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Using a Wireless Network for Personal Emergencies? 61
An anonymous reader asks: "A friend asked me this today and as I began to think about an answer I realized it made for a perfect Ask Slashdot question. His question was: 'Now that our illustrious Attorney General has gone as far as to suggest that families put in place an emergency communications system between themselves, I'm shopping for the right solution. I think RIM because it allows me to enter text and to rely on the pager network rather than the cell network. But the last that I looked, it was still impossible to do without my own server. Enlightened Ones: what suggestions might you have that would allow us to each have something in our pockets and is most likely to be fault tolerant to a messy event?' Having had the experience of using my Crackberry in NYC on 9/11 as the only stable means of contact, I too wonder whether this is the next big thing? So I turn the question over to you at Slashdot -- If you were in need of a hand-held, wireless data device and wanted to use a data network which was likely to survive, what would you use? Which arcane pager or emergency information networks were designed for survival? What if you wanted it to easily work with POP email? How about for reasonable data rates?" Assuming we are not quote to the point of a truly fault-tolerant network, what would need to happen for it to become reality? Which provider is close to putting something like this together?
Indeed (Score:3, Informative)
--
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death -- G.W. Bush
How about some perspective? (Score:3, Interesting)
You make a lot of assumptions in your statement.
First, no personal emergency communications should ever go on an emergency or restricted band. While I'm not a radio expert, most of the fire department radios I've seen can't make major changes in frequency like the radios on Star Trek do. It's unlikely that using CB or HAM radio is going to make things difficult for the authorities.
Second, you're assuming the situation is static -- people are either OK, or they're not. In the case of natural disasters (flood, tornado, hurricane), someone may assume they're alright, but the situation could change in hours (or minutes in the case of tornado). That backup communications system may be the only way to call for help.
Third, the communications you provide may be important for the people "down the line". Spreading word about the effected areas may help other people avoid clogged roads, or know that loved ones in other areas are alright.
Fourth, many humans are social creatures with responsibilities beyond themselves. Worrying about a loved one is nearly as bad as hearing that they died. If the person is a victim -- either injured or a fatality -- there will be numerous arrangements to be made. Just because you live in your parents basement
Re:How about some perspective? (Score:1)
Now telephone, cell, cable, HAM and other networks may not be the emergency service's primary way of communicating. In fact, their network is built to withstand the high load under these circumstances. But one can never be prepared for fully exceptional circumstances - that's why they're exceptional. Falling back to an inferiour infrastucture is quite common. (In fact, the military's interest in arpanet, and later internet, was to develop a robust redundant fall-back infrastructure.)
Even with small traffic accidents there are typically one or two phone calls to the police, while there may be dozins originating from bystanders calling friends and family to tell they'll be late, to tell they're OK, or to tell they saw something spectacular.
Afterall, it's hard to imagine the internet overload during 9/11 was caused by the 2000 people communicating something that might have saved their lives, the lives of others, or - including your last point - might have been of some comfort to loved ones.
Yes. You have a good point that I'm making a lot of assumptions - I'm oversimplifying. But people - please think for a moment and stay off the air in life threatening situations unless there is something you can do about it.
(Also - in case of a hostage situation or bomb attack - think for a while about radio signals setting off remote devices.)
Re:How about some perspective? (Score:2)
We are well know for handling "formal Traffic", which has 4 levels of priority
Emergency - Messages that have an immediate impact on life/property
Priority - Typically Offical Comms that are important, but don't rate Emergency
Health and Welfare - These are the "I'm OK" or the "I'm at X Hospital" messages
Regular - the rest of the messages
IF you become a ham, some of this stuff must be know to pass the test. Here in NYC most of the "offical" traffic will be on a subset of 12 repeaters - and probably on only 1-4 of those (which subset will depend on the type and location of the problem) - we will probably also use one Simplex VHF channel
We drill for this stuff at least once/week
DON'T COMMUNICATE (Score:4, Informative)
I really loathe all the people who live in NYC, do *not* work in the WTC, and then called home or got called to "make sure they were okay". Which makes things hell for the people who *do* need the lines to coordinate emergency work or who need emergency medical assistance.
Perhaps people are just less aware of it outside of CA -- after a major earthquake, *everyone* knows that the stupidest, most irresponsible thing you can do is to call all your relatives and tell 'em that you're all right. People *need* to call in for medical assistance, to report major problems (a bridge starting to collapse, etc). Chatting with your family when you aren't hurt is a big no-no.
USians sometimes frusterate me. No experience with disaster, most of us, except for maybe "stress" or "emotional damage", and so a total fucking inability to act responsibly in a real emergency.
Re:DON'T COMMUNICATE (Score:2)
ALL INFRASTRUCTURE MUST BE CAPABLE OF ABSORBING EMERGENCY DEMAND *PLUS* NORMAL DEMAND SIMULTANEOUSLY.
