[EAS] ETRS Reporting

[Alex Hartman]

Why did they use yet another system for reporting? Quite honestly, they could've used the IPAWS servers as a proxy and made the manufacturers write into the firmware a "reporting" system. Instead of relying on the 13,000 stations to know what they're doing (or have the staff to do it). So far i've done about 15 Sage boxes and 2 dasdec's. While setting them up to get the "NPT" code was marginally trivial, the 3 days of productivity lost doing the reporting by hand is the kicker. They're computers. They send and receive data very well. Make them do it. That way they get EXACTLY what they want, in a format they want it in. 

I think that the whole system needs to hire an IT design consultant who knows how to do mass data ingest and redesign the whole thing if what they're really after is "complete and utter control". They want to test if they can take over the nations broadcast facility, well, IMO, the best way is to remove the human component. If it fails, then it's on the few that programmed the things, not the masses, which will make the legal people do something stupid like "it's unreliable, we need yet another system to fix this failed one".(Because that's how this works...)

And really, scheduling the reporting to make sure the servers don't crash?! Who's running this show? A modern cluster of servers (which should be in place already) essentially sending emails could easily handle 20,000 messages at once. Hell, i had a mail server cluster with a database backend in 1999 that could handle 50,000 messages a second. (Former life, ISP with large business customers) If FEMA and/or the FCC can't handle this, then well.. We're all hosed.

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Alex Hartman

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 7:40 AM, Dave Kline <dkline at tvmail.unomaha.edu> wrote:
>Nail on the head, in my opinion Alan.

>This test is not so much about how stations across the country will handle the alert.
>It is more about the Fed wanting to be able to demonstrate that they can ingest an alert into the system that will propagate nationwide.
>Which is something, that to date, they have not been able to do.
>Remember how much they tried to spin the 2011 national test into being a "success."
>It is also the first use of the ETRS system and they recommend the reporting time windows to avoid it crashing, which if it happens will cause an uproar just like what happened with the failed audio in the 2011 test.
>They have done everything they can do to make themselves look good, and nothing to make this easy for broadcasters.

>We need to put the EASy back into EAS.

>----------------------------------------
>Dave Kline   UNO-TV/Mav Radio/KVNO
>----------------------------------------

>On Sep 27, 2016, at 6:12 AM, Alan Alsobrook wrote:

>>Even if the test works the reporting will likely cause a national
>>disaster.

>>--
>>Alan Alsobrook CSRE AMD
>>aalso at bellsouth.net

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