November 2003 Mfg.Trust

Mfg.Trust is a monthly feature of the
            NCMS InfraGard Manufacturing Industry Association
                        Infrastructure assurance for manufacturers
                                    Powered by NCMS.

This month – ROBUST TELECOMMUNICATIONS
If you can’t communicate, you can’t recover

See the Resources Page for this Story 

Editor's Preface:

Phone service is mission critical. Given the way business is done in most enterprises, email and networks are mission critical. A communications outage caused by natural or man-made causes can translate into millions of dollars of lost revenue, productivity, an credibility.

Yet, a simple communications outage is simple compared with the aftermath of a disaster that includes telecommunications problems. In this more difficult and more likely event, your peak need for communications to reach your workers, customers, and investors occurs right after the loss of communications service.

The smaller business owner faces all these problems, but with fewer expert resources and a limited set of practical solution options.

This month’s article examines the problems, and offers planning tips and resources that we recommend for your enterprise. As always, our Resources Section at http://trust.ncms.org contains a rich set of links for further reading.

Editor

ROBUST TELECOMMUNICATIONS

In most cases, you would believe that most firms would be self-motivated to take the right proactive measures to minimize or eliminate single points of failure within their communications network. After all, it makes good business sense to eliminate risk of loss. But the knowledge of how to minimize that risk is not common.

Simplified, the goal is to introduce an adequate level of network diversity and redundancy without “over-kill.” Finding the right balance among cost, risk, tolerance, and technology is the challenge. Unfortunately, older installed systems installed by customers or deployed by carriers were not always optimally rugged. These demand your scrutiny when planning.

Network Vulnerability

In terms of local network vulnerability, history has shown what the risks are, and they are diverse:
* the notorious backhoe digging up the street and taking all the fiber cable feeding a building with it.
* the vendor maintenance that fixes one problem and causes another
* the water main break flooding the local central office
* the unexplainable software failure within a carrier’s network
* the unexpected hardware failure that requires a part, which is not readily available
* the hurricane or tornado that creates all manner of havoc for both you and the telecoms provider.

Contingency Plans

Due to space and scope limitations, this article will not address in any depth the topic of business continuity planning. See Resources page for good references, including Disaster Recovery Institute and Gartner Group.

Contingency plans need address all sorts of prospective outages, as shown in the previous paragraph. Contingency plans should offer some degree of resiliency, transparency, redundancy, and diversity:

Resiliency – the ability to restore in the event of an outage, in the time necessary, before the impact on the business is too serious.
Transparency – the operation of a completely alternate or “standby” network that is (to varying degrees) the same as the primary network.
Diversity – a “mirror-image” network to the extent necessary, with an alternate carrier to keep business flowing
In-Network Redundancy – the ability to limit single points of failure within the primary and secondary networks, to the extent necessary to keep business operations flowing

With contingency planning, one size does not fit all. Needs and reasonable measures vary greatly from business to business, depending on customer risk threshold, financial impact, and scalability required. Developing a plan, and executing on that plan, is cause for getting professional help.

Finding Answers. A Few Partial Solutions

Some digging (no pun intended) is required to get to the truth about network reliability. Technical help can be valuable to sort out true diversity from the appearance of diversity. It is a false sense of security to assume that, because you are being billed by two different companies for parallel telecommunications services, you are fully protected from single point of failure.

Further, it seems that different measures each provide protection from certain failures, each a partial solution. Thus, your measures become a set of defenses. That said, here are some partial solutions.

       Digital Wireless Broadband
One possibility is digital wireless broadband services to parallel your network infrastructure. They can be fully independent of much of your network, and offer a good way to round out a fail over plan as a “mirror image” or just a “hot standby.”

       Cellular Phones
Cellular phones, unfortunately, have limited utility in a recovery plan. Their networks are generally under-engineered and easily saturated. However, they do protect from local equipment failure.

       Government Emergency Telecommunications Systems (GETS)
If you are qualified, the GETS system (see Resources) supports federal, state, and local government, industry, and non-profit organization personnel in performing their National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) missions. GETS provides emergency access and priority processing in the local and long distance segments of the Public Switched Network (PSN). It is intended to be used in an emergency or crisis situation during which the probability of completing a call over normal or other alternate telecommunication means has significantly decreased.

       Wireless Priority Service (WPS)
WPS is a White House-directed National Security/Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) National Communications System (NCS) program for priority cellular network access. The WPS was approved by the FCC for NS/EP requirements on a call-by-call priority basis. The NCS executes the program on behalf of the Executive Office of the President. Only individuals in NS/EP key leadership positions are authorized use of WPS.

       Voice over IP
Internet telephony may be useful alternative to “regular” phone service, but for most it is not a defense against failure. VoIP uses some additional equipment added to the same existing network facilities as, for instance, email. If you already have email as an emergency alternative to voice, then VoIP does not add significantly.

       Teleworking Environments
A virtual private network (VPN) that permits staff to work from home (where they have access to other phone service) can be a powerful recovery tool, IF you can recover the VPN. This solution also offers everyday benefits for some office environments.

       Interview Your ISP About Communicating in an Emergency
Recall the scenario in which your peak need for communications to reach your workers, customers, and investors occurs right after the loss of communications service. You will need to do some communications planning to address this problem. Some relevant questions that you might ask your IT staff and ISP include:

* Do you have a website that will support emergency notification and announcements?
* How long will it be unavailable after a loss to your primary Internet Service provider?
* Are emergency notification pages already in place, or will they have to be created during the crush of an emergency?
* If the latter, have you selected a vendor capable of setting up such a web-based support process in a hurry?
* Does your Internet Service Provider have the capacity and the flexibility to run your web requirements when so many other customers may be calling on them for the same services?
* Have you made advance contractual arrangements with your ISP for contingent services?
* Is your web host capable of redundancy to ensure the survivability of your website?
* Have you audited to ensure their claim?

Conclusion

If you are in a smaller company, a probing interview with your staff IT person and network provider reps may be an enlightening and worthwhile part of your planning. This might be preceded by a look at the Disaster Recovery Institute’s Professional Practices for Business Continuity Professionals. Thus armed with factual information, you are in a better position to assess your local options. There might not be many, but each could be very important to your business.

Please take a moment to review the Resources Page. You will find more detail there.

LINKS

http://trust.ncms.org, select ‘Publications Index’ tab to find:
Business Continuity Planning, a special feature July-Aug 2002 Corner.Office

Government Emergency Telecommunications System (GETS)
Priority access to normal phone networks for public safety and emergency workers
http://www.gets.ncs.gov/

Wireless Priority Service (WPS)
http://www.wps.ncs.gov/

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