Otherwise you've just gotta face the fact that you're building an inferior infrastructure; why not save money on the Internet's backbone routers by assuming that 2am traffic levels are the maximum, then when your routers start crashing during the day just say, "Hey, you should use the routers at 2am, there's no point wasting money by having everybody do it at the same time".
Re:Group Responsibility. (Score:1)
I totally agree with 0x0d0a that people should know better than to call, but unfortunately I don't think people are smart enough to leave the lines open. Especially after an emergency when they are in a panic.
-> Fritz
Re:Dunno (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dunno (Score:1)
That's easy. (Score:1, Troll)
It is your duty as an American to carry around a satalite phone in a backpack, ala Zach Morris from Saved By The Bell. Who do you turn to for such a beast? Iridium of course. After eleven rounds of refinancing, they are back in full force, with even bigger phones and more ridiculous rates. Anthrax scare in L.A.? Call your family in San Diego and let them know you're alright, or at least not dead, for the low, low, comforting price of $24.99 per minute.
Re:That's easy. (Score:1)
I'm not biased or anything. I just helped the manufacturing of the antenna for Globalstar/Qualcomm. I got to build a small anechoic chamber for the testing/tuning of the antennas. BTW, if anybody needs help building fully or semi-anechoic chambers for EM, I need a job.
Re:That's easy. (Score:2)
Amateur Radio (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't raelly go wrong with an amateur radio license. Not only does it give you a failsafe communications method (assuming your transceiver has batteries), it also gives you a new hobby. You get to tinker with electronics, broadcasting, and radio equipment. It is a great learning tool for understanding computers better.
For more information, I suggest you check out the American Radio Relay League [arrl.org] website. You might want to check and see if your local area has any amateur radio clubs [arrl.org] that you can go to and ask more detailed questions.
Re:Amateur Radio (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you have a crazy dictator at the head of the country. When Romania was struck by a massive earthquake in the 70's, the radio went silent, even though most people were alright and it could have transmitted. Why? Because they needed to ask for Ceaucescu's permission to announce on the radio that there had been an earthquake, and he was away on holiday somewhere. Thus for several hours the rest of the civilised world thought that Romania had been wiped off the map by this earthquake...
But normally, radio is one thing which has enough backups everywhere that it will survive.
Daniel
Re:Amateur Radio (Score:1)
Re:Amateur Radio (Score:1)
Well, during 9/11, those little "talkies" stopped working because the communication tower was on top of the second tower.
Ironic, isn't it?
Re:Amateur Radio (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Amateur Radio (Score:1)
Re:Amateur Radio (Score:2)
I agree fully - "Ham" radio is the way to go. With todays easier Tech License (not disparaging - I'm only a Tech myself) it's not hard, plus, on top of keeping in touch with your family, you can actually help others
I see that the original poster is from NYC - He should look at the NYC ARES [nyc-ares.org] web site. We are on "standby" right now - my scanner is on monitoring all out "tac" frequencies
Disclaimer:
I am the Queens County Emergency Coordinator of NYC ARES and the Queens County Radio Officer of RACES
I'd use GSM. (Score:2, Interesting)
GSM phones have text messaging, voice messaging and some newer phones have built-in digital cameras and multimedia messaging.
The GSM network is quite fault-tolerant too and everyone carries around their phone everywhere.
I understand you still live in a 80's world on the other side of the ocean, so your cellular technology maybe isn't very advanced. You have "pager networks"?
Re:I'd use GSM. (Score:1)
I think having an extra communication channel, e.g. wireless would be a useful extra in times of emergency.
Re:I'd use GSM. (Score:2)
Find out what the Israelis use. (GSM I think) (Score:3, Insightful)
I read somewhere that many Israelis use their GSM mobile phones to tell each other that they are OK when there is a terrorist outrage. The article said that they would usually make very short calls as soon as possible after the incident before the network jams, or send text messages.
Seeing as Israel suffers more emergencies of this type in an average month, than most countries do in a decade I would think that would be a good place to seek advice or experiences.
I hope this helps
Euro-arrogance and psuedo-knowledge (Score:2, Informative)
Now if he/she/it only thought about it for a moment- GSM or CDMA or W-CDMA or anything else - they're all dependent on centralized servers, switches, cell sites and controllers.
As others have noted, 9/11 overloaded ALL our cell systems on all technologies, including the GSM system in NYC (at the time, Voicestream, now T-Mobile and also now Cingular & AT&T as well), not just the "80's" style cellular. BTW, "80's" cellular in both US and Europe was analog FM, so get off your high horse. Anybody with a cellphone in NYC today is on a signal that is either CDMA-based (Sprint or Verizon), TDMA air-interface with GSM protocols (T-Mobile, AT&T, Cingular), or TDMA air-interface with N.American IS-136 protocols (AT&T's older network).
