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East Coast Internet Outage

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Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#101

Post by dylan604 »

Animats wrote: post #95

Too much is failing from single point outages. The FCC may have to establish standards to prevent over-centralization. In the entire history of the Bell System, no electromechanical central office was ever down for more than 30 minutes for any reason than a natural disaster or, one occasion, a major file. That record has not been maintained in the Internet era.

>The FCC may have to establish standards to prevent over-centralization.

Bwahahahahaha. Sorry, but that's like expecting the FCC to do something that would benefit US citizens vs US corporations. I think we've seen that's just not something they are interested in doing. Maybe a new administration will put as the head of the FCC someone that is "good of citizens" minded and uses a normal size coffee cup, but I'm not holding my breath for anything other than pro-corp rulings from the FCC

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#102

Post by lotsofpulp »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #99
arthurcolle wrote: post #85

I was just about to call FiOS to switch from Xfinity because these data caps are absolutely ridiculous. I am sad now. Aside: Comcast, wtf? 1.2 TB limit per month? Seriously if anyone works at Comcast know that I hate your company with an overwhelming passion.

I love these posts. They remind me that there are places in the world where technology is moving forward. Where we live in Tennessee I have to run 2 internet connections to be able to have a service when I need it. 3gb DSL and a 5gb satellite connection. The sat connection has the additional bonus of being capped at 150Gb per month. All these new streaming services may as well not even exist for those of us in rural…

When I bought a home, I limited my searches to ones that had symmetric fiber connections.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#103

Post by neogodless »

2dollars27cents wrote: post #93

I have no technical understanding of fiber networks. The explanation that this was caused by one fiber line in Brooklyn being severed seems unlikely. Curious to see what the experts think.

While I'm also not qualified to diagnose the problem, I would imagine it's something like this...

The major internet connections are like superhighways, with major central routers acting like exchanges. If a major superhighway had an accident blocking traffic, there would be personnel stationed at exchanges to help re-route the traffic, though that often occurs too late to prevent a bunch of backups. At any rate, people using Google Maps, Waze, etc. would see the accident and would likely be redirected to alternate routes that would normally be much slower - and would also be slowed down by the influx of higher than normal traffic.

The fact that the internet still worked albeit much slower than usual leads me to believe that something similar happened. While normally my internet traffic might go through a major hub in NYC and then onward to various carriers and hosts, etc. it had to be re-routed around that hub that is normally sub-optimal, and also ill-equipped to handle the spillover. (And in some cases, bandwidth was saturated, and failed altogether for some users for certain usage.)

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#104

Post by learc83 »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #99
arthurcolle wrote: post #85

I was just about to call FiOS to switch from Xfinity because these data caps are absolutely ridiculous. I am sad now. Aside: Comcast, wtf? 1.2 TB limit per month? Seriously if anyone works at Comcast know that I hate your company with an overwhelming passion.

I love these posts. They remind me that there are places in the world where technology is moving forward. Where we live in Tennessee I have to run 2 internet connections to be able to have a service when I need it. 3gb DSL and a 5gb satellite connection. The sat connection has the additional bonus of being capped at 150Gb per month. All these new streaming services may as well not even exist for those of us in rural…

You should move down to Hamilton county. We have 1Gb fiber for around $60 from EPB (the municipal power company). Even out in the more rural areas.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#106

Post by adrr »

arthurcolle wrote: post #85

I was just about to call FiOS to switch from Xfinity because these data caps are absolutely ridiculous. I am sad now. Aside: Comcast, wtf? 1.2 TB limit per month? Seriously if anyone works at Comcast know that I hate your company with an overwhelming passion.

A fiber cut can affect any ISP.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#107

Post by arthurcolle »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #102
SteveGerencser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these posts. They remind me that there are places in the world where technology is moving forward. Where we live in Tennessee I have to run 2 internet connections to be able to have a service when I need it. 3gb DSL and a 5gb satellite connection. The sat connection has the additional bonus of being capped at 150Gb per month. All these new streaming services may as well not even exist for those of us in rural…

When I bought a home, I limited my searches to ones that had symmetric fiber connections.

Had to make this after seeing your post. https://i.imgflip.com/4vesal.jpg

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#108

Post by nwsm »

We have FiOS in Boston and noticed it. Nothing terrible but for ~15 seconds at a time, recurring sporadically, we lost connection. Happened for a few hours, maybe 10am-1pm EST.

Based on other comments we probably just didn't notice the big actual outage that happened all at once.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#109

Post by im3w1l »

kube-system wrote: post #96
2dollars27cents wrote: post #93

I have no technical understanding of fiber networks. The explanation that this was caused by one fiber line in Brooklyn being severed seems unlikely. Curious to see what the experts think.

I wouldn't doubt it. Single misconfigured routers have caused issues of similar scale.

I believe the internet is designed to handle broken links, but is not very robust against misconfigured (or malicious) routers.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#110

Post by SteveGerencser »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #102
SteveGerencser wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these posts. They remind me that there are places in the world where technology is moving forward. Where we live in Tennessee I have to run 2 internet connections to be able to have a service when I need it. 3gb DSL and a 5gb satellite connection. The sat connection has the additional bonus of being capped at 150Gb per month. All these new streaming services may as well not even exist for those of us in rural…

When I bought a home, I limited my searches to ones that had symmetric fiber connections.

I priced having a 10m fiber connection brought out here. I was quoted just over $5k/month with a minimum 3 year contract. I assume they were expecting me to just pay for the new service to the entire area for them to resell.

Wife wanted to live out here. So we traded my being able to work easily for amazing views and lots of land. Not entirely unhappy with the trade, but there are days when I think about just renting an office in town. (30 minutes away).

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