Blackout Worse For Internet Than Previously Thought? 149
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."
Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about most sites do not have large UPSs ... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Ready or not, here we come. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the power system is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Critical Infrastructure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but uptime is not 100% never was, never will be - plan for it, or deal with it when your connection goes down.
Even though we have multiple connections to the backbone - local trunks can go down. Aka backhoe attacks on burried fiber, or dove hunters blasting pole run fiber (don't laugh - it happened last week). If you don't have a backup DSL,ISDN, or heck even dialup connection for your business - then stfu and wait while we repair.
And don't even get me started on residential accounts that call in 'I use this for work I need it up now - send someone out today.' And it's Sunday evening... no - you didn't pay for a business account, so you get residential service levels which include 24-72 hour turn around on repairs.
critical infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying there isn't other evidence that would support such a conclusion, but the real failure here was the power infrastructure, upon which the net relied "critically" in the first place...
I'm not sure I agree with their conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the power system is? (Score:5, Insightful)
"We find that Internet connectivity in the blacked-out region was far more seriously affected than has been publicly revealed."
Pointing out that areas without power didn't have internet connectivity seems rather redundant to me. The big question is how did it affect people outside that area? The fact that the rest of the world just plugged right along seems contrary to the conclusion they seem to want to draw.
Re: Power Outage (Score:3, Insightful)
Out here on the left coast, there were no effects. So why, don't international org.s and government departments have duplicate facilities on independant grids? That's always bugged me.
bwh
Re:Obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its pretty cool though that it can be observed in terms of routing activity.
Yes, ideally everyone would have backup power (and enough of it). If power outages were common, it might be a good selling point for ISPs, but they aren't so not many people want to may more $ per month just to have battery backup. (Especially residential customers who won't have it at home anyway).
I don't like big government either, but an FTC law (or whatever) mandating backup power for ISPs/backbones of sufficient size or type of service (business vs residenial) might be what's needed.
If phone companies have such a requirement, then the internet probably should to.
(Unfortunately, most phones are powered from the phone line, but I can't say the same about my cable modem...)
OTOH, did many businesses care to have backup power for sufficient length? Just because the some routers went out, it might not have mattered if their end users were already without power.
A robust internet is a great thing, but not near as great as a robust internet with robust users.
downed internet nodes == useless anyway. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ready or not, here we come. (Score:3, Insightful)
critical infrastructure (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet not ready to be critical infrastructure?! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're saying that lack of failure defines whether something is critical or ready to be critical then I guess by that definition the electrical distribution grid isn't ready to be critical infrastructure. That is preposterous because it is and manages quite nicely for the most part. The rest is down to cost benefit.
Re:Critical Infrastructure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently, if I lose power, I fire up my generator; I still have water. If the water pump has problems, I can usually get someone over that day (or the next at the latest) to fix it or replace it. With the city water system, I do not get that option. I don't even get a choice of who to call.
Excuse me? (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? It would seem to me that the fucking power grid is not yet ready to be critical infrastructure but hey, here we are. Shit. There is nothing in the world (except for the sun, oceans, etc.) that is 100.00000% dependable.
Our top story tonight: humans, human inventions imperfect. Tomorrow: sky blue, water wet.
Standards? (Score:2, Insightful)
So. They conclude that the internet is supposed to be more reliable than the power grid...or else it's not ready for prime-time?
Sounds like they're setting their standards a bit too high.
already critical infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? It already is a mission critical infrastructure for my company and most others, I suspect. When some idiot with a backhoe takes the region down for a few hours, we're in serious doo-doo (no second carrier where I am). We switch to ye ole spreadsheet as a backup, but we're crippled without Internet access.
I agree with the article - there are some serious architectural flaws that need to be addressed; however, fact of the matter is that the internet has already become a mission critical technology despite these shortcomings.
Caused problems across the nation (Score:1, Insightful)
Think of the number of manufacturer plants whose headquarters are based in the area of the outage and rely on the internet for communications. think of what this could have done to the economy.