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Communications Wireless Networking Technology

Searching for a Satellite Pager? 243

Posted by Cliff from the beep-me-anywhere dept.
mcolgin asks: "I need a satellite pager! Why? I own a dot-com and as the only technical person responsible for the 7 servers needed to run the site and it's automated delivery systems, I've got to find out about any problems, before my customers/suppliers do; no matter where I am, especially when I'm: camping in Eastern-Washington; back-country skiing in Whistler; or driving down to Oregon for Mother's Day. I've tried every type of cellphone and pager I can find, but nothing gets a message to me once I get out of populated areas and away from freeways. So, I started looking into Satellite pagers; but I swear, I can't find anything in the local Seattle, WA area and only a couple listings online from Google searches. This has got to be a problem that the Slashdot community has run into, before. Any suggestions?"
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Searching for a Satellite Pager? More

Searching for a Satellite Pager?

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  • There are many options (Score:5, Informative)

    by Exstatica ( 769958 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:49PM (#12531645) Homepage
    Iridium [iridium.com] who does satellite phones also does global pagers [iridium.com]. The pagers are not too expensive about 150.00 dollars US, but the service is about 127 dollars a month for unlimited pages or you can get the basic plan that i think is around 56 dollars it gives you about 150 pages per month. If your stuff doesn't go down that much i'd get the basic plan. A place that I know that sells it is InfoSat [infosat.com] YOur other option is have your cell phone text messaged. I usually never not have service. If I do it's not for very long, and when i get back into a populated area or get reception i get my messages right away. The point is, what if you get a page but you can't call anyone because you have no reception. That would fustrate me more.
    • Iridium + Text messaging (http://messaging.iridium.com/ [iridium.com]) is the way to go. That way you can not only receive it anywhere, but you can take action.

      The one thing I did notice with the Iridium phones is that while they work EVERYWHERE on the globe (including in the middle of the Pacific on a cruise ship, great reception despite the latency), they don't perform as well as most modern phones in steel buildings (again, cruise ship). On the deck they were great. In the large open air suites they were great. In th
      • Iridium + Text messaging is the way to go. That way you can not only receive it anywhere, but you can take action.

        Oooo I can see it now. Jack is out ona hike and the site goes down.

        *beep* *beep*

        Boss via text messaging: "Jack, the site is down."
        Jack via text messaging: "WTF!"
        Boss: "Can you help out?"
        Jack: "kybord no good 4 typng! LOLz. cya l8r"
      • There are places here where not even satphones work. Dad ran a mining camp just outside Mt Tom Price [walkabout.com.au] for a little while, which had a "phone booth", a white square meter painted onto the bare rock upon which one could stand and one's satphone may or may not work (it had good and bad days). One could also stand there with a cellular phone (CDMA or GSM) and some of them would work (the ones that did work, worked more reliably than the satphone).

        The residents reckoned that it was all of the iron ore playing si

    • or he can... (Score:2, Funny)

      by wahsapa ( 767922 )
      Hire Me!

      I'll run your servers! I don't eat much and I won't take up much space...
      • Are you a gerbil?

      • Re:or he can... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Mistlefoot ( 636417 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @07:37PM (#12532238)
        Hiring you might be deemed funny but this seems to be the correct answer.

        I fail to see how, while hiking in the back country, finding out via a pager that there is an issue will help. Not be able to 'call out' with solutions....hey, he's not asking for Satellite phone info.....but Satellite pager info. Knowing that somethings is amiss leads to two results.

        1), Hurredly unhiking out of the back country until you reach a location where you can 'call out' and/or solve the issue.

        2), Stressing about what the outcome of the issue is while you continue to enjoy your hike.

        Neither seem worthwhile to me unless you are the "only person" who can do this job and you trust no one else in your company or employ to handle the task. You really should have someone who can.

        • Re:or he can... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @09:17PM (#12532796)
          Neither seem worthwhile to me unless you are the "only person" who can do this job and you trust no one else in your company or employ to handle the task.

          Woe to the company that hires a single-man operation to maintain mission-critical systems.

          If he's the only person who can manage these 7 servers, and gets hit by a bus, a whole lot of people are going to be really pissed off.

          • Re:or he can... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by msuzio ( 3104 )
            Original post:

            "I own a dot-com..."

