A Bullet Crashed the Internet In Texas (404media.co) 48
alternative_right writes: Last week, thousands of people in North and Central Texas were suddenly knocked offline. The cause? A bullet. The outage hit cities all across the state, including Dallas, Irving, Plano, Arlington, Austin, and San Antonio. The outage affected Spectrum customers and took down their phone lines and TV services as well as the internet.
"The outage stemmed from a fiber optic cable that was damaged by a stray bullet," Spectrum told 404 Media. "Our teams worked quickly to make the necessary repairs and get customers back online. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Spectrum told 404 Media that it didn't have any further details to share about the incident so we have no idea how the company learned a bullet hit its equipment, where the bullet was found, and if the police are involved.
"The outage stemmed from a fiber optic cable that was damaged by a stray bullet," Spectrum told 404 Media. "Our teams worked quickly to make the necessary repairs and get customers back online. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Spectrum told 404 Media that it didn't have any further details to share about the incident so we have no idea how the company learned a bullet hit its equipment, where the bullet was found, and if the police are involved.
People shot, naaah. But (Score:2)
think of the children's internet!
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As long people want guns, people will obtain guns.
You need to make people don't want guns, and in a place like texas, "think of the children" will just not work.
You probably have to sell it as the "coward's way" or something, which probably will lead to a bunch of machete wielding texans, which is bloody and terrible, but has less collateral damage.
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Could make it too inconvenient for casual ownership. Add ownership license with mandatory training, per firearm renewal fee, fines for improperly stored firearms, confiscate unlicensed, no exceptions for grandfathered guns, etc.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of being in a country where the police are armed like a military and the civilians have nothing. Not that a direct confrontation would be productive. I guess it's more of a feeling/fear than any practical consideration.
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You ever been in a situation where someone was breaking into your home, while you were in it? I have. Scared the robber off with a gun.
My neighbor has. Except the robber didn't leave without firing a few shots back. The cops locked down my block for 6 hours in a stand off.
Rather be judged by 12 then carried by 6.
Number one source of guns that resulted in a minor's death: their own household.
The thought of 6 feet under in a tiny little casket ought to give any red blooded man pause.
Last time I was in Alaska... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Some of the road signs were so full of bullet holes as to be unreadable - so I'm kind of surprised this story isn't from that state.
Although, I suppose, if I were going to pick a likely alternative to Alaska in this regard, the immediately obvious choices would be Texas and Florida.
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Speaking as a Brit I find it astounding that there seem to be so few controls on gun use in the USA. Yes: I know what the second amendment is but surely it is time that this was retired. An Internet outage is hardly important but 4.43 deaths per 100k is huge, you are not the worse but up there. [worldpopul...review.com]
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Good gun control means restricting handguns and automatic weapons. It means guns being securely locked away when not in use. Registration.
None of that will stop dickheads vandalising signs.
Thinking about it, bullet holes in signs are far less common in Australia than decades ago. I doubt that is because semi-autos were banned.
Maybe it is a case of people taking guns more seriously. A bit like we have far fewer drunk drivers on the road now.
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>"So you want to take away the great equalizer for women, the handgun?"
It's not just women. Elderly, handicapped, frail, etc. A world without guns is a world in which the physically stronger will still prey on the physically weaker with knives, hammers, fists, tire-irons, whatever. People seem to forget that part. For defensive use, there are estimates that "good" people with guns stop at least a million violent crimes in the USA every year, and 99+% of that is without ever firing a single shot.
Wishi
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A world without guns is a world in which the physically stronger will still prey on the physically weaker with knives, hammers, fists, tire-irons, whatever.
You know, there is a world without gun prevalence. But something tells me you don't even own a passport.
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So you want to
Have you been taking debating lessons from Cathy Newman?
But apologies, I know this is a sensitive topic in the US, and I should have said "regulating", not restricting.
I'm not against concealed carry in the US, given your unfortunate circumstances.
But loaded handguns in handbags, drawers, and glove compartments, very much against.
In no other country are there statistics for gun homicides by toddlers.
If some murderer can't get a gun, they do it with a knife, or a truck.
Of course, its all the same. Think how much money the US Army could save if they got rid of the guns, and fou
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It's worth pointing out that some years ago Japan had the highest suicide rate in the developed world but private gun ownership was almost entirely nonexistent due to very strict gun control laws in Japan. Suicide is a cultural problem, not a tool problem.
