Re: [Atoca] Requirement D2: "Large Audience"

[Brian Rosen <[e-mail]>]

I certainly agree that ATOCA would not make use of SMS in any form of acknowledgement.   Similarly, I don't think we would use mobility management systems.

We would specify IP based mechanisms - exchanges of packets on the IP network.

Brian


On Jan 18, 2011, at 10:45 AM, DALY, BRIAN K (ATTCINW) wrote:

> Mark - you have described the logic behind the development of CMAS and what that is the alerting mechanism that will be used in the US on CMRS networks as defined under FCC rules. I was the Chair of the Communication Technology Group under the FCCs CMSAAC which developed CMASM Globally this is the Public Warning System as defined in 3GPP standards.
> 
> SMS for any type of acknowledgment in a mass notification network will not work and will do more harm than good. This is wehy the FCC rules do not require acknowledgments. 
> Brian K. Daly
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> ----- Original Message -----
> From: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
> To: [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
> Sent: Tue Jan 18 03:49:39 2011
> Subject: Re: [Atoca] Requirement D2: "Large Audience"
> 
> 
> Thanks Brian,
> 
> Brian's point is well made and correct, thanks Brian, but there are some
> special issues that need to be borne in mind with some bearers.
> 
> I first came into this project with the brief from the UN  to "protect the
> (Mobile) mobile networks from catastrophic overload situations during
> disasters". 
> When I "did the numbers" I discovered that the real problem is not what many
> think. The bottleneck is in the mobility management system
> (HLR/VLR/Paging/Access grant). EU sponsored Studies by Prof Sophocles
> Kiriazakos  for the Greek government after the Athens earthquake and
> subsequent crash of the Greek networks, confirmed this.  This is what lead
> me to work on cell broadcast (which does not use the mobility management
> system at all).
> 
> I agree that it is reasonable to allow that the acknowledgments may indeed
> take much longer to 'traffic' than the outbound multicast message. Obviously
> the scale is the same both ways, but while the latency is critical going
> forward, the reverse path is not in the least bit time critical, so
> relatively slower 'best effort'  bearers would be fine. The server which is
> wishing to know its subscribers got a message may send the message both by
> unicast and multicast (as mine do), but inevitably the acknowledgement will
> have to be unicast. There is no specific problem in allowing the
> acknowledgement of a multicast message by unicast means as long as we
> understand that the latency is indeterminate. (However since it's not clear
> when the ack may come, I send the message by both means simultaneously
> without waiting for acks.) 
> 
> My concern is really for the Mobile Network, at layer 2. 
> For example if a large number of terminals all receive a multicast at the
> same time, then they will all want to acknowledge at the same time. This
> will result is a tsunami wave of random access bursts to the cells uplink
> timeslot, MSC call set up load, 'channel allocation algorithm' threads and
> SDCCH allocation attempts. Then there will be huge load on the SMS gateways.
> Mobiles that don't get an access grant message will obviously try again but
> for a while the whole mobility management system will be significantly
> loaded. This affects circuit switched voice just as much because the
> mobility management system is common for voice and SMS, (but maybe not
> GPRS?). Recall that in cellular network design, erlang calculations are done
> such that it's the assumption that only a small fraction of terminals will
> make random access burst attempts at any one time, so the mobility
> management system is designed for this load only.
> 
> In other words, consider that a public warning message (such as a USA  CMAS
> presidential message) will reach 100% of terminals simultaneously, rather
> than the small percentage that the signaling system can cope with. This is
> why both the CMAS and ETSI standards intentionally disallow embedded numbers
> or URLs for large scale (Public) warnings.
> 
> So in fact the "scale" of the problem may not be as significant as the
> impact on the local infrastructure (such as a cell). Maybe "scale" is a less
> important factor than, let's say, penetration?  
> 
> On the other hand a smaller scale (of penetration)  message would not have
> such a profound impact. So in some cases it may be reasonable to expect
> acknowledgements in 'best effort'  time. Norway, for example,  likes this
> approach.
> 
> I am unclear as to if IP systems have such problems because there is not a
> 'stateful'  mobility management system in the core and though acks are on a
> large scale, they represent very small packets of less than 1K each. Maybe
> the problem will go away in the future? Any comments on that?
> 
> Warm regards Mark Wood DRCF.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Rosen [mailto:[e-mail]] 
> Sent: Monday, January 17, 2011 2:44 PM
> To: <[e-mail]>
> Cc: [e-mail]
> Subject: Re: [Atoca] Requirement D2: "Large Audience"
> 
> It may be, but I'd like to explore this a bit anyway.
> 
> Millions of messages (acknowledgements) is a scale we can deal with today.
> Hundreds of millions is probably beyond what we can deal with in a response
> to a very large alert.
> 
> Most systems consist of several smaller subsystems.  The purpose of an
> acknowledgement is to make sure everyone got the message.  If the subsystem
> can determine that every one of its clients got it, it can report that up
> the line.  It can save missed acks for later analysis, or if there are few
> enough of them, report them up.
> 
> This means messages national scale which have small effectivity times can't
> reasonably ask for message acknowledgement.  Anything smaller than that
> probably can.
> 
> Since most alerts really don't involve hundreds of millions of
> notifications, most alerts probably can ask for them.
> 
> If your delivery mechanism is multicast, the multicast mechanism itself
> doesn't track who gets the alert in any way we can use.  That implies
> something else is tracking who gets the alert, a complication that could
> loom large.  Some systems do know who gets the alert (sometimes because it
> knows who it is connected to, and all of them get the alert).  Certainly,
> anything with a subscription has the characteristic that the sender knows
> who all the recipients are.  
> 
> It's VERY valuable to know that every entity that should get the alert got
> it.  The only other mechanism we have is some repeating of the sending in
> the hopes that everyone got it.  In some cases you may have more than one
> "path" to the same recipient.  That might be multiple devices, multiple
> services, or multiple logical or physical connections.  You may try one
> first, and if that doesn't get an ack, try another.  Although we often think
> of this mechanism as needing no more than seconds to deploy, in fact many
> alerts would be fine with a few minutes, and trying some things sequentially
> may make sense.
> 
> So, yes, probably a Tsunami alert to all of East Asia can't ask for
> acknowledgements.  An "Amber Alert" (possible abducted child) to a county
> might very well.  Certainly, a snow emergency closing to the parents of an
> elementary school could.
> 
> Brian
> 
> 
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