            Presumably if the owner gets hit by a bus, a lot of WTF? is going to go down. I assume he's mission critical because, for all we know, it's him and maybe 2 other people working for the company. I've been there, you really can't have redundancies when it's just less than 10 of you trying to make this company work.
        • Number 1 would probably be the reaction, but the most common occurrence would probably be that he can relax for that week or whatever that he's out of contact, confident that if there WERE a problem, he would know about it. A vacation isn't much of a vacation if you have a nagging question in the back of your mind about whether everything you're responsible for is going okay. So just having the potential to be notified can make you more comfortable when you're not notified.
    • Ok, I would definately look into Iridium. But as a note to Exstatica, I can tell you aren't from the Washington Area. When I go from Seattle to Pullman to go back to school I usually spend 3/4 of that 5 hour drive out of cell range. When I go backpacking up in the cascades, usually you're out of cell range. I could do a speil on radio theory and talk about what the terrian is like in the Cascades, but it is more easily said that Cell coverage will never be 100%.

      As for not being able to do anything, if

  • Iridium 9501 Satellite Pager by Motorola (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:50PM (#12531648)
    The reason you only got "a couple listings" is because Iridium [iridium.com] is pretty much the only game in town, and there's pretty much only one pager. There weren't exactly a lot of devices made for this market. It's no small feat to operate a global voice/data satellite network. There are only a "couple" of other providers (geared more toward government, military, and enterprise, and without "pager" offerings): InMarSat [inmarsat.com] and GlobalStar [globalstar.com], for example.

    The Motorola 9501 for Iridium is, as I said, essentially the only satellite pager:

    http://www.iridium.com/product/iri_product-detail. asp?productid=445 [iridium.com]

    http://shop.infosat.com/pagers/ [infosat.com]

    http://www.infosat.com/services/iridium/motorola_9 501_pager.htm [infosat.com]

    http://www.satwest.com/satellite_pagers_mi9501.htm l [satwest.com]

    More... [google.com]

    Of course, you may be interested in a satellite handset, not strictly a "pager", than can also get email and numeric messages. Keep in mind, though, that all of these satellite devices are subject to normal satellite requirements, e.g., line of sight to the sky. Yes, sometimes they'll "kind of" work in vehicles, wooded areas, etc., and you will get confirmed delivery of messages once you're again in range, but these things aren't exactly set up to work in houses and buildings. You may have no choice but to have a conventional cell phone/pager AND a satellite device for when you're remote, and have your automated systems and/or people try both devices.

    For others in a similar boat, but not quite as remote as the submitter, you may also consider a conventional 2-way or 1.5-way nationwide pager, which provides delivery confirmation and re-attempts if you're temporarily out of range. But if you know you're going to be out of range for a while, you pretty much restricted to something like one of the satellite solutions. Consider a mobile phone. Most providers' digital networks offer email service, numeric "paging", and even true TAP/IXO paging. Just look into a provider that covers your area(s).

    A bit of history on Iridium: Iridium was the satellite phone service launched by Motorola on Sept 23, 1998, when the last satellite of its global constellation was in place. Handset prices (over $3000) and airtime fees (several dollars per minute), as well as attempting to market to ordinary folks doomed the service from the beginning. Motorola decided to end the Iridium service on March 17, 2000, at 11:59pm. After billions were spent on the 66 satellites, and the $1 million per month that it cost Motorola for Boeing operate the satellites, Motorola initiated plans to deorbit and destroy the constellation. Various investor groups attempted to save Iridium, and the Defense Department even provided $72 million to keep the satellites operational (in the face of concerns of debris from the deorbited satellites actually hitting someone on earth, which NASA pinned at 1 in 250). In any event, Iridium Satellite LLC successfully purchased the assets of the $7 billion Motorola Iridium program in November 2000 for a mere $25 million:

    http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0011/16iridium/ [spaceflightnow.com]
    http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0103/29iridium/ [spaceflightnow.com]

    The new Iridium, launched in March 2001, attempts to fix the shortcomings of the original by expanding beyond satellite voice telephone service, into data, video, realtime monitoring, and special applications in markets such as mining, oil/gas, m
    • One of the spaceflightnow.com links above says...

      A total of 88 satellites were launched beginning in May 1997, but several malfunctioned after arriving in orbit.

      Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space built the satellite platforms and said the craft would operate up to eight years. The Iridium constellation is divided into six groups of satellites circling 421 miles above Earth.

      So... 1997 + 8 years = 2005.

      Are they replacing satellites that have reached EOL ?
      • Were the Mars rovers replaced at their EOL?

