more on Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
Date: September 1, 2005 2:41:25 PM EDT
To: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () dandin com>, Bob Frankston  
<Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>, dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones


For IP, if you want:

Every big event seems to serve as a magnet for projecting personal  
political views in rather ridiculous ways.

During 9/11, Internet based communications worked pretty well.   The  
result was that reporters descended on "experts" like me to try to  
get a "money quote" that the Internet was designed to withstand  
Global Thermonuclear War.   When I pointed out that that was not the  
case, it took a lot of effort to keep them from calling the next guy  
in search of the story they wanted (truth be damned).

Now it seems that everyone is claiming their technology (including  
some, like "self-organizing mesh radios" that don't exist yet) would  
be the "best" solution for Katrina-like disasters.

I'd submit, Dave, that most of the "experts" don't know much at all  
about the situation faced in Katrina.   The technologies being  
discussed may or may not be useful for the actual jobs at hand.

Trunked radio systems (which are the most common police and fire  
systems) have central points of failure, and showed problems in  
9/11.   Cellular systems are not engineered for disasters, and may or  
may not degrade gracefully.  2-way systems with repeaters like Ham  
radios can be quite useful, but don't scale well.

Mesh systems look promising, but they've hardly been tried in such  
situations.

It seems less likely that "hardening" existing systems is the proper  
approach, compared to rethinking the overall emergency comms  
architecture to focus on resiliency via flexibility and internetwork  
interoperability.

If we want to deploy more resilient communications systems for near  
and far future emergencies, I'm sure we could, given resolve and  
innovative/creative thought coupled with engineering judgment.  But  
it's a sad waste to focus all this "expert" energy on Katrina's  
relationship to today's random collection of technologies, as if we  
are trying to be Cisco, Verizon Wireless, or Tropos shills.


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