Original poster's comment about using a pager network is because the pager networks are optimized for text message delivery with "guaranteed" delivery.
SMS via the cell networks (which BTW we DO have here) works pretty well, but is not guaranteed immediate delivery, which is why many businesses still require or encourage text pagers or blackberries rather than SMS.
SMS over the cell networks *was* a major factor in restoring communication on 9/11. A number of news articles reported that people discovered that their SMS texts got through even though the voice channels were too congested or signal too weak due to lost cell sites to make voice calls.
However, an emergency communication system should NOT be dependent on some other part of the infrastructure being up and operational. Whether that be beloved-by-Europe-GSM, US/Asian CDMA standards, Europe's new WDCDMA (based on US-developed CDMA tech), TDMA, or the pager networks, or Nextel-style iDEN.
Thus the poster who suggested getting an amateur radio license is spot-on. If your emergency preparations include always maintaining charged batteries for your handheld transceivers (HT) and or mobile stations (e.g. car battery power), you can establish communications. There are regular practice sessions, traffic networks for message passing, and events like the ARRL's "Field Day" for practicing this. Of course, all family members would need a ham license but it's something anyone vaguely intelligent can get. People often use "repeaters" which are volunteer and group-owned re-transmitters. So that's "infrastructure" of a sort, but it's distributed, not controlled by the government or corporations, and thus somebody's repeater is still up even if the one on the top of the skyscraper is down. Plus there are common non-repeater ("simplex") calling frequencies like 146.52 MHz and agreed-upon sections of the bands for direct simplex.
Another option would be the licenseless FRS radios so often seen at ski areas. Limited range, but workable as you get back uptown towards home, perhaps. And maybe the higher-power GMRS radios that share some frequencies with FRS but have much more range. They need to be licensed but there are no operator test requirements.
Of course perhaps in Europe, GSM magically works even when your city is bombed, power and fiber lines are destroyed, and the main telco switching center is disabled.
Re:Euro-arrogance and psuedo-knowledge (Score:1)
Re:I'd use GSM. (Score:2)
I bought AT&T version of the GSM network, it's not bad, they still have some bugs to work out.
Another thing that gets me is that here in the US you pay for INCOMING calls per minute!!!
I know, it's unheard of in Europe.
Indian Smoke messages (Score:1)
Re:Indian Smoke messages (Score:1)
Walkie-talkies, carrier pigeons, satellites (Score:3, Funny)
If there's really something going on, every system which relies on fixed nodes (such as WiFi, cellphones) are very likely to fail.
Probably a satellite based system will work, although presumably Uncle Sam shuts down the satellites if it gets serios.
Re:Walkie-talkies, carrier pigeons, satellites (Score:1)
Unless it's an attack specifically targetted on electronics only, of course.
Daniel
Re:Walkie-talkies, carrier pigeons, satellites (Score:3, Funny)
The last implimentation(http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/) was rather slow, though using a usb drive you could send packets in large bursts. P-)
Re:Walkie-talkies, carrier pigeons, satellites (Score:1)
You don't. Get over it. (Score:1)
Why not carry around a walkie-talkie, a carrier pigeon, a set of semaphore flags, a satellite phone (won't work in a city though, not with those tall buildings).
Better still hide in your basement and stop worrying about things you have no control over.
RIM using pager network? (Score:2)
What!? (Score:2)
That seems insane! Has anyone else heard of this? Any links to the Attorney General's site where this is mentioned? A quick search didn't turn anything up for me. Did someone make this up or have I not heard of it because I don't live in the states?
Re:What!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What!? (Score:2)
How about (Score:2)
Whatever happened to CBs? (Score:2)
Heck! They even make small walkie talkies with 2-5 mile distances.
10-4 good buddy. We gonna do what they say can't be done.
What type of "emergency" are you planning on? (Score:3, Informative)
Are you planning on a bomb threat or even a 9/11 type disaster and just want to send emails to stay current with the news while you are removed from the actual disaster? Or, do you fear a missle strike or nuclear event and need to find your spouse/children immediately?
Depending on the scale of the event and your proximity to the event, you may be satisfied with email on a Blackberry. But, the pager network may not be available due to massive load or even destruction. Also, do you really want to send an email and possibly wait for a reply in the heat of a serious emergency, or due you want a direct connection, immediately.
No single solution really fits the bill but some are better than others for different circumstances. The best solution will be independent of local or regional infrastructure like pager and cell networks or even grid power systems. Your Blackberry is at serious risk on the network side in a large scale catastrophy. The same is true of cell phones and any type of internet access.
The best solutions are going to be the likes of satellite phones but, both parties will need to be outside. A short range solution, if your family usually stays close together, would be GMRS walkie-talkies which have ranges up to 5 miles but, don't bet on much more than 3 miles. For greater distances the use of HAM or licensed VHF radios would be required.