        I imagine they can be pushed into 2010 if they've survived so far. Coverage will slowly recede during that time, but since its not 100% coverage to begin with, they can still sell 'global' phones and pagers.

      • Are they replacing satellites that have reached EOL ?

        Iridium currently has about a dozen spare satellites in orbit, in addition to the 66 operational spacecraft. While the earliest spacecraft have reached their originally-estimated EOL, the satellite constellation remains quite healthy, and company officials have indicated (based on independent studies) that the existing constellation should remain fully functional until around 2014 [iridium.com]. This gives the company plenty of time to plan launching replacement

        • Calling Iridium profitable is a very interesting use of the word profitable. While they may be profitable on a month to moth basis, it's only because they are living off the assets that were thrown into space on someone else's dime. Iridium was a huge failure, and the likelyhood that a direct replacement system will be launched is extreemly close to zero.

    • Iridium is not global (Score:3, Informative)

      by mnmn ( 145599 )
      Their global 'coverage' is limited as displayed on the map on their site. For one, Africa is completely uncovered.. so if youre smack dab in the middle of central Africa, theres NO way to communicate back except maybe long range ham radio.

      The polar regions are also barely covered; that was the reason I was looking for a pager in the first place.
      • Globalstar is not global, and misses Africa, but Iridium seems to be global, at least according to their site. And Inmarsat is global, except at the polar regions.

        The exceptions for Iridium seems to be: "The four Restricted Countries where the Iridium phone will not complete a call to the local phone system are: N. Korea, Poland, & Hungary. " (yes, there is only three, but see for yourselves at wwwg.lobalcomsatphone.com)

      • Re:Iridium is not global (Score:3, Informative)

        by kriston ( 7886 )
        so if youre smack dab in the middle of central Africa, theres NO way to communicate back except maybe long range ham radio.

        Ahem. Inmarsat [inmarsat.com] has been around for decades and covers all of Africa. There are local agents who can hook you up with rental Inmarsat briefcase-sized communications units. Inmarsat has also had fax, store-and-forward, as well as packet data for a long time and have in recent years been providing high-speed data, too.

  • I have one (Score:5, Funny)

    by nother_nix_hacker ( 596961 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:50PM (#12531652)
    Any suggestions?


    Yea, sleep in the server room.
    • Good idea, but still something has to wake him up when the servers are down.
      • You don't think the burning smell would do it? Or the angry phone calls from customers? Or the investors, for that matter?
      • Good idea, but still something has to wake him up when the servers are down

        Personally I use the "Red Alert" sounder from Star Trek TNG -- works rather nice for the purpose, and even if I am nowhere near the server room someone runs over to find me in panic. Something about that sound that makes people freak out, especially non-geeks.

        -Em

  • Sigh, here we go again... (Score:3, Informative)

    by halo1982 ( 679554 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:50PM (#12531653) Homepage Journal
    OK, so it took me all of three minutes to find what you are looking for.
    First, I googled Satellite Pager [google.com] and found out that Motorola used to make a pager called the 9501 for well known satellite phone company Iridium [iridium.com]. Next, I checked a few of the first links. I found that the Motorola 9501 has been discontinued but originally retailed for $149.95. I also found that the service had a $100 activation fee and was $69 a month, and Iridium still offers it. Ahah! Theres something! So then I clicked on the seventh link down [wcclp.com] and found out that a company called World COmmunications Center sells refurbished ones for $195. You can buy the pager from them and activate it with Iridium's service. There's a link that says How to Buy [wcclp.com] on the WCC page that lists their phone numbers, including one in Portland, OR. Close enough for Seattle for ya?
    Now I could probably find more, but I have to be back at work in 20 minutes and don't really feel like more googling. So enjoy, I hope this works for you.
    Ask Slashdot: For When You're Just Too LazyTM
    And oh yeah...FP!
    • And oh yeah...FP!
      That's right! Fourth post! :-)
    • You can always google for ads, but they never give you the whole story. Much more valuable would be to hear from a slashdotter who has used such a service, and knows how well it works, what the gotchas are, and what it actually ends up costing.

      What would be even better is someone in a similar position who found some solution that's better than a satellite pager, which never occurred to the O.P. Web searches just don't work when you don't understand your problem well enough to reduce it to a few keywords

  • um... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:51PM (#12531656)
    I googled "satellite pager service" and got this:

    http://www.wcclp.com/index.php/phpmPage/Services_S atellite+Pager+Service/page/6 [wcclp.com]

    if by local to Washington you mean "anywhere on the planet", then this should work.
  • ..you're a good candidate for WiMax and VoIP.

