corrosive than fresh water, could be another factor, he says.
Some hopeful signs on the extent of the damage came from Houston-based LOGIX Communications, which markets secure Internet service to small-to-medium businesses and mid-market enterprise customers in Texas. The company owns most of the fiber it uses to serve a thousand buildings in Texas, and also owns long-haul cables that connect the cities of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin, LOGIX chief strategy and marketing officer Richard Rosmarin says.
LOGIX’s core network was operational by Friday, though some customers weren’t able to access the Internet because of power outages or because their buildings were flooded, Rosmarin says. LOGIX interconnects with other service providers at key points so it can serve customers its fiber doesn’t reach, he says. Those interconnection hubs at data centers, and co-located facilities such as “carrier hotels,” all seem to be working well, according to Rosmarin. But he says LOGIX uses only some of the scores of such hubs in the region. “We don’t talk to everyone,” he says.
LOGIX, whose headquarters building on N. Loop West escaped the flooding that affected nearby sections of Houston, may suffer less economic loss from damage to its equipment than it does from the storm’s impact on its customers, Rosmarin says. Clients may not come back if their buildings are uninhabitable, he says. The hit for area businesses may also come from a decline in spending by consumers, whose homes were much more vulnerable to storm damage than commercial buildings.
It’s not clear whether the Internet infrastructure serving consumers fared as well as networks operated by companies such as LOGIX that are dedicated to business customers. Assessing the amount of damage is a time-consuming process, Barford says. Buildings must be drained and power restored before testing for infrastructure damage can go forward, he says.
It’s possible that Internet performance and availability could be affected in the region. “There’s no question it will take a long time to recover from this,” Barford says.
From his experience studying the impact of hurricanes on the Internet, Barford says he has learned to watch out for long-term effects, such as the time it takes to replace infrastructure. The aim of his research is to help develop systems and capabilities to mitigate those longer-lasting effects, he says.
As Houston digs out of the crisis, Barford sees a particular need to shore up the Internet’s defenses along the Gulf Coast, post-Harvey.
“Houston, and that area, are still at risk,” Barford says. “There could be another hurricane in two years, or two weeks.”
Photo Credit: NOAA/NASA GOES Project. The photo, uploaded on August 24, 2017 to Flickr, was cropped by Xconomy. Used here under Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
