Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: Paging - How do you receive?
From: Don Westlight <westligh () OHSU EDU>
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 07:48:03 -0700
How do you receive your pages pertaining to security, network...
It is important to remember that there is not much of a Service Level Agreement on cell-phone text messaging. In the event of any sort of panic, or even carrier Internet gateway meltdown, your text notifications can wait over a day. ((Our local carriers recurrently classify our email paging gateway or network management systems as SPAM....)) On the plus side, text pages are cached for when you turn your device back on. If you have any sort of life-safety (fire dampers, medical attention, etc.) dependent on text paging, you may have a liability problem if you knowingly depend on the cellular networks, as this arrangement may not meet the minimum standard for responsiveness. Traditional paging systems, while going the way of the dinosaur in many sectors, do have some advantages. (1) Lower spectrum translates to better building penetration. (2) Organizations that maintain their own paging systems can have high reliability. (3) Redundancy We use both. If we were not also a Hospital, we'd just have cellular text. Also note that IP telephony means that you can have 802.11 wireless devices with integrated text messaging (working the same as cellular text messaging in-house.) We are starting to use this also, and the technology shows great promise for reliability/redundancy beyond what cellular can offer alone, especially with the control we have over the environment. Application integration is a snap. -Don Westlight Oregon Health & Science University
Current thread:
- Paging - How do you receive? Jenkins, Matthew (Jul 03)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Greg Schaffer (Jul 04)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Gary Flynn (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Cal Frye (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Don Westlight (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Megan Carney (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Stephen John Smoogen (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Mike Iglesias (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Allison Dolan (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Robert Kalal (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Barbara Torney (Jul 07)
- Re: Paging - How do you receive? Jenkins, Matthew (Jul 07)