Blackout Worse For Internet Than Previously Thought?

An anonymous reader writes "Renesys (the people who previously brought you cool animated graphs of the US/Canada power outage has a new report out. It challenges the widely held belief that the Internet was largely unaffected by the power outage. Lots of important networks lost connectivity, including banks, hospitals, government organizations and investment funds. There's a cool appendix on the huge Italian power outage in September as well. They conclude that the Internet is not ready to be critical infrastructure."

Infrastructure

[pete-classic]

They conclude that the Internet is not ready to be critical infrastructure.

But seemingly no less so than the power grid.

-Peter

Re:That's fine

[Anonymous Coward]

dschl wins, this discussion is over.

Worst case scenario

[superpulpsicle]

I lost slashdot for a day. I almost had to commit a suicide to relieve the pain.

Re:I'm not sure I agree with their conclusions

[lunartik]

How many of your learned about the blackout from Slashdot or some other online news source?

I learned about it when my card wouldn't swipe me out of the parking garage. And then when all of the traffic lights were out downtown. And then after searching the dial and finding the one AM station still on the air.

I can't wait to see

[Travoltus]

Internet outages when they start putting high speed internet on power lines...

Oh yeah?

[HungWeiLo]

They conclude that the Internet is not ready to be critical infrastructure."

Oh yeah? Boys Scouts like me have their 256 CDs of pr0n and mp3 ready in their trusty CaseLogic. We'll last a week longer than everyone else in the event of a catastrophic blackout.

Re:I'm not sure I agree with their conclusions

[modder]

From this tragic story, I must conclude that AM Radio is the only medium ready for critical infrastructure.

Re:Obvious?

[nachosternum]

well to think that this did not affect many or that the internet didn't even blip would be a dumb statement to make. First of all, with the news of power outage, many geeks ran to their computers to see if they were still able to "Aim" their buddy! or the online gammers who, regardless of the candles surrounding they could still not belive that this could be happening.

There were many-a-young-kid without the ability to hit the Maxum web site. So to say that there weren't any affects, it's just purely not right!