Subject: No GETS activityRE:[Ieprep] Fwd: Re: 5.2 Earthquake in Northern California

From: "Gunn, Janet NE" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 12:48:22 -0400

Apparently, this event did not trigger a lot of GETS activity.

"As you know yesterdays 5.2 earthquake near Gilroy, CA  was an "event"
However I see no unusual GETS activity whatso ever
The daily numbers of originating and incoming were actually about the same
or slightly less then usual for a given day
attached here is the 115 isolated  by clli and 30 minute interval of the
near 200 or so calls of  which only 7 came into the state"

Janet

-----Original Message-----
From: Gunn, Janet NE 
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 2:12 PM
To: 'senthil ayyasamy'; [email-masked]
Subject: RE: [Ieprep] Fwd: Re: 5.2 Earthquake in Northern California

I am more involved in the "future functionality" of GETS than the current
operations, but I will see what I can come up with.

Janet

-----Original Message-----
From: senthil ayyasamy [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 3:34 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [Ieprep] Fwd: Re: 5.2 Earthquake in Northern California

Did GETs got any call???
I think internet is fine.I could reach all newsites
except some Govt sites.
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---

From: Sean Donelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 18:32:33 -0400 (EDT)

> near 200 or so calls of  which only 7 came into the state"

I'm confused.  Was the public telephone network congested to require
the use of GETS at all on Tuesday?  Were normal calls being blocked on
Tuesday, which required designated users to invoke GETS special handling?
The only FCC outage report on Tuesday was in Norfolk Virginia, all
inter-office, long distance and 9-1-1 service was out for 50,000+ people
due to yet another DACS failure.

Shouldn't the number of GETS calls be zero, except during a massive
telephone problem?

If a GETS-like service is introduced into the Internet, is this just
during "emergencies" or is the government expecting to use GETS all the
time, even when the Internet is functioning normally, just to shove in
front of the line?

---

From: Ken Carlberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 09:50:07 +0100

> Shouldn't the number of GETS calls be zero, except during a massive

so, lets see, if we look at the numbers there is (roughly) 50K+
authorized users of GETS....and yet 200 calls were made.  not bad when
you consider that some percentage are testing for service (could be
govenrmnet OR carrier technicians) and/or checking for fraud -- which
i'm sure you're aware is common place action to take.  and then the rest
are probably officials making an emergency call.  actually, quite a
restrained number in my opinion....

> time, even when the Internet is functioning normally, just to shove in

...which leads to two other things to keep in mind.  GETS is a
pay-for-use service in the US.  the carriers are not mandated to offer
the service, nor are they providing it for free.  the US government pays
for it, just like any other client.  IF we end up with some measure of
support in portions of the Internet, the same pay-for-use service will
ideally be in place.  my personal opinion is that I rather like this
business approach to things and would dread regulation to replace it.

the other things to keep in mind is that access to GETS roams with the
individual.  so if an official is at home (or at a sporting event) and
hears that an earthquake occured, he/she is not going to have
information about whether phone service is having a problem in order to
decide whether a GETS call needs to be made.

regards,

-ken

---

From: Sean Donelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 06:55:14 -0400 (EDT)

> business approach to things and would dread regulation to replace it.

The telephone system individually priced each calling card call long
before GETS was created.  A direct-dial call is priced differently than
an operator assisted call, or credit card call.  The GETS card fits
the telephone billing process, and each call is billed at the appropriate
rate. The Internet doesn't have a billing or accounting system to charge
the government different rates for individual mail messages, or telnet
sessions with different types of handling.  Or are you proposing a
differentiated billing and accounting mechanism for the Internet to
enable the government to buy different a priority for each packet?

I like the business-like approach too.  But I'm not sure if we should
be turning the Internet upside down and inside out just so the government
can pay 15 cents to make a calls across the Internet.  Re-engineering
the Internet before we're certain what the problem with using the
Internet as it currently exists doesn't make business sense to me.

In the last year there has been more evidence of calls attempted with
GETS failing to complete through the telephone network than evidence
of calls using the Internet failing during an emergency.  If 97%
completion rate of calls through GETS is satisfactory, and the
Internet achieves completion rates above 97%, what is the problem we
are trying to solve?

Problem statement:

   The Internet must complete 97% of emergency communications.

Solutions:

   1. More capacity
   2. End-to-end QoS of streams across providers
   3. Individual marking of packets with on-demand authentication
      using a telephone calling card number, and billing for those
      packets

> decide whether a GETS call needs to be made.