    Besides, it's probably cheaper to hire some guy that always knows where you are and will physically come out and find you if something happens.

    • Grizzly situation (Score:4, Funny)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:15PM (#12531806)
      you're a good candidate for WiMax and VoIP.

      Yesh, the last time I was in the woods a hundred miles from the nearest road I was amazed what the 802.11 sniffer was pulling in. I guess the grizzly bears use it to track the tastiest hikers or something and get out the word.

      • from here [ucdavis.edu]

        DARPA funded WolfPack technology is a soda can sized pod, deployed about 1 per sq. km, is designed to replace or supplement similar technologies that currently reside in aircraft. Because of proximity to enemy radios, less power is required to jam signals. Ad-hoc networking and multi-hop routing are used to control and retrieve data from the network, which can also monitor enemy communications in addition to jamming them. The pods are designed to last for about 2 months.

  • Holy cow. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kozz ( 7764 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:52PM (#12531666)
    Owner of a dot-com, seven servers, and you're the only person with the technical skills? I'd say your options are:
    • Never leave town.
    • Delegate some responsibilities to someone else.
    Entrepreneurs also need to be able to "let go" just a little bit by hiring responsible folks to share the burden of situations like this. If you continue to try doing things all on your own like this, I'm inclined to think you'd have nothing but headaches, followed by burn-out.
    • Not just entrepreneurs. There are some small companies that expect that their handful of server admins be on call, effectively all the time.

      The options are: don't have a life or find some other job or career.

      If a company can't do without an employee for a weekend, then that company is either in trouble anyway or are inviting trouble.

    • Re:Holy cow. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:19PM (#12531824) Journal
      Owner of a dot-com, seven servers, and you're the only person with the technical skills? I'd say your options are: * Never leave town. * Delegate some responsibilities to someone else.

      I'd agree with you, but for an entirely different reason than he "should" for his own good...

      This strikes me as a simple matter of practicality. I personally enjoy hiking. I hike places where I can't get a cell signal. In such places, even if I could get a signal, what good would it do me? With up to six hours to get back to town, would knowing my servers just cooked really do me any good if I didn't have someone "back at the ranch" to fix the problem for me in the first place?

      Someone either needs near-perfect uptime, or they don't. If "ASAP" means five minutes or less, the job requires a body, not a pager. If it means the company's sole tech can afford a few hours to get back to civilization, then skip the pager and have fun while out, rather than spending the whole time worrying about getting a page.
      • You're assuming that the fact that he's the only technician is the reason he needs the pager.

        It's likely that he's just an ueber-pimp and all his bitches are paging him for business purposes. The servers are probably low-maintenance and it could be a porn business that he's running.

        He simply needs to send a page back that says something like, "000-911" which means "No Bitch, make that fucker pay you more money."; or "111-911" which may translate to "Yeah baby, take that cash and have my money when I get

      • I personally enjoy hiking. I hike places where I can't get a cell signal. In such places, even if I could get a signal, what good would it do me?

        You'd ssh to your serial console box from your phone (which you can do on any halfway decent phone these days, at least in GSM-land), and reboot the machines or whatever you need to do. If there is a hardware problem and you have no hot standby you could be out of luck, but otherwise, with a little preparation, a cell signal is enough to handle most problems

    • He could always stay within an hour or two of his server room. But even then:
      • Does he want the reputation of a guy who thinks his IT business is as important as heart transplant surgery? If you're an on-call surgeon, you have an excuse to leave in the middle of weddings, funerals, dinner-parties, movies, hikes, religious services, heart-to-heart conversations with loved ones, etc. If you're not leaving for life-or-death matters, it generally starts to look rude. (If you're the minion and the alternative is
      • Even if he has no social life whatsoever, he'll eventually be hit by the flu, medical emergencies, jury service selection waits (or depositions or a court case)

        I agree with your post in general, but just a comment on the whole jury duty thing. I've been called a few times to show up for jury selection back when I ran a one man show and, while it would have been interesting, I wrote back explaining that in my business if I'm not there, there is no business. The result? A nice letter stating that I'm exc
    • Agreed. I'd say if you're the owner of the company and a single point of failure, and you're still thinking about skiing in the back country or going camping, pretty soon you won't need a new pager, you'll need a new job. Hire someone technical, or don't go on vacations. Yes, that sucks, but if you really want your business to succeed, you have to sacrifice. (Unless you have really rich friends, in which case I've got a business plan...)
  • I mean, it's a satellite pager! Isn't the idea that it works anywhere? A Google search for satellite pagers turns up plenty.

  • Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:54PM (#12531683)
    Get your life in order. Either hire someone to
    give you the free time, or realize you're in a
    phase of your life where fun vacations are not an option. Get used to this. Pagers will always fail.
    With a human, you can at least use employement
    to make sure they're at the keyboard.

    I personally recommend you examine your plans
    to provide reliable service to your customers,
    and critically evaluate whether advice from
    slashdot is part of your solution matrix.

  • Are you a SPAMMER?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:57PM (#12531695)
    Takes many vacations...*check*

    Is the only one responsible *check*

    MUST maintain 7 servers (e-mail servers?) *check*

    Talks about clients and his "dot-com business *check*

    Question: Are you a SPAMMER?! Cause you sure fit the profile
  • I can't find anything in the local Seattle, WA area

    It's a satellite phone. Order it from anywhere and it should work, right? That's the point. Any one of those Google results would work. Here's one. [infosat.com]

  • bankruptcy (Score:4, Funny)

    by poopdeville ( 841677 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:57PM (#12531699)
    This has got to be a problem that the Slashdot community has run into, before. Any suggestions?

    Yes. The dot-com boom ended several years ago. Ditch this company and become a waiter, before you go retroactively bankrupt.

  • Lackey. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:57PM (#12531703) Homepage Journal
    Hire a lackey. Find a guy/gal down at your local LUG. Seattle has lots of underemployed, overqualified geeks at the moment. Show him the ropes.

    Sure, he (please substitute she if appropriate) won't know how to fix everything. But he will call your customers to let them know a technical person *is* on site, ring your cell incessantly till you pick up, put your pager on the wardialer.. And for simple stuff, IE, service didn't come up on restart, or UPS warning some of the batteries just went south, you just saved yourself a trip back to Seattle.
    • "Hire a lackey. Find a guy/gal down at your local LUG"

      You know, I was just thinking "I am *so* glad I don't work for this guy"

      Anyone who did would wind up with no life at all. So the LUG suggestion is a great one.

      Nothing lost, nothing gained, as they say!

  • Weak Link (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:04PM (#12531736) Homepage Journal
    I don't know about satellite pagers. But if you are the single point of failure for an operation you own, large enough to require 7 servers to operate, I suggest you examine your budget, and maybe your ego. And find room to train an alternate who can relieve you of that duty sometimes. Because your satellite pager might survive your preemption, by a family crisis, or a skiing/camping/driving accident, or a really good night's "sleep". But your system won't survive a chance outage at that unavoidable downtime. If you care about your customers/suppliers, you'll ensure remove your system's 24/7/365 dependence on that part with less than 99.9999% availability.
  • I've got to find out about any problems, before my customers/suppliers do; no matter where I am, especially when I'm: camping in Eastern-Washington; back-country skiing in Whistler; or driving down to Oregon for Mother's Day.

    I know of a good sat pager solution, but it only works while kicking back with some babes in a cigarette boat off Miami. Funny thing.

  • We back up data onto tapes (or external drives) to ensure that any loss is minor; we have backup hard drives to make our data safer; we even have backup machines so a blown PSU or similar won't seriously affect downtime. Put simply, through redundancy we achieve reliability.

    Now you tell me that you are the only person who is looking after seven different servers? And you think the best solution to this is better communication? Umm, no. The best solution to this is to contract somebody else to act as y
    • We back up data onto tapes (or external drives) to ensure that any loss is minor; we have backup hard drives to make our data safer; we even have backup machines so a blown PSU or similar won't seriously affect downtime. Put simply, through redundancy we achieve reliability.

      I really hope you don't think this is enough to guarantee uptime. What happens when your first set of machines get hits with a worm that you haven't patched to, yet? Re-imaging won't help you, there--the worm will probably be back on

  • uh ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by oh_the_humanity ( 883420 )
    Any when you get your page saying all your servers are down, what exactly will you do then hundreds of miles away from the NOC?

