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New York City Has a Y2K-Like Problem, and It Doesn't Want You To Know About It (nytimes.com)
On April 6, something known as the GPS rollover, a cousin to the dreaded Y2K bug, mostly came and went, as businesses and government agencies around the world heeded warnings and made software or hardware updates in advance. But in New York, something went wrong -- and city officials seem to not want anyone to know. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] New submitter RAYinNYC shares a report: At 7:59 p.m. E.D.T. on Saturday, the New York City Wireless Network, or NYCWiN, went dark, waylaying numerous city tasks and functions, including the collection and transmission of information from some Police Department license plate readers. The shutdown also interrupted the ability of the Department of Transportation to program traffic lights, and prevented agencies such as the sanitation and parks departments from staying connected with far-flung offices and work sites. The culprit was a long-anticipated calendar reset of the centralized Global Positioning System, which connects to devices and computer networks around the world. There has been no public disclosure that NYCWiN, a $500 million network built for the city by Northrop Grumman, was offline and remains so, even as workers are trying to restore it.
City officials tried to play down the shutdown when first asked about it on Monday, speaking of it as if it were a routine maintenance issue. "The city is in the process of upgrading some components of our private wireless network," Stephanie Raphael, a spokeswoman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, said in an email on Monday. She referred to the glitch as a "brief software installation period." By Tuesday, the agency acknowledged the network shutdown, but said in an emailed statement that "no critical public safety systems are affected." Ms. Raphael admitted that technicians have been unable to get the network back up and running, adding, "We're working overtime to update the network and bring all of it back online." The problem has raised questions about whether the city had taken appropriate measures to prepare the network for the GPS rollover.
City officials tried to play down the shutdown when first asked about it on Monday, speaking of it as if it were a routine maintenance issue. "The city is in the process of upgrading some components of our private wireless network," Stephanie Raphael, a spokeswoman for the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, said in an email on Monday. She referred to the glitch as a "brief software installation period." By Tuesday, the agency acknowledged the network shutdown, but said in an emailed statement that "no critical public safety systems are affected." Ms. Raphael admitted that technicians have been unable to get the network back up and running, adding, "We're working overtime to update the network and bring all of it back online." The problem has raised questions about whether the city had taken appropriate measures to prepare the network for the GPS rollover.
They pay 45 million a year in support for that network to Northrop Grumman. GPS being the root of that downtime should have been easily fixable. The GPS epoch that ended was the second one since it's origin in 1980. It was entirely predictable down to day dates minutes and they had 20 years to prepare for it. Hell they even have 20 or so or more satellites with atomic clocks whose sole purpose for being built is calculating the time.
I don't see how they are supporting their claim of the City trying to keep people from knowing about this. Just because the government isn't jumping up and down declaring "we failed!" doesn't mean they are actively trying to oppress people from reaching that conclusion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"The problem has raised questions about whether the city had taken appropriate measures to prepare the network for the GPS rollover." I would say it raised answers not questions. The question, did NYC prepare for the GPS rollover, was answered a resounding and emphatic NO, they did not even try to prepare.
How much of that goes to union bosses who get paid to stand around on the job site and look important? This is NYC we're talking about here.
I didn't say this was absurd to have downtime. This isn't a planned outage for maintenance either. To be clear this isn't 1% down time. This issue began on Sunday the 6th, and the network has been down for at least nine or ten days. At this point the network has been down for about 3.6 % of the year, and that percentage is increasing.
What I said quite clearly, they have known (northrop grumman) about the epoch changing for 20 years. This shouldn't be a surprise. They had they designed the network properly would have been aware of this absolute unavoidable reality and been able to pre-emptively planned for and fixed the underlying causes.
They clearly did not, so the question becomes what exactly do they do for the 40 million dollar contract, if not maintain what they built and marketed as a safe alternative and reliable and viable critical information network.