The telephone network has a nifty feature which immediately informs
an user when his or her call can not be completed through the normal
circuits called an "all circuits are busy" signal (or special information
tone and message, or whatever).  An official can immediately learn that
the telephone network is having problems simply by making a normal call
to check on whatever he or she needs to check.  If the telephone network
is operating normally, his or her call will go through normally.  When
the call gets a "Your call can not be completed due to an earthquake in
the area," the official immediately knows he or she needs to pay extra to
use a GETS card to make the call.

---

From: Ken Carlberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 13:43:27 +0100

> rate. 

um, right.

> The Internet doesn't have a billing or accounting system to charge

how are you getting from the first part of your comment to this?  the
part of my earlier message that you did not include was...

  "... IF we end up with some measure of support in portions of the 
   Internet, the same pay-for-use service will ideally be in place. ..."

...the words "IF" "some" and "portions" are very important.

if someone is going to contract a service better than best effort,
their going to have to pay for it.  if the service can't be provided,
its going to be best effort, and they'll have to live with it.  life
goes on.

> Internet as it currently exists doesn't make business sense to me.

um, ok

> of calls using the Internet failing during an emergency.  

fantastic!!  please provide the raw data for this (specifically, for
IP telephony) to make sure we're not comparing apples and oranges.  
the information you provide will also save the government some money by 
removing those telco folks from the RBOCs and IXCs that are on GETS 
authorized list and have used it over the past year.  no need for the 
US government to pay for folks at places like Southwestern Bell to use 
GETS if they can do it better with their own own IP telephony system.

> If 97%

you're joking.  we'll assume you're speaking about best effort VoIP when 
you talk of "Internet..completion rates".....and you want to do a
straight comparison between best effort VoIP with toll quality telephony?  
you'll get what you'll pay for.

>       using a telephone calling card number, and billing for those

since these are your solutions (and assuming you're aiming for number 1), 
how does this allow me to bridge IP telephony via SIP/H.323 with the 
NS/EP marking of IAM messages of the SS7 world?

> use a GETS card to make the call.

cool.

have a nice day,

-ken

---

From: Sean Donelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 16:33:10 -0400 (EDT)

> ...the words "IF" "some" and "portions" are very important.

Those are pretty big If's.  Changing an economic system of an industry
in order to implement a protocol is an amazing challenge for engineers.

Are there any solutions for enabling emergency communications across the
Internet which don't require altering the business model of the existing
Internet?

> GETS if they can do it better with their own own IP telephony system.

Well, I'm more interested in getting the communications through in
an emergency rather than who gets paid to carry it.  If Avian Carrier
Pidgens Communications, Inc. has working communication channels in
an emergency, they should be used.  Despite having no support for
GETS, Blackberry pagers have become very popular with emergency
officials.

If you believe the statistics, UUNET claims they have been delivering
on average over 99% of all packets on their backbone for over a year.

http://www1.worldcom.com/us/about/network/latency/

AT&T, C&W and Sprint make similar reliablity claims for their IP
backbones.

Comparing apples and apples is interesting if everyone sold the same
apples.  Try an orange, you might like it.  Attempting to make an orange
look like an apple destroys a perfectly good orange, and doesn't make
a very good apple.

I am working with people who are deploying an IP telephony system for
use in an emergency.  The goals include evaluating how well it performs
during periods of network stress, and what problems it has.  Only after
we figure out what the problems are, will we be in a postion to identify
solutions to those problems.

---

From: Ken Carlberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 22:23:23 +0100

> Internet which don't require altering the business model of the existing

I'm sorry, but what are you talking about?  what is the economic system
that you are refering too, and what is the change to that you feel I'm
advocating?

> AT&T, C&W and Sprint make similar reliablity claims for their IP

excuse me, but you've made the following claim....

 > of calls using the Internet failing during an emergency.

...based on the *internal* stats of four *tier-1* carriers?  and what 
does that number tell us about IP telephony traffic that they carry?

----------

actually, in giving it some thought, I made an error in judgement in my 

 > Internet as it currently exists doesn't make business sense to me.

I should have first asked, who is suggesting that the internet be 
re-engineered?  and more importantly, which document states this,
and where exactly does it say this?

> solutions to those problems.

my best wishes in your endeavors,

-ken

---

From: Sean Donelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 18:38:40 -0400 (EDT)

> and where exactly does it say this?

