New Cisco emitters await being installed on streetlights in the town center
The public WiFi overhaul bringing downtown Amherst a stronger more reliable system has potentially one minor problem with reliability (actually kind of major): a power failure like the one we experienced almost a year ago on Halloween weekend will take out most of the system, as the vast majority of the 24 new emitters are still tied into the street lights for power.
Note huge spike in traffic to town website seeking info immediately after storm
Last year, because the main router is located in Town Hall and the municipal seat of government had no generator, the entire system went down lock, stock and bandwidth. Although the town website did stay up the entire time since the servers for our presence on the Web are located in Holyoke in one of the few areas unaffected by the storm.
A new $85,000 generator is being installed soon, but will only cover the building itself and not any of the adjacent street lights.
The Police station and Central Fire Station have generators and are being outfitted with the new Cisco emitters, as will Town Hall. So if we do experience another major prolonged power outage, those three buildings will attract us smart phones and tablets addicts like insects to a bright light on a hot summer night.
Outside of the center, all I want is decent competition so internet providers will be fighting for my business and charging less. It costs several times more than my television.
ReplyDeleteThere is another aspect to all of this -- wouldn't it be nice to have had a dozen or so of the streetlights themselves actually functioning as well?
ReplyDeleteWhen everything else is out, a dozen streetlights distributed throughout downtown would give an incredible amount of light. And as the very factors used to select the specific lights upon which the transmitters are placed makes them the ones that would be the most effective ones to have in a blackout.
The answer is simple: have the transponders and the streetlights to which they are bolted on an emergency power circuit. Perhaps a WMECO circuit, perhaps an Amherst Town Generator, perhaps some sort of UM/WMECO agreement that it comes directly from the UM power plant via underground wire.
As an aside, did anyone notice how some of the neighborhoods near UMass got power back a day or two before the WMECO crews had made it down North Pleasant Street? I'm not saying that UMass was running all the turbines at the new plant at full capacity (and dumping the un-needed steam up through the roof) so they could backfeed and help WMECO.
I *am* saying that it would make a bit of sense to have some exterior lighting in a power failure. Perhaps require every town entity with a generator to power at least one exterior light of some sort - even an ugly sodium vapor floodlight that only goes on when the generator is running.