BlackBerry Outages Across North America

TheHappyMailAdmin writes "BlackBerry service in North America is out: no email, no BB Messenger and no web browsing. Last carrier estimate I got was 24 hours until service will be restored, with others saying they've gotten estimates from support from between 3 hours to 2 days. BES and BIS services are impacted, and it's across all carriers. Bad timing for RIM as people are wrapping up their holiday shopping..." Updated 18:11 GMT by timothy: Reader notheusualsuspect pings with a note that the service has been restored.

Comments

Central point of failure..

[NeuralAbyss]

RIM seems to be particularly odd in chosing an architecture that gives a single point of failure.

Then again, given most crackberry users.. nothing of value was lost.

Re:Central point of failure..

[ircmaxell]

I think it's weird requiring all services to go through a middle man. Why should I need to use a proxy for push email when my exchange server supports it directly? (If there's a real reason, please tell me because I'm curious)...

PS. I'm a proud owner of a Droid. Push email works quite well for me on it (directly from my server). I don't see a reason (for me) to switch to Blackberry/RIM). Is there a killer feature/functionality that a BB would give me over the Droid? Is it enough of a reason to add another point of failure in the stack?

Thanks...

Re:Central point of failure..

[netsavior]

BB is essential for cwhoreporate systems, because NO OTHER PHONE ON THE MARKET ANYWHERE matches its functionality... they can issue you a phone, then enforce strong passwords, content filtering, disable cameras so you don't end up sending pictures of your Christmas party indiscretion to your whole team, etc etc. Hell I can see my internal websites (not published to the internets) on my BB because it is basically VPN'd 24x7 to my work network.

In short, if you use your phone for email and dicking around, then the BB is one of the worst smartphones for you... if you are a corporate entity that wants to have certain employees "connected" at all times, then there is no other choice. The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry.

Re:Central point of failure..

[rickb928]

"The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry."

Because, as you implied in your post, BlackBerry phones 'just work'. Most of the time.

Push e-mail? A BIS phone works splendidly. BIS handles the actual polling. Even OWA seems to work fo those of us without BB servers at the home office. Ask your favorite Android user how their POP/IMAP email is working. Full disclosure; I am an Android user, G-1 on Donut. iPhone users, I have no idea how you POP mail works, but it can't be too bad or you all would have ditched... wait, nevermind.

Web browsing? Very well done, considering the platform, since your BES is essentially a proxy server that solves some problems and gives you an enhanced experience. BIS does this also, just not as customizable as having a BES of your own.

BIS is a good idea, though it does expose the single-point-of-failure issue. But, consider your cell service in general:

- Most of us forget that the first single-point-of-failure is probably a cell tower. Yep, you might have two or three that can serve you, but if the backhaul from your tower is fritzed, you might have to wait until you get paroled from that tower, and move one to one that isn't hosed.

- The next single-point-of-failure is probably a metro area uplink for your carrier. I don't know for sure, but I suspect redundancy here is not universal.

- God forbid your carrier is architected like T-Mobile, or your single-point-of-failure is either a GSM service that has to be responsive or your phone is doing rock imitations, or a similar CDMA. I hear CDMA doesn't have the same architecture, but if your carrier can't authenticate you to the network, u b hosed.

RIM has had more than its share of outages over the last two years, but they have been notable because of the popularity of the platform. I ditched my BB to try Android. My wife has not been affected by either outage this month - be they natiowide or global or whatever. Her BB Curve hasn't missed a beat. Lucky I guess. And she would not like my G1, or Andriod, at all. Too much fuss. She just wants mail and minimal web when she wants it.

Dump on RIM if you want, but their platform works very well. Outages aside, it is a superior corporate solution, and makes most other platforms look like pants. Wait, are there ANY other corporate platforms?

Re:Central point of failure..

[javilon]

if you are a corporate entity that wants to have certain employees "connected" at all times, then there is no other choice. The only confusing part to me is why people buy themselves a non-corporate blackberry.

I agree with you, and that means the dead of Blackberry.

When people sees it, it looks like a phone, so they assume that they can do the things people do with a phone usually. Shortly after, they find out that this is only useful for work. It means that they are available to their bosses 24x7 and they get none of the fancy gadgets that iphone and Android users have installed on their phones.

When they realize that they would like to have another phone for personal use, they hate the blackberry and resist having one as much as possible.

On the other hand, you have the iphone and Android. People buy them and take them to work. They manage to force the IT department to write stuff for them. There are lots of security issues, but that is what users want.

Now, which one of the two has more future in small/medium companies right now?

And do you think that Blackberry will be able to live if only big enterprises use its terminals?

Re:Central point of failure..

[gregarican]

As well as the iPhone. I have a handful of corporate iPhone users and can remotely wipe their phones to a clean install from an admin console on our Exchange Server.

Re:Central point of failure..

[maztuhblastah]

IMAP email (actually, IMAPS) works perfectly on my iPhone.

And S/MIME support?