   "ETS is a pay-for-use service in the US.  the carriers are not mandated
   to offer the service, nor are they providing it for free.  the US
   government pays for it, just like any other client.  IF we end up with
   some measure of support in portions of the Internet, the same
   pay-for-use service will ideally be in place."

If ETS is a pay-for-use service, someone will need to re-engineer
the Internet to include the infrastructure to support pay-for-use
billing. Many people have been working on that for a long time,
but it doesn't seem to be here yet.  What if the ideal billing
infrastructure isn't in place, how will ETS be supported?  $19.95
a month for all the priority packets you can send?

---

From: Ken Carlberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 09:28:16 +0100

>    pay-for-use service will ideally be in place."

just to clarify, i stated "GETS", not "ETS".

> but it doesn't seem to be here yet.  

where is here?  I'm really weak regarding billing, but I'll bring up some
information that I know off the top of my head.

1) AT&T is offering diff-serv marked service.  I have not obtained details
because then I'm stuck with an NDA, but I'll bet a couple of pints that 
this service is an an additional cost beyond best effort service to use it.

2) in the states, we've had fractional T-1 service for a while where a 
flat fee is charged for some threshold, and an additional charge is made
when you exceed the threshold -- an additional pay-as-you-use service.

3) In New Zealand, large customers (eg, schools) are charged on a 
per-IP packet basis for traffic they obtain from outside of the country.
The same used to be true for Chile (my info on it is 3 years old).  All
in-country traffic in Chile was charged at a flat rate, but in-bound 
traffic from outside the country was charged as you obtained it.  My 
assumption is that this model applies to other countries where 
international tariffs are still relatively high.

> What if the ideal billing

what is considered "ideal" is rather relative.  economic theory by Keyes
or Adams would probably state that the billing needs to recover costs
as well as be acceptable to the target audience.

the thread seems to be drifting away to economics.  if you wish to
continue with that, lets take this off line.

-ken

---

From: "Stuart (Stu) Goldman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 03:03:37 -0700

Ken,

The other thing that should be pointed out is that while an authorized emergency
user may place a GETS call anytime, that call does not "just to shove in front
of the line". (One would of course first need a line in order to be able to
shove to its front.) If, as it has been suggested, there was no network
congestion in this case, then the GETS call completed normally, as did all of
the POTS calls. There is some misconception that GETS calls somehow get accepted
first, faster, etc. in the PSTN.  GETS calls can better be viewed as less
subject to failure by blockage when there is congestion, but otherwise look
remarkably like a credit card call.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:59:56 -0700

At 06:38 PM 5/19/2002 -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
>billing.

The larger issue is that the current Internet is a single service (best 
effort) environment.

If the Internet is going to support end-to-end Quality of Service, there 
are likely to be changes to the general Internet accounting system to 
handle the different services.   My own view is that end-to-end QOS is, in 
fact, required.

I've no sympathy for the design model that says just use bigger pipes.  It 
ignores details in the history and nature of packet-switching 
research:  Queuing is for transients, not for handling high averages.

High averages require denial at the leaves and/or bigger pipes.  It is not 
possible to guarantee that pipes are always "too" large, so congestion is 
guarantee to occur at some point, even for the simplistic model, ignoring 
the likelihood that it is not economically feasible.

Denial for high averages and for both methods of handling high transients 
-- dropping packets or queuing -- all require 
prioritization.  Prioritization rules define QOSs...

Stated less predictively:  Whatever accounting model is used to support 
other kinds of quality of service seems likely to be able to satisfy IEPS 
accounting requirements.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker  <mailto:[email-masked]>
Brandenburg InternetWorking  <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253;  fax +1.408.850.1850

---

From: Sean Donelan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 19:53:39 -0400 (EDT)

> other kinds of quality of service seems likely to be able to satisfy IEPS

That's great.  We've been waiting for 10 years for a new QoS model to
take hold.  When the new accounting model is ready we'll use it.

In the mean time, can we do something for emergency services before
this new accounting model is deployed on the Internet?  To be more
practical, can we  deploy  "simple" emergency service within a
few years using what is available today (or with the fewest changes)
or must we wait for the Internet to catch up with IEPS requirements.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 18:13:58 -0700

At 07:53 PM 5/20/2002 -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
>take hold.

alas, I remember initial arpanet/internet efforts at this somewhere around 
25 years ago.  but that's just quibbling, of course, except for one very 
important implication, namely how slowly things change.

