[EAS] Time to make the LP daisy chain an option

[Sean Donelan]

On Thu, 5 Sep 2019, Mike McCarthy wrote:
> Now, I do find some measure of mandatory message routing via FEMA
> IPAWs/CAP to be a bit onerous and single point of failure in an event that
> isolates a given area/region or can not be originated from the validated
> servers at various EOC's and other command centers.

A few, very few, states have purchased independent CAP services for their 
state. A state CAP server can operate regionally even if IPAWS is down or 
unreachable.  Although, I've noticed some are "Cloud Service," which are
just some physical data centers some place else.  I think IPAWS has 
experienced more management-induced outages than physical outages, 
although the FEMA FOIA office won't release those records claiming a FOIA 
exemption.

PBS-WARN provides a backup CAP feed via satellite to all PBS TV 
stations when the Internet is down.  PBS-WARN was supposed to be the 
second-path for cellular providers. Its also available for any CAP 
ingest receiver in range of a PBS TV station and appropriate ingest
software.

As a backup, backup -- the legacy EAS protocol can be transmited over 
almost any audio channel, such as state relay radio network and local 
relay radio networks.  But SRN/LRN costs money & resources to operate. 
Again, a few states implement SRN/LRN with either satellite (e.g. GSS) or 
long-range microwave towers.

Money, money, money.  The engineering is easy :-) Its the politics and 
money that's difficult.