  • What is the real use here? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kainaw ( 676073 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:13PM (#12531791) Homepage Journal
    While this sounds plausible on the surface, what is the real use? Take the scenario at face value. He's camping in the woods somewhere. The pager goes off in the night. Let's say that he hosting an ecommerce site and the database keeps going down so products aren't showing up on the site. So, he packs up (an hour or so), drives back to Seattle (another 2-3 hours), and then rushes in wired on drive-thru coffee to fix the problem before anyone knows about it. Am I missing something?

    Before you start with the whole "He can tell his IT people to fix the problem," remember that he said he is the only IT person in the company. What's he going to do, call his accountant and talk her through viewing the logs and using vi to edit the config files or something?

    Wait! Maybe he plans to mind-meld with the sat-pager and surf the virtual net back to the server and fight the bugs like in Tron! This guy is cooler than I first thought. I'm in awe.

  • Digitalcandle.com (Score:2, Interesting)

    by medgooroo ( 884060 )
    Erm, either your site isnt really so critical you can drop everything and head from the woods to fix it.. or you can pay a PFY to do it for you? btw - i liked the combination of http://www.digitalcandle.com/asterisk.html [digitalcandle.com] and http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2 004-January/032521.html [digium.com]

  • Bragging or Complaining? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Trailwalker ( 648636 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:16PM (#12531810)
    no matter where I am, especially when I'm: camping in Eastern-Washington; back-country skiing in Whistler; or driving down to Oregon for Mother's Day
    Try a camping trip in Redmond. I'm sure Bill and Steve would be happy to share their expertise with such a hard working dedicated individual.

    <sarcasm> If you are that important, put in a roll-a-way and stay at work.</sarcasm>

  • Support Contracts, or simplify (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SpamapS ( 70953 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:17PM (#12531816) Homepage
    You have two options..

    1) You need to go and find a consulting firm who, for a fee, is willing to be avaialble when you're not. You probably want somebody who is not too big, and local too, so they'll be flexible. If you can work it right, you might even be able to get it where you just have to call them 30+ days in advance and schedule them for when you'll be out of range.

    2) Simplify your operations. Anything that you can't explain in 5 minutes to a reasonably intelligent person is too complex. This will have two benefits. 1- simpler systems will tend not to break as often, as you can see the problems on cursory examination. 2- You can trust somebody who maybe isn't a sysadmin/uebercoder like you, but can handle a bash prompt.

    I've adopted #2 now, but in the past had #1. #2 is _by far_ the better long term solution.
  • Get a cellphone with a wide range of bands, so that you are sufficiently covered no matter where you go. Couple that with worldwide coverage, and you can get SMS or MMS (even email) on your phone. I suspect you already have a phone, so why have another item to lug around?

  • RE: Amateur radio. APRS. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fshalor ( 133678 ) <fshalor AT comcast DOT net> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:31PM (#12531890) Homepage Journal
    You could do it with packet and a tower in your back yard and a few hundred dollars initial investment in gear.

    1. Get your license.
    2. Throw up a tower.
    3. Get a pII 300 for a packet box. plug it into the network. Run nagios. There's some linux scripts for getting nagios to talk to *nearly_any* software. Such as aprs. using X.25 or similar.
    4. Get a laptop for your car and an HF antenna + mobile 100w rig.
    5. Have it send out automated heartbeats every ten minutes w/callsign. And warnings when it's worse.
    6. Have lappy pump juice into a claxon or similar, mounted on your car under the hood.

    Good for a few hundred miles.

    Considering my mom talked with people around the world with 100 watrs all the time using PSK31 (about IM chat speed text data transfer.)

    You could do better with directional antrenna.
    • Interesting idea, but Amateur Radio is restricted to non-commercial use. "The Amateur Radio Service is a voluntary noncommercial communication service, used by qualified persons of any age who are interested in radio technique with a personal aim and without pecuniary interest" (FCC Website [fcc.gov]).
    • Brilliant solution, and an excellent example of the wide range and advanced nature of many Amateur technologies.

      One problem....

      He's running a business, and well that's not really amateur than is it? What you are proposing is actually illegal.

      Please see part 97 of the FCC rules, specifically section 113, 'Prohibited transmissions'

      FCC rules 97.113 [gpo.gov]

      -Mikey P
      • I'm not licensed, but I did study for the test at one point. Another prohibited transmission is "messages in codes or ciphers intended to obscure the meaning thereof." That means even if he wasn't a business, SSH is out, right?
  • I'm in roughly the same boat as this guy. I currently have 4 servers on the net that are pretty much mission critical and at least one for the last 8 years or so. Now they just work.... I go for months without the tiniest hiccup. However bad things do happen and they generally seem happen when I'm camping or in another state or whatever.