>When the new accounting model is ready we'll use it.

I was not suggesting waiting on anything.  Rather I was noting that 
inter-provider changes are required and that changes to accounting go 
hand-in-hand with changes to service.

Oh.  And I was suggesting that IEPS should piggyback on those activities, 
rather than postulating any infrastructure changes that are unique to IEPS.

A different point than the one I was making -- and probably the one that 
you are very properly focusing on -- is that in the near term, we have what 
we have, both for infrastructure service and infrastructure 
accounting.  They ain't gonna change anytime soon.

>or must we wait for the Internet to catch up with IEPS requirements.

1.      We can deploy edge services easily in the end-point 
hosts.  Probably not all that useful.

2.      We can deploy edge ISP services with more difficulty, but more 
utility.  In effect this would be a client/server service model, concerning 
access.

         The attaching host uses standardized ways of requesting special 
services from the ISP they are attaching to.

         What happens within the cloud is a separate matter.  It occurs to 
me that one can easily imagine "regional" agreements among ISPs happening 
more quickly than international one.  However, the dominance of a few major 
US-based ISPs makes this possibility weaker.  In any event, it explicitly 
defers the end-to-end details, while providing a mechanism for users to 
request special service.

         That would probably be generally helpful for the Internet.

3.  ...can't think of an alternative...

d/

----------

---

From: Ken Carlberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 09:18:35 +0100

<to the general public>...

> 3.  ...can't think of an alternative...

one can deploy VoIP within certain environments as it exists today.  
Vendor-proprietary solutions to compensate for loss in times of 
congestion can be used between clients using the same products or 
tools.  Redundant transmissions or FEC can also be used along the same 
line of reasoning.  

IM type applications and email can be used to supplement voice.

however, the point about the above is that one doesn't need a working 
group to do that or point out the obvious.  It already exists.  

I'm not concerned about best effort VoIP.  when someone suggests using
it, great.  its a non-issue.  I am concerned about when you want to go 
beyond that, and just as importantly, when providers are offering 
service beyond that.

there is nothing in the IEPREP charter that says what it produces is 
the only way to do something regarding emergency communications.

-ken

---

From: "Alistair Munro" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 12:48:47 +0100

Hi All,

At the risk of reopening an earlier discussion that ran ahead of
requirements, I agree that we should make statements about best practice
on QoS. So far, there has not been any advance on Fred's text in his
requirements draft and we should look again at this issue in due course.

There *is* a discernable end-to-end QoS model for IP already, arguably
three if you consider MPLS as part of IP, and I believe it/they,
together with proper network planning would work well in many emergency
situations. In fact, they will work better than any other QoS/GoS model
because they will survive congestion better *because of* the statistical
multiplexing effects. Specifications for using what exists already to
best effect are what we should bring out in best practice statements and
I would resist any claim that an[other?] end-to-end QoS model is needed.
What exactly did you have in mind? 

I don't know much about accounting/pricing/charging models and I don't
see how they fit in to a discussion on QoS, (or indeed into IEPREP).
Pricing is a tool for limiting use but it is not a quality model. Could
you explain the relationship please?

Regards,

Alistair

--
Dr. Alistair Munro,
Chief Systems Engineer, Degree2 Innovations Ltd.
Regus House, 1 Friary, Temple Quay, Bristol, BS1 6EA, U.K.
E-mail: [email-masked]
Tel: (work) +44-117-900-8114, (home) +44-1275-462707, (mobile)
+44-7974-922-442;
Fax: +44-117-900-8151
Web: http://www.u4eagroup.com

> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Ken Carlberg
> Sent: 21 May 2002 09:19
> To: Dave Crocker
> Cc: Sean Donelan; [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Ieprep] Internet QOS
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not concerned about best effort VoIP.  when someone 
> suggests using it, great.  its a non-issue.  I am concerned 
> about when you want to go

---

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 10:12:05 -0400

> requirements draft and we should look again at this issue in due course.

That proposal seems (to me) to be inconsistent with the WG charter for 
IEprep.
The chair, of course, is the only person who can officially interpret 
the charter.

However, I'll point out that A LOT of what is being discussed here is
much more properly handled as a private business arrangement, between 
DISA/NCS
and whichever telecom/ISP firms it contracts with, than as an IETF 
standards
activity.

Ran