[AusNOG] Comms gear, deep underwater, floods.

[Marcus Emanuel]

Gentlemen and Ladies,

I’ve been on this list for almost two decades, helped out where i can, and have run a small Australian AS network over this time to date.

We have all seen disasters, and responded accordingly, rerouted traffic, held SLA’s and basically found a way for packets to get from A to B because thats what we do.

Northern rivers NSW and SE QLD (Where I live) copped what is labelled a 1 in 500 year high water event this week.
I dont care so much for the statistics, but the general consensus of this group is that in one way or another… we are all ‘preppers’… we build resilient systems to withstand the worst conceivable disasters. We are always looking over our shoulder.

If there has been a thread on this list covering our region already, Apologies for the ‘noise’ but the following river bound regions have failed in basic comms risk mitigation, directly endangering lives through broken emergency comms networks.

Some are listed below:
NBN PoI region: Grafton (grafton to Qld border)
Cell/Mobile backhaul: wherever Telstra sends its cell routes, from northern rivers NSW presumably on a similar trajectory to NBN, back to sydney for handoff. Optus sent techs to shoot their backhaul via sat, while Telstra seemingly sat on its hands it seems all week to date. People have been isolated and without emergency comms for almost 7days.

I expect to see more of this, but critical infrastructure has no place adjacent to flood prone rivers. I hope we can learn and adapt.

Anyway, the first of what will be a lot of submerged comms gear has made its way to me today from lismore NSW. I have seen dust before,  But i’m seeing red dirt sludge 3mm thick inside equipment that endured 10M deep flooded rivers inside servers, routers, switches…

I am attempting to bathe, ultrasonic clean, dry and repower some of this gear and hoping for the best.

What i am reaching out for here, is potentially some retired comms gear that may help bring hundreds of businesses and networks back online as they rebuild.
 I have a mountain of it in Melbourne, but if anyone in brisbane/goldcoast/sydney is willing to offer some retired gear (switches, servers, routers) to the cause it will be a blessing.

I will find a simple way to register support and ways to get it to us, but this goes out as a 6 day in ‘help!’ to the Ausnog group.

Thank you in advance. I will update with how to donate and related logistics soon.

Cheers,
Marcus.










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