    If I knew with 100% certainty that I could be contacted if there was a problem I would be able to enjoy my vacations much more. But since I can't I['m always driving around
    • I'm glad I don't work for you. I dislike the idea of being thought of as incompetent and/or completely untrustworthy by default.

      Did you ever consider that that might be/have been part of your problem - that only the people with those traits would deal with the flack?
      • Well you can create comlete sentences.... that's a helluva lot better than most of the people I get.

        Most of the people I deal with can barely read, so no I really don't think I look at most people as incompetent by default... It just seems to work out that way here, but the town where I live is pretty bizare.
        • Yes, I can create complete sentences.

          I can also keep a network of approximately 120 desktops and 6 or 7 servers up and running. In fact, it's how I worked my way through college (I was the network analyst and lead technician at a fairly large non-profit for four years).

          I will concede the point that it's not easy to get good help (in my case it was largely because I didn't have as much of a say in the hiring process as I should have), but it is possible.

          If nothing else, try looking to the area universiti
  • Simple cheapest solution: hire someone.

    Never mind that satelite pager is still not 100% reliable (nothing is)but what the heck are you going to do when you get that page???? Now you need satelite based data service for your laptop. And how much can you get done at 2400 baud(isn't it the bandwidth cap for irridium?) I am not even mentioning insane latency making ssh nearly impossible??? And what happends when its a hardware issue that you need to call someone? So now you need a satelite phone. You can go on
  • but is not a cardinal rule of business that no one person should be indespensible? And equally so, say you're out having your vacation and something does go wrong and you we're contacted via your satellite pager. How are you going to contact your sysadmin back home and what are you going to do, drive or fly all the way back home? Hours could go by and the customers you want avoid inconveniencing would have to wait for your return before restoration of service.

    You need to invest in a good technical team if

  • The cemeteries are full of people who deem themselves indispensable. If you're not able to leave your pager at home when you're off, you've got the wrong job.

    "Simplify, Simplify". H.D. Thoreau had a point, don't you think?

    NN

  • Sure, you may be camping in Eastern-Washington or back-country skiing in Whistler and a satellite pager can tell you that everything's gone pear-shaped back in the server room, but then how do you plan to act on that notice in a timely fashion?
    It's no good being three hours from civilisation only to find that your servers are down and you can't do anything about it =)

  • Dude... (Score:2)

    by wik ( 10258 )
    This ain't C. You don't have to end every statement with a semicolon.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • may now have sms functionality

    http://www.gmpcs-us.com/products/globalstar/Gst_s m s.htm [gmpcs-us.com]
    http://www.satphonestore.com/sms.htm [satphonestore.com]
    http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2003/0 8/001300.htm [textually.org]

    Definately check out http://www.iridium.com/ [iridium.com] and ask how recieving an SMS works - same as normal?
  • I was in an Alltel store recently getting a new phone when a woman walked in and asked if Alltel had any phones that would work in Iraq. The store people said no, so she asked where the nearest Suncom dealer was.

    Welcome to South Carolina.
  • ...what you need is to slap the crap out of some executives there and get them to hire AT LEAST 1 more person to cover you arse.

    Where I work, we're always hearing about how we need to be sure to properly document and do knowledge transfers to others on our teams just in case the lead gets hit by a bus. As much as we laugh about it, it couldn't be more true, because after the sad eMails go around the office, people will want to know how what the dead guy was responsible for is gonna be kept going.

  • What good is it to get a page when you are back country skiing if you are truly the only tech guy there is? If the servers are all down, you can't very well VPN/telnet in (or choose your remote technology) and fix the problem. Bottom line is you're still stuck away from the machines. I'd have to think it would be more cost effective to have a slightly trained person monitor the status, via a normal phone or pager and then leave you a message at your hotel or whatever. Then you can call this person back
  • Let me get this straight:
    1) You are the only sysop.
    2) You've got 7 servers that must be up 24/7.
    3) And you haven't even a single backupped spare with a watchdog to switch over when things go haywire?

    Sorry, pal, but you're either bullshitting us or you gotta get some basics of your outfit sorted out before thinking of a satellite pager or other exotic stuff - that is not your current problem.

    Having dealt with that, I recommend http://www.iridium.com/ [iridium.com] for all your satellite communication needs. They are the satellite phone people. And they have a satellite SMS aswell.

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