Slashdot Mirror
Blackberry Network is Down
Brian writes "According to CNET and others, "A system failure at Research In Motion has affected BlackBerry users in the Western Hemisphere, a news channel reported on its Web site late on Tuesday. The infrastructure failed on Tuesday night, and e-mails were not being delivered to the handheld devices.""
Common, this was an easy one!
"Blackberry Blackout"
MABASPLOOM!
My thumbs are twitching!
Now I have to go in to work and explain that I dont control the Blackberry network........Cmon RIM!!
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
.... In the following locations:
M .20070418.wblackberry18/BNStory/Business/home
o utage-update-its-kinda-up-253214.php
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA
http://www.wnbc.com/news/12339359/detail.html
But I can verify that their network is up (sort of) and Engaget.com confirms this:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/blackberry-
So YMMV.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
It is expected to be back up by 11:00 EST.
Because millions of voices really ARE crying out in pain. Man, the cooler we make things, and the more that entire business cultures get built around this stuff, the more fragile it is. Just think of the war stories we're going to hear about people who've come to utterly depends on their Crackberries having lost a deal, not heard that a critical server was down, not realized that a surgery had been rescheduled, and so on. I wouldn't make a living if people didn't depend on fancy networked technologies, but it sure does feel like a house of cards, some days.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
For what its worth, my employer (in Washington D.C.) has their own Blackberry Enterprise Server (an on-site server that interfaces directly with corporate mail systems), and it appears to be unaffected by this outage.
A single point of failure can bring down the entire network? Not very reassuring, especially considering Blackberry is predominately a business tool.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
They have about a half hour to fix it before the stock market opens. From what I've seen, they've already taken a massive hit. I wonder how much of their gain since Oct 2006 they'll lose (They jumped from around $79 to over $130 in the 4th quarter last year).
They're already down close to $3.60 in pre-market alone. Ouch.
A hundred thousand angry users plus thousands of angry investors? Someone's got a case of the, uh.. Wednesdays.
Can't be true... I would have got an email telling me if it was......
Cruise TT
Lawsuits? Surely any network-based buisness with a legal department worth a lick of salt would include provision in their terms and agreements of services that cover such instances of blackouts, loss of service, or even financial collapse of the company leaving addicts with their network device without a network.
Demented But Determined.
... and tell everyone to stay home.
I can predict at least two possible reactions from end-users.
First: jumping out of a building due to the terror and pain of sudden withdrawal. It happens to heroin addicts, it can happen here too, folks.
Second: people wandering the streets of major cities bright-eyed and staring in open wonder, as though they were waking up from a long dream. Joining hand in hand, they frolic in the parks or whatever greenspace they can find chanting "Free at Last, Free at Last..." The clouds part, and an auspicious rainbow graces the sky. Oh, and I suppose there are other reactions: incoherent rage at no one in particular (ever chat with a cold-turkey smoking quitter?), unjustified rage at corporate IT for letting this happen, curling up in a fetal position in the corner, uncontrollable thumb twitching (almost like phantom limb pain).
Then there's another reaction: simply shrugging and going back to computer-based email and cellphones.
It's fine here in the UK, and the rest of Europe. As far as I can tell it's the US server, which 'only' serves the USA and Canada. As mentioned by others though, one point of failure destroying such a large portion of the network is bad planning at the very least!
"Officials with RIM said they are trying to reset the system and told NewsChannel4 that they are concerned that the backlog of data, which will rush through when it comes back on line, could cause a bigger problem"
When in doubt, reboot!
I got in trouble with my wife last night for not reading her emails to me, and I could not figure out why synchronization wasn't working. Thank you, Slashdot! You saved my marriage!!!
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
And I don't want to carry one, first I heard is when a user asked me about it. Sure enough, my boss is asking me why their blackberries aren't working and I'm in a meeting trying to show them how the system works... CURSE YOU RIM!
They could at least tell a time they plan on having it working again...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Reason? It's cheaper than bricks.
Seriously, that's what's gonna break our neck sooner or later. We strip systems of their redundancies to make them cost less, we use cheaper components and the lowest bidder, we downgrade specs to the bare minimum because price makes right.
