Wireless Network Services: Disaster Monitoring and Recovery

Category F5 tornado (upgraded from initial estimate of F4) viewed from the southeast as it approached Elie, Manitoba, on Friday, June 22, 2007. (Photo credit: Justin1569 at Wikipedia)

In 2011, the United States experienced its worst tornado outbreak in more than 50 years. And communication systems were not spared from the carnage.

In the video below, Robert Young, senior manager for Aviat Networks’ Americas TAC/NOC explains how the company’s San Antonio network operations center (NOC) and its expertise in disaster monitoring and recovery helped microwave communication systems rebound from severe weather challenges. He details how the Aviat Networks Technical Assistance Center (TAC) and NOC team provided support for customers during the 2011 tornado outbreak.

One of the special services Aviat Networks’ NOC offers is in the form of Special Event Recovery and Monitoring. Two of Aviat Networks’ major customers were directly affected by the 2011 tornado outbreak. The storms were tracked, and the customers were preemptively notified of the storm tracks. Approximately 600-plus tornadoes were monitored in one week, and Aviat Networks managed disaster recovery of more than 300 outages due to the storms.

Young goes on to describe the detail-oriented mission of the TAC/NOC to help these wireless communication customers recover from the storms. “We identified the route, whether the outages were within the track of the storms, whether the area was safe for their field technicians to enter when the storms were cleared. Then we actually coordinated all of the efforts to identify root causes for their outages after these storms,” he says.

For more than a week, Aviat Networks’ wireless network services TAC/NOC team would continue to monitor the weather situation on behalf of these telecommunications solutions providers until all the danger had passed. Safety was paramount. No field technicians were cleared to go into a tornado touchdown area until fallen trees, flooding and any other hazardous conditions were under control.

Every microwave communication backhaul will eventually face a challenge to its network operation. Many of these challenges are the result of severe weather conditions. So when severe weather strikes your microwave network, will you be prepared? Contact our wireless network services team to find out.

Related articles

• Tornado Numbers Running Ahead of 2011 (climatecrocks.com)
• Texas tornadoes: Why nobody died in yesterday’s severe weather (shortformblog.com)
• CNN Airs Incredible Live Footage Of Tornado Ripping Through Texas (mediaite.com)
• Wireless Services: Stepping Outside the ‘Box’ (blog.aviatnetworks.com)
• Aviat Networks Interoperability Lab for Wireless & Network Testing (blog.aviatnetworks.com)