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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Disaster Planning
Message-ID: <1989Oct26.232947.9679@world.std.com>
Date: 26 Oct 89 23:29:47 GMT
References: <103@farcomp.UUCP> <35944@apple.Apple.COM> <14806@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Followup-To: news.admin
Distribution: news
Organization: The World
Lines: 37
In-reply-to: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET's message of 26 Oct 89 17:31:05 GMT


Obviously the concern here is tying up public telephone network
resources during disasters (private lines don't make much
difference...yet.)

What is needed is to inform the people who actually are tracking an
emergency situation first-hand (AT&T, Civil Defense, FEMA, Pentagon)
of contacts who might be able to get bandwidth freed if and when
needed (CERT comes to mind as a primary point of contact.)

All that remains is to structure those thoughts into actions:

	1. Who are the first level contact points (CERT?)
	   (assuming they're willing, of course)

	2. Who should be told how to contact these people? What
	   should they be told (e.g. explain that this network
	   has often been the only thing that does get thru in
	   in an emergency due to its redundancy and stubborness,
	   it's *not* obvious that the reaction to every emergency
	   is to shut down the network!)

	3. What *exactly* would the procedure be once contacted
	   (probably post to a few groups like announce.important,
	   e-mail to some pre-prepared list of individuals etc.)

	4. What, if anything, should be policy (e.g. do we shut down
	   merely because someone asked us to? do we indemnify anything
	   or anybody [no]? is every site anarchically responsible for
	   deciding their response to a request to shut down [yes]?)

I think that about sums it up.
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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