Measuring the Impacts of Power Outages on Internet Hosts in the United States

Power outages are a well-known threat to Internet communications systems. While Internet service providers address this threat via backup power systems in datacenters and points-of-presence, office buildings and private homes may not have similar capabilities. This chapter describes an empirical study that assesses how power outages in the United States impact end-host access to the Internet. To conduct this study, the PowerPing system was created to monitor a power outage reporting website and measure end-host responsiveness in the impacted areas. PowerPing collected power outage and end-host responsiveness data over 14 months from June 2020 through July 2021. The results reveal that power outages affecting 10% or more customers in U.S. counties occur at a rate of about 50 events/day. The outages typically impact about 3,000 customers and services are restored in just under two hours. The end-host responsiveness characteristics for typical power outage events are also reported. Surprisingly, only a weak correlation exists between power outage impacts and service restoration periods versus end-host responsiveness. This suggests that improving backup power for network devices in office buildings and private homes may enable end-hosts to maintain access to Internet service during typical power outages.