| From: | Robert Watkins <robert.watkins@******.COM> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | [OT] Australian links (was RE: Shadowrun ain't a game ... it's a |
| Date: | Wed, 14 Oct 1998 10:51:33 +1000 |
> Quoting Robert Watkins (robert.watkins@******.COM):
> > It's not because our pollies are paranoid: it's a cost issue. There's a
> > cable heading out of Sydney to Hawaii, and there's a cable
> heading out of
> > Darwin to either Singapore or Indonesia (the original was
> Singapore, but I
> > think they may have changed the destination when they went to fibre).
> > There's little to no point in making other connections.
>
> I think, however, you may be underestimating the effect of
> satellite transmission. I think it'd be a lot harder to isolate any
> country, even one like Australia that takes up all of its own
> continent, than you seem to think.
> But, looking at the number of 'I thinks' in there, I
> could easilly be
> wrong :)
Nope. Telecommunications within Australia is _within_ Australia. Even if you
run a network via sattelite communications, it goes from your site to a base
station in the capital city. And most such networks would be things like
bush schools (something like a mining site would find this far too expensive
to do on a full-time basis). Furthermore, there's going to be less and less
use of sattelite communications, and even for remote sites, the preferred
setup would be up to one sattelite, then straight back down to the base
station. The latency factor involved is just too high, especially for data
communications.
Links outside of Australia run through the two major links in Darwin and
Sydney. If the cable link is down, they switch to satellite links as backups
in Darwin and Sydney. Even with the addition of extra players to the
telecommunications market in Australia, this isn't likely to change simply
due to the cost of laying cable on the Pacific basin (PacBell spent more
money laying phone lines than the US Navy did setting up the SOSUS sonar
network).
I remember when the LA earthquake hit, as I was online chatting to some
folks in the States at the time. First thing I noticed was that one of the
people I was talking to dropped off (she lives in LA). The second was that
performance dropped away like crap. Why? The satellite backup link kicked
in. But it was still going through the main station at Sydney.
Still, I don't think the virus wouldn't have hit Australia. About the only
thing that would make sense like this is that it was easier to clean up the
virus in Australia, simply because we can isolate ourselves if needed. In
addition, we have fewer systems, so once a means of combating the virus was
found (Echo Mirage), we could have restored our section of the Net to
operational status faster, which would have limited the effects of the
Crash.
--
.sig deleted to conserve electrons. robert.watkins@******.com