It's also worth noting that many of the murders (not all homicides are murders - shooting and killing an intruder in your home is always a homicide but is rarely murder) via firearms are where both parties are participating in or chose to associate closely
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Used to happen fairly often in Oregon.
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"Won't anyone think of..." (Score:3)
"...the Texan internet subscribers!!??"
Missing redundancy crashed the Internet in Texas (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing redundancy crashed the Internet in Texa (Score:4, Interesting)
Was just coming here to post that, since it was my first thought. Of course there is an alternative almost as bad, once 1/3 of the internet connections in North America went down because of a farmer in the Midwest with a backhoe. The carrier (Alter.net IIRC) had two redundant fibers all right, but all three of them had been run in the same trench along the railroad right of way. Until it was fixed everything that crossed the US had to divert through Canada.
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The cost of hardening against malicious damage is astronomical, so it isn't attempted. Besides, the best answer to a malicious attack is multiple-site redundancy.
Where were the warning signs/poles? Did the carrier not erect them? Plus, there should be protection against incidental damage. (Eg. a brick corridor offering limited 'hardening'.)
Even then, I've heard that carriers 'lose' their cable, telling farmers to dig in the very spot holding the cable.
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There were probably signs, but a shocking percentage of people just plain don't read anything that they don't think they have to. It wasn't malicious damage, just stupidity.
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You can bet this was done maliciously. Redundancy is not typically built against malicious activities.
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But nor do I think it was a "stray" bullet.
My guess, it was just a thing out in the open in an bright color that attracts attention and can be seen from far away. In some peoples' minds that automatically makes it a nice target.
Not what it once was (Score:2)
No, it wasn't really a bullet that "crashed the Internet in Texas", but the negligence of not having any redundant connection
It's a bit sad to think that the internet has gone from something that was originally designed to be capable of functioning after a nuclear attack to something that can now be disabled by one stray bullet.
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but the negligence of not having any redundant connection
I don't think you can really say it is negligence, when it is design. Carrier backbone links do not have redundancy, and that has long been the general rule that these were never redundant. A single fiber break or line cut can break anyone's internet service, and has always been the case. That isone of the major reasons it is recommended for customers to have multihoming in the first place.
Your home phone lines are the same. You are always
The police need to get involved (Score:1)
I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often.
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A few months ago, some sort of organized group drove around Houston and smashed up a bunch of the green Comcast cable junction boxes that you see by the side of the road. You can tell it was an organized group due to the number of boxes smashed in a large geographical area (100 sq.mi) in a single night. A TV station got knocked off the air for a few minutes, and my own internet was out for the whole day. Saw many smashed up cable boxes by my house. There is 1 that still hasn't been repaired, guts are laying
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Crazy there crazy here too (Score:4, Interesting)
Texas. An incident like this was inevitable, right?
I am having a hard time comparing that story to one in my own neighborhood in California. A few years back our Internet and other network services were taken offline by some guy taking a chain saw to a telephone pole in the middle of the night while nobody was looking. It was interesting to see how many different telecommunications companies showed up to repair the damage, which was several hundred individual fibers.
So they repaired it after working all night, then a week or two later it happens again. They were smart enough to plant a cam on the site and they ended up catching the guy who was doing it. Turns out he had gone pretty much the deep end and was convinced that Comcast was trying to control his mind and was trying to defend himself and family.
I'll leave it to others here to opine on whether he had a case for that.
So it can happen here or anywhere when someone goes crazy. In Texas, it is just normal.
Re:Crazy there crazy here too (Score:4, Funny)
was convinced that Comcast was trying to control his mind
He's not wrong.
Why is this news? Ever hear of the backhoe? (Score:2)
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Single point of failure .. (Score:3)
Wouldn't it be a good idea to have more than one fiber optic cable providing Internet to the area.
Well... (Score:1)
Thoughts and prayers, I guess?
And the real cause (Score:2)
Is bad planning, no redundancy, and doing things cheaper than possible. And that should get the respective C-levels some time behind bars as this is critical infrastructure they are half-assing.
I think the CCP (Score:2)
Thought the internet (Score:2)
Was designed to survive a nuclear war, maybe spectrum missed the memo of multi-point routing.
Full Onionization (Score:3)
Sorry, this story is not good enough for The Onion. Let's fix the headline:
"Florida Man Fires Bullet that Crashes the Internet in Texas. ChatGPT Sends Thoughts and Prayers."
Only in America (Score:2)
Huh, one broken cable brings down large areas ? (Score:2)