It might not matter to you or to most home users/teens/hipsters/iPhone users, but S/MIME is damn crucial for a lot of government and enterprise users. The iPhone doesn't support S/MIME, nor does Android, nor does Symbian. There're no third party mail apps for the iPhone (since Apple doesn't allow "duplication of functionality"), and none (that I know of) that provide S/MIME for Android, and definitely none for S/MIME on Symbian (I know because I checked last year when I was forced to use a Symbian phone.)

S/MIME support, along with management of the associated certs, etc. is one thing that BlackBerrys excel at and, like it or not, a reason that a lot of users choose them.

Thank you Karma

[Gothmolly]

BB users are the biggest type-A douchebags around. They differ from their hipster iPhone douchebag brethren by typically wearing suits, talking loudly on their phones while waiting in line, and driving faux-retro American sedans. I knew when I woke up this morning that it would be a good day, as if millions of douchebags cried out and were suddenly silenced. Merry Christmas to all.

Re:Thank you Karma

[gregarican]

True in a lot of ways. Perhaps a _brief_ outage would put people's lives in perspective. In all actuality you really aren't that important and being in constant contact with the rest of the world in real time through your hip-holstered cell phone isn't that important either.

People seriously need a "mental health" to unplug from the grid and take a chill pill. What better time of year than right leading into the Holidays to do this?

Reminds me of places I've done IT support. Our core billing systems, inventory systems, accounting systems, etc. would be down and it was a PITA to the end users. But god forbid if Internet or e-mail access was down. You'd think that the CHQ was on fire and Milton was running away from the scene. :-/

Re:Thank you Karma

[sakdoctor]

I'd like to see a medium-long facebook outage.
Certain hardcore users would get physical withdraw symptoms, coma, then death.

One wonders...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How long RIM's model of interposing their own(seemingly rather unstable) services lasts.

Obviously, when the carrier has some major fuckup, email/web aren't going to happen because the packets are being routed to their deaths, like so many binary lemmings, somewhere within the series of tubes.

RIM's presence in the loop, though, seems like an increasingly useless liability. Back when Blackberries were little more than pagers, in terms of hardware spec, RIM's service made sense. Now, though, phones are powerful enough to speak the same protocols as computers. Why, if my carrier is passing packets properly, and my mailserver is up, should RIM be standing in the middle?

A blackberry outage? Oh my!

[ratnerstar]

Crap, no work emails on Christmas Eve? Whatever shall we do?

Re:Better late than never?

[GweeDo]

Actually no, that was a failure of just BIS. This is a bigger failure that affects messenger, BES and BIS.

Re:No, its for being at retail..

[MBGMorden]

I'll admit that that's become pretty common for shopping in general. My mom is a shopaholic. She hits thrift stores, the Goodwill, yard sales, etc looking for "the deals" (I think Antiques Roadshow did this to her). Generally I just leave her be on that, but she knows that I have things that I like (old guitars, M&M's memorabilia, telescopes, etc). If she finds anything that she thinks I'd find remotely interesting I get a picture message of the item asking if she should buy it.

While I kinda questioned the usefulness of camera phones when they first came out (and still find it hilarious that people were using those 0.3MP phones to take any pictures they want to keep), I must say that being able to instantly show someone an example of an object you're looking at over the phone is a nice thing.

IT Needs to Learn from TV

[RobotRunAmok]

As a TV Master Control honcho in a previous life, I read stuff like this and I shake my head... hours?? DAYS?! In broadcasting, that's not an outage, that's a carefully orchestrated attack by space aliens. Why does anyone on the corporate management level even remotely tolerate this? What, there's not enough money changing hands over at RIM to merit hiring the right professionals and institute the proper safeguards and procedures? The infomercial that aired at 3AM on Channel 11 has a better back-up plan than RIM's entire service? It boggles...

Re:Oh god no internet on my phone!

[MooseMuffin]

You posted from that thing? You're braver than I thought.

Seriously though, you didn't actually come to slashdot and navigate through the comments on the default BB browser did you?

Re:Works for me

[Bigbutt]

Actually they get their new stories via their Blackberry's.

[John]

Re:BLACKBERRY IS US ONLY SO N.A. IS IGNORANT !!

[acoustix]

RIM (the company that runs the BB services) is a Canadian company that operates globally. So the original post is correct in saying North America.

Re:Works for me

[erroneus]

It sometimes helps to explain to the powers that be with a data flow and connectivity diagram. All Blackberry traffic, especially BES traffic, flows through the Blackberry servers. So the phones are connected first to the carrier, then to the Blackberry servers, then to the BES, then to the company mail server. The company mail server is connected to the BES, which then connects to the Blackberry server network, then to the carrier, then to your phone.

There are pluses and minuses to this arrangement. The big minus is obvious -- when Blackberry has problems, EVERYONE has problems.

Perhaps the outage was shorter than expected. Slashdot news is never "real time" and problems are often solved before the story is ever published here.