What the Internet Really Looks Like

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 1 Aug 2006 9:25 am

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 1 Aug 2006 9:43 am

Yep, the day's comin' when we won't be able to pull the plug on Collossus...

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 1 Aug 2006 10:10 am

I've seen a lot of that in the SSA computer center and in my area center, when I was with SSA (until I retired).

One contraditiction to the article. UPS systems are not designed to power a system/data center or whatever for a long period. UPS system primarily protect from momentary and very short outages. I had two 400KVA (480 VAC) UPS systems to power my LAN/WAN network gateway site and help desk. It was only spec'd for 30 minutes. SSA's main computer complex has a UPS system but it's only good for 10 minutes (and it covers half of one floor), and if the power outage lasts longer than 5 minutes they have turbine type power generators that will power up, sync up to the AC line and at 10 minutes automatically assume the power load from the UPS system.

Robert Leaman · Post by **Robert Leaman** » 2 Aug 2006 10:30 am

Auxiliary power systems are nothing new. In 1965, I designed a co-ordinated motor drive system for Pittsburgh Plate Glass to manufacture pane glass on a Pilkington Process (glass floats on molten tin)line. There was a requirement to supply uninterrupted auxiliary power for 24 hours to permit the system to be shutdown in an orderly fashion. It seems that when a continuous, bottom-fed glass furnace shuts down due to power failure, the molten glass ball burns through the furnace floor and floods the plant basement with molten glass. Within a short time period, the glass freezes into a solid mass and there is no method other than a jack hammer and/or dynamite to remove it. Plant managers view this scenario as unacceptable. Total demand for the UPS was 1MW for 24 hours at 60Hz.

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 2 Aug 2006 11:35 am

At Corning Glass, the now gone plant in Bradford, Pa. we dumped the molten silica tank into a dumpster full of water. It was quite a sight to behold, this white hot taffy stream extruding/falling 20 feet from the underside of the tank & falling into the dumpster. One time the forklift got bumped and the hot stream was impinging onto the lift truck's propane tank. One of the fellas hopped on the truck and moved it. Coulda been a big boom.