The idea of life without the internet is beyond my understanding.
I am not talking about living without the internet, of course we can all do that. I just can’t imagine how anyone can say that the internet connection that they need – for example, for a home business – is down for a week or more.
Maybe this comes from my work as a consultant building secure data centers and call centers that needed 100% uptime.
The expert drawing to the right is supposed to represent where I live. I don’t actually live in a turquoise rectangle, but you get the idea. I have the luck of living near the boarder where 2 departments – sort of like US states – come together. The red arrow is the path that one telephone line follows from the France Telecom central in the Yvelines and the blue arrow from the central that is part of Seine et Marne (2 different French departments or ’states’).
I have 2 landlines entering the house at different entry points, so if a truck crashes into the house, they can only take one line down, unless the house is totally destroyed I would still have a working telephone connection.Once I built a call center for a French hotel chain who had a similar setup – redundant phone lines, redundant power and a generator. The problem that they had was all the phone and power lines met up in one place in the basement and followed one path to the actual call center on the fifth floor. They had a fire in the underground parking just before I was called in, and the car the burned had the misfortune of being parked under the point where all power and phone lines came together.
They had a great beginning of a plan, with a single point of failure.
Electricity to Run the Internet Connection
I have redundant power in the house. Electricity from the local power company that supports my neighborhood and a generator with enough fuel to run the house for several months – at least 2 full months in the dead of winter. Having a fuel generator is very common in France, my fuel tank is buried in the back yard and holds 3500 liters of diesel fuel. I need to manually switch over, but the downtime could be one minute or less. Side note, not related to the interent connection, is that we cook using bottled gas. As a backup here, if I forget to get a bottle, we have electric hotplates and an oven that will fill the gap as I wait a day to go get the 2 bottles replaced (haven’t needed to do that).
Then I have 2 mobile phones in the house, from 2 different carriers. Each can be bluetoothed to a hub and give 3G connection to the internet. One phone is an iPhone 3G that has an app allowing any computer to use the phone as a hub to connect to the interent. The second phone is just a standard phone with an internet connection and it can act as a hub, but I onle get an Edge connection with this carrier.
With the Linux-based Maemo operating platform, 32GB of storage and multiple options of connectivity including access for 3G data networks, consumers no longer need to leave everything that makes them them – their email, favorite websites, social communities, images, music – anywhere but on their Nokia N900. With the Nokia N900, you don’t have to worry about missing that next great moment.
Like I said, the idea of life without the internet is beyond my understanding.
For full disclosure, I don’t actually live in a turquoise rectangle, but that really is a map of the street where I live.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
You really have all basis covered don’t you. 2 internet connections, 2 mobile phones. No wonder you don’t have any problems.
Damn! I really can’t live without the internet. I remembered last time when my ISP was down for a week and I wasn’t able to visit the blogs that I love to read and update my social networking accounts. Life is boring without internet.
I actually wrote this post because one of my lines went down and it took me about 12 seconds to get back up and running.
Backup plans – the only way to go.
this is funny,nice post!
Now I understand why. Actually, I’m impressed by your setup and backup plans.
Helpful ideas that make me think I don’t pay enough attention to my own.
I am impressed (Who wouldn’t be?). I only have a backup using 2 adsl service providers. I also have a laptop with a cellular connection on standby and I am planning a possible second adsl connection some time next year.
Gert Hough@Website Promotion´s last blog ..Thank You Lord For Making Me Whole
i love the n900 its freaking great, always loved the n800 as well though
That is quite a set up, I am shamed and impressed at the same time
Regarding the generator, which is something I have been thinking of investing in, does the diesel have a shelf life, so that you end up having to use it every year or something?
Steve@Lift Chairs´s last blog ..The Importance of Physical Examinations when Treating Arthritis
The most common form of communication today apart from talking is by internet With this in mind you can see what an important part of peoples lives internet have become.
Since the ‘arrival’ of the phenomenon that is known as the Internet, we have become obsessed to some extent with the speed in which it lets us live our lives. We rarely expect to get letters from friends, family or businesses – email is there, ready, waiting and fast. We can visit just about any virtual shop in the world, buy more than we could physically carry and arrange to have it delivered, and all this can be done in just an hour of surfing without even getting out of a chair.
nice blog thanks for enlightening read provided.you are here with such a good information .i shall repeated here soon and recommend this to others as well.please keep adapting it.thanks for sharing your knowledge with the readers
I think we can not live without internet and i think we are earning money from internet ,glad to read this post.
jim@uk phone deals´s last blog ..More Nokia X3 deals at e2save and OneStop
Of course we could cope without the Internet. Food and water maybe not, but the Internet we can. It is true that it plays a big role in many of our lives though, espcially those of us who earn a living through it.
Redundancy is a great idea. Everyone knows they should back up their computers. Until I had a recent 2 day black-out, I didn’t even think about having a back up plan for electricity…let alone phone lines. You’ve got me thinking now…
Thanks for the post!
Mike from Call Center Data´s last blog ..Cold Calling-The Ghastliest Chore in All of Marketing
I live in the mountains of Northern California and this article really hit home. Wloe lost power every time we had any snow this winter and of course that means no computer. Also the local cable company lost power quite often so between the two utilities the computer was down often. This backup plan seems like overkill but when you can’t get online, it makes sense to have a great backup. Kudos to the writer.
Living with out the Internet. Really… I would go insane. We had a bad storm in my area and lost it for a week. It was like an addiction, I had actual withdrawls . I guess you don’t realize how dependent you become on the Internet. Not just for financial or business needs, but also entertainment and communication.
When the electricity came back on. I was the most relieved not for lights, not for heat, or the televisions. But for my computer and my coffee. Now those are two things I can’t live without.
This was a great post. Just so glad that I had the internet connection to enjoy it.
Megan