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Blackout Shows Net's Fragility
It doesn't come easy wrote to mention a ZDNet article discussing a recent outage between Level 3 Communications and Cogent Communication. A business feud inadvertently highlighted the fragility of the Internet's skeleton. From the article: "In theory, this kind of blackout is precisely the kind of problem the Internet was designed to withstand. The complicated, interlocking nature of networks means that data traffic is supposed to be able to find an alternate route to its destination, even if a critical link is broken. In practice, obscure contract disputes between the big network companies can make all these redundancies moot. At issue is a type of network connection called 'peering.' Most of the biggest network companies, such as AT&T, Sprint and MCI, as well as companies including Cogent and Level 3, strike "peering agreements" in which they agree to establish direct connections between their networks. "
Everyone here at the company I work for was crying their internet was down because the msn homepage and some microsoft page were down and they didn't think to try another site. When your job as IT becomes to tell people to try a different website then the homepage then there's a problem.
I didn't even know anything about this until Howard Stern started talking about it this morning on his show. He was pretty pissed about not having email for 2 days. He also said that nobody informed him that it wasn't on his end. He was going nuts trying to get his computer fixed, calling every computer guy that he knew to come look at it.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Time Warner Cable in upstate NY was unable to connect to several sites. SETI and Newsfeeds notably on Wed.