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East Coast Internet Outage

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Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#181

Post by betterunix2 »

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.

Fios service is fantastic, and this morning's outage barely impacted me in Jersey City (only some disruption that seemed to be related to NYC area DCs more than Fios service itself). I have found their service to be very reliable for years now, with throughput that does not fluctuate (I get what I pay for regardless of the time of day) and lower latency than I had with Comcast. No regrets at all.

The only real complaint I have is that Verizon still seems to be unable to deploy IPv6. They have promised it for years and never seem to get past the testing phase.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#182

Post by tenebrisalietum »

amarshall wrote: post #151
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bell System's job was to operate a nationwide telephone system for voice, not high-speed data. Even then, you only had one path to the telephone CO and only one CO it could go to. Outages were rare because voice-grade wire is cheap and all the complexity is handled by the CO. Also, while my Internet may have outages from time to time, I can't recall the last time I couldn't use my cell phone other than being in a…

Natural disasters sometimes take out cellular service in large areas. Definitely happened for several days during Hurricane Sandy in NY.

They can get temporary cellular devices to fill in on generator power pretty quickly. I know most if not all phone lines are underground, but something like a 2000-pair "wet pulp" repair (necessary in the first place due to negligence) takes a week. I don't know the name of these devices but something of that nature was deployed in Nashville on Dec 25 when the AT&T building was bombed and I think most cell service downtown was restored the next day.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#183

Post by betterunix2 »

310260 wrote: post #177

No problems in Jersey City all day. Bleeping Computer article cites someone as saying it's a specific AS that's affected. JC routes through an AS in Newark, NJ and not NYC so, for me at least, there hasn't been an outage.

I saw some disruptions in services that people in my household rely on, but I think that is because of disruptions in DCs located in NYC and not FiOS itself.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#184

Post by tenebrisalietum »

dan-robertson wrote: post #149
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bell System's job was to operate a nationwide telephone system for voice, not high-speed data. Even then, you only had one path to the telephone CO and only one CO it could go to. Outages were rare because voice-grade wire is cheap and all the complexity is handled by the CO. Also, while my Internet may have outages from time to time, I can't recall the last time I couldn't use my cell phone other than being in a…

What do you mean by saying the wire is cheap? Obviously you can’t send much high frequency data down the wire but each wire could only be used for one call at a time for much of the company’s history, so more wires were needed. What effect does that have on the cost? And surely the complexity is still in the CO with the internet, or am I missing something?

> And surely the complexity is still in the CO with the internet

Your cable modem (which has a CPU and does high-speed signaling) or your FIOS box is much more complicated than an analog phone.

The carrier-grade router on the other end of your cable modem is really just a bigger version of routers you buy off the shelf or for enterprises. It's literally routing IP packets in the same way.

Whereas you have to have a whole switching system at the other end of an analog voice CO. (Or an operator making physical connections if we're still in the 1800's). The best you can do for yourself in that world today is get an PBX system like an old NEC NEAX box or similar, but you're still not going to be on the same level as the CO.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#185

Post by ASalazarMX »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #130
ASalazarMX wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might sound conspiratorial, but when the WTC was attacked in 2001, the Internet slowed down a few days after. We'll probably never know, but I assumed it was deeper surveillance being implemented. Every time an outage like this happens without a following postmortem, I wonder if it was a surveillance oopsie.

Why not take the simpler interpretation that millions of dollars of equipment was in the buildings that were destroyed, and it took a while for the network's self-healing algorithms to discover a new steady-state configuration that approximated the performance of what was suddenly lost?

Because it happened a few days after, not immediately, and there was nothing on the news about that. It was working fine immediately after, although people then mostly got their news from TV; a major event didn't increase bandwidth usage as drastically as today.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#186

Post by jzwinck »

fcsp wrote: post #180
korethr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when it's a large bundle cut, it's going to take a bit before service is restored. I have been told that a highly skilled tech can splice a single strand in a matter of minutes. Looking it up, I find figures of an average of 30 minutes per joint for 4-strand bundles, and slowing down from there. So if you have a 144-strand bundle to repair, or multiple 144-strand bundles, it's going to take several hours to effec…

Would it maybe be an idea to, going forward, color the cables individually before putting them into the ground?

Of course they are colored. Like this: http://www.evertopcomms.com/144-fiber-count-gyts-fiber-optic...

It is still a lot of work, and so far not automated.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#187

Post by betterunix2 »

t0mbstone wrote: post #152
carewornalien wrote: post #137

Yes, large carriers can't do much when the backhoe strikes.. it happens.. they'll fix it.. and we'll all go on with our lives..

I thought the whole point of the internet and protocols like TCP/IP is that it's supposed to be fault tolerant and traffic is supposed to automatically re-route. Seems kind of weird how a single cable being cut can cause half the country to lose internet...

The Internet is not as redundant as you might think, and in fact there is less spare capacity to go around as a result of the pandemic (a lot more time spent streaming and on video chats by a larger number of people). Internet routing is also non-trivial (convergence has not been reached in years), and when a major link goes down it can take time for routes to stabilize. Also keep in mind that the Internet itself was not down for most people who were affected by this; rather, connectivity between users and various services was affected. So people could have continued torrenting, but their Zoom sessions would get dropped because connectivity to some data center was impacted.

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#188

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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 think the price dropped though. I was furious until I saw a lower bill. I also got a speed increase to 1.2gbps

I still wish I had other options in my area (nh)

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#189

Post by sitzkrieg »

noja wrote: post #175
sitzkrieg wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its 3/5/10/35mbit up, but consistent. 35 is the docsis limit on their gigabit cable offering

Which version of docsis is this? 2.0 from 2002?

i think so, but i had to upgrade to a docsis 3.0 modem, but told the physical infrastructure in place here cannot exceed 35mbit up. im not even going to pretend to know enough about cable to postulate how possible that is

Re: East Coast Internet Outage

#190

Post by srswtf123 »

fcsp wrote: post #180
korethr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when it's a large bundle cut, it's going to take a bit before service is restored. I have been told that a highly skilled tech can splice a single strand in a matter of minutes. Looking it up, I find figures of an average of 30 minutes per joint for 4-strand bundles, and slowing down from there. So if you have a 144-strand bundle to repair, or multiple 144-strand bundles, it's going to take several hours to effec…

Would it maybe be an idea to, going forward, color the cables individually before putting them into the ground?

You must be joking. Cables are Color-coded and labeled obsessively.

You should take some time to understand the physical layer of infrastructure. There will always be work to do in meet-me-rooms!

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