Technology already starts learning from nature, copying structures and models from millenia proven concepts. I think business could learn a thing from them too. Because nature has down what business wants to achive: Maximum output for minimum input. There is no such thing as waste and surplus in nature's makeup, if there was, it would be used for more output instead. So why do we have 2 kidneys, why is our brain able to adapt to damage, if it wasn't for the simple fact that this proved to be the more successful way in the long run.
But as long as companies are run by managers who care more about their next quarter report than the company itself, this won't fly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Blackberry down, we got a blackberry down.
Leave No Email Behind
I was on RIM's rolling conference call last night and received some additional information. It seems that somehow they lost connectivity in their NOC. When they failed over to a co-lo they couldn't get the SRP communication up and running, causing all BES to fail in their connection to RIM. Fast forward a few hours and SRP is back up, but they cannot get critical components for email delivery to connect to their DB. Fast forward a few more hours and they get this up and running also. Currently, Sprint and Nextel are up and running, but the GPRS/EDGE service providers are still not receiving consistent mail flow.
Yippee!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Good ole' government. Last night at 11:37 PM the DoD distributed an email to all Blackberries informing them that the Blackberry service was down.
A single point of failure is always a bad thing. Especially if a lot depends on it. But it can be some cascading effect too, for example power plants running on top output that couldn't swallow the sudden additional load when some parts of the network blew up.
It's a lack of redundancies. Redundancies cost money, and we want everything as cheaply as possible. So no redundancy. But hey, it "works". Usually. The question is, though, can we afford the blackout?
Imagine communication breaking down. No cell, no net, no data transfer, nothing. You could hear commerce grind to a halt. Nothing could be scheduled, nothing could be delivered on time, we'd simply break down. And that scenario isn't as impossible as it seems, because telcos don't have a lot of redundancies in their networks anymore either.
But we're depending on them. Often enough with our very lives. Yet we're not willing to pay the price.
But even if we did, would it be invested? I mean, afaik it's not like RIM made some kind of promise that the service would work. And as long as you can't hold them responsible for the loss, of money and maybe even life, they certainly won't add anything that costs more than it has to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It'll be interesting to see just how much detail we get concerning what exactly failed and why the current level of redundancy didn't kick in.
I mean, it's not like the power supply failed on an NT 4 server (you know, the one with the post-it taped in place that says "East Coast B-berry server, DO NOT POWER OFF!!!"), it's not like somebody accidentally drove a nail trough some coax in the wall at RIM's HQ, it's not like somebody accidentally typed "rm -r *" at the wrong prompt. There has to be some serious "Thank God I'm not the one stuck cleaning up that mess" stuff going on here.
Funny unrelated story. We had an exec looking at one of the blackberry's. He put in back in the hard case and was fumbling around with it and saw the "RIM" on the back. Then he asked, in the innocence that only an exec can have, "So, how does one go about getting one of these 'RIM' jobs anyway?" When I am canonized as a saint, one of my miracles will be "not laughing at the VP who asked how to get a rim job."
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
RIM: Get better at communicating with your client base or they will go elsewhere.
philo
Now what's a busy executive supposed to do when you're giving them a presentation? Actually pay attention to you?
... 9:52am EST (Rochester, NY)
This is something which mystifies me...
How does RIM plan on maintaining this behemoth it has created when more smart phones that know how to use TCP/IP are in play and people realize "wait, we can just set up an exchange or IMAP server..."
Is there something THAT magical in their kool-aid?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
This is Russell Shaw. I do the BlackBerry beat blog for ZDNet. I've just called all the carriers, and RIM, and have just posted the latest at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/blackberry/?p=135
Karl Rove in ER being treated for shock following Crackberry failure. Nation's government falls. Peace breaks out, we run a surplus, Crawford is consumed by tornados that miraculously miss the protestors.
Wait, am I awake now? Damn.
Has anyone tried the free (as in beer) alternatives to Blackberry for Push email?
For instance this one
You need a data plan, so not completely free, but it works pretty well for me. Check the list of supported phones before going through the registration though.
Incredible! They were down at the open, but are now UP 5 bucks from yesterday's close! An outage taking out all of North America and the stock is up. Why don't I own some RIMM?