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911 isn't being done well anywhere IMHO. If you look at the way 911 works, there's no location information unless you use the cellular radio (and this assumes
by josh2600 13y ago
911 isn't being done well anywhere IMHO.
If you look at the way 911 works, there's no location information unless you use the cellular radio (and this assumes your carrier is using the cell tower to anchor your location). If you use IP to call, let's say via an application like RingCentral, how does the 911 service know whether you're in San Francisco or New York? It doesn't.
This isn't pie in the sky fantasy, this is actually how all over the top VoIP connections work. You pick a location and that's where your 911 calls originate. It doesn't matter whether you're using your SIP client in New York, your 911 call will still go to a San Francisco 911 center because your office address is in SF. That's not good.
So IMHO the right approach is a top-down rewrite and rolling that sucker out nationwide. Normally, we'd see one vendor start to dominate over other vendors, and while there has definitely been some consolidation in the 911 market, the fact that these services are federally mandated (Read: Allocated budget automatically) there's not a huge incentive for municipalities to shop around. These systems are essentially free as far as they're concerned.
Part of the reason we're not on IP is because the federal dollars can't be legally spent on IP in many places (gotta love lobbying). In short, the correct approach, IMHO, is IP-enabled PSAPs with GPS information for location combined with reform efforts in congress. The logically addressed world of the phone network is a fantasy and our emergency services should model reality instead of our dreams.
- jimbokun 13y ago"So IMHO the right approach is a top-down rewrite..." This is almost always an extremely bad idea: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html I have no inside knowledge, but wouldn't be surprised at all if many of the problems of the new NYC 911 system is due to a decision to rewrite the code from scratch, losing much of the knowledge and bug fixes embedded in the old system's source code.
- josh2600 13y agoI know but you have to understand, Joel makes excellent points, but if most of the systems are written in COBOL it makes them hard to extend over time. We're talking about software from 1984 in some cases although it's all littered with security holes, bad interfaces and slow response times. In the case of NY, I could agree with you, but I would say that the problem was significantly overcomplicated. There are better systems that could be used to deliver something like this. I think that, yes, sometimes you do need to do a top-down rewrite, especially when everything is wrong. I do agree with your point that the NY incident is likely attributable to poor software design, but I disagree with the conclusion that any rewrite would suffer from the same malady.
- dkarl 13y agoTaking for granted that VoIP location information is an unsolved problem, what about systems that are simply fast and reliable and don't leave people scrambling for pencil and paper?