pessimal. > ... > > If you know the word "pessimal" [malus, pejor, pessimus = bad, worse, > worst], you should know that "most pessimal" is redundant - perhaps > allowable for emphasis - and that "optimized to be pessimal" is so much > an oxymoron it must be deliberate. But why not just say "pessimized"? Actually, I had no idea I'd used the words. When I was in my youth, I read the story of "Mel, a Real Programmer". In it, the author actually used two words that have stuck with me ever since (more included here for context): Mel never wrote time-delay loops, either, even when the balky Flexowriter required a delay between output characters to work right. He just located instructions on the drum so each successive one was just *past* the read head when it was needed; the drum had to execute another complete revolution to find the next instruction. He coined an unforgettable term for this procedure. Although "optimum" is an absolute term, like "unique", it became common verbal practice to make it relative: "not quite optimum" or "less optimum" or "not very optimum". Mel called the maximum time-delay locations the "most pessimum". I admit to forgeting it was -mum, not -mal. Thank you for reminding me. -- David W. Hankins"If you don't do it right the first time, Software Engineer you'll just have to do it again." Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. -- Jack T. Hankins pgpBLnwyTwKV4.pgp Description: PGP signature
A proposal - was Re: Is your ISP Influenza-ready?
How about this? I will not post anything to NANOG that "discounts the hysteria." Yall will take the bird flu discussion (and the discussion of the meaning, origin and proper usage of "pessimal" for crissake) elsewhere. Deal? Etaoin Shrdlu wrote: ...I don't mean to add to the hysteria, but I also would prefer that you not discount it...