It all depends on the type of disaster and what your circumstances are but, I for one would not have to wait or rely on email for an emergency.
No servers are required for RIM (Score:3, Interesting)
That said I don't think that Blackberries for all the family is the best solution. As they use the Mobitex network they are less prone to saturation then cell phones. However Blackberry is still reliant on a mobitex tower. A single point of failure. Unless you can get a super deal on the units and a monthly plan I can't imagine that Blackberry is the most affordable option either.
The best most reliable solution is probably HAM radios. A 50w mobile (installed in the cars, and at a home base) can probably give you the coverage you need even if all of the many repeaters in your area fail, and become saturated. A tiny little handheld (yeasu vx5r) would be enough to reach a repeater in most cities. There is a downside. You and your family must be good radio citizens and know how to operate your radios, and how to communicate with other radio operators. In a true crisis you will require the good will and assistance of other radio operators.
HAM Radio is your only reliable alternative (Score:4, Informative)
HAM Radio however would work no matter what. Well, short of an EMP from a nuclear warhead detonation. Then most electronics will be toast including all the fancy computers in one's car. Some cars won't start without the computer. Of course you'll have bigger problems in the event of a nuclear attack than trying to contact your family members. Also if you are close enough for the EMP to destroy your electronics then you are probably not long for this world anyway.
HAM radio has been used to communicate in times of crisis since it's earliest days. Go get a study guide, join a club and take the exam.
You can get portable HAM radio's ranging in size from table top base stations to something the size of a CB radio to a handheld unit. Range is limited by the car and portable units due to the antenna.
Computer data can and does get transmitted over HAM channels but it's slower than normal.
A HAM operator has the responsibility of bridging communication gaps when a crisis occurs. You have no business using a HAM in a time of crisis if you don't help others to relay communications.
This also begs to question some of the information coming out to protect ones self and family in the event of an attack. So far most of it is really stupid. i.e. Duct Tape and sheet plastic will do absolutely dick for chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. Just about as useful as duck and cover in the 50's.
The only real way to survive a full out attack is to have a high quality bomb shelter buried rather deep in the earth. Isolated air and water systems with full filtration. Stockpile of food and supplies.
But IMHO you are only delaying the inevitable. Sure say we are nuked or say you are in NY and the reactor just outside of NYC is bombed. There would be numbers like 5-10 million dead and more over the next several years from radiation poisoning and cancer. Evacuation of NYC won't happen.
I would rather be killed in an initial attack of that magnitude than go on living. i.e. slowly dying...
Sure some would survive but you have to consider quality of life. Your only chance is to be away from the affected attack areas. BOKYAG - Bend Over Kiss You Ass Goodbye.
In the event of chemical of biological attack, the odds are much better than an actual nuclear detonation. Note a dirty bomb is not a nuclear detonation it's a conventional explosion with the after effect of spreading radiological particles. This poisons people with radiation. So it's much more like a chemical attack. Those at ground zero will surely die. Those in the path of the poison cloud will die. Those not in the path of the destruction will survive.
Technology breaks (Score:3, Informative)
Some reliable friends or relatives that are usually home. Pick two in the local calling area and two way outside of the local area. Call them whenever or however you can and use them to pass messages. You have to agree ahead of time on the people though and carry their phone numbers. Keep the calls short.
A couple of safe places to meet if you can't get home. Somewhere a mile or two away in case of things like a brush fire, gas leak, road closure, train wreck, etc. Somewhere near work, near school, etc. in case of travel problems. Find out and carry the phone numbers of these places if you can. Try to avoid places that could be looting targets.
Your neighbor's phone numbers (home and cellular). You can call them to check on your house or anyone there.
Some co-workers cell numbers. Your family can call them if you forget your cell or it dies.
Mesh networking to the rescue! (Score:2)
One of the products my company [meshnetworks.com] makes is a software mesh for 802.11. We have ported this software to PocketPC, so a device like a Compag^H^H^H^H^H^HHP iPaq with a wireless card can mesh with other devices around it. As nodes go down or enter the network the devices seamlessly configure themselves and route traffic around breaks or congested areas. If the access point you were using went down, you could hop through a neighborss handheld and his neighbor's, so on, until you found an AP.
Of course, you could also do this with free software. Familiar [handhelds.org] + iPaq + AODV [nist.gov] would be a viable open source alternative. Once you have the connectivity you could use just about any app. Gnomemeeting [gnomemeeting.org] or OpenH323 [openh323.org] would enable VoIP. Email apps are there too.
And you expect the infrastructure to survive? (Score:2)
I doubt it will ever come to that, but if you are REALLY going to plan ahead, that is NOT the way to do it.. It must be standalone and self-powered.
Wireless Instant Messaging (Score:1)