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The Fed Is Down

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Re: The Fed Is Down

#11

Post by lrem »

ohiovr wrote: post #4
dragontamer wrote: post #2

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?

Why wouldn't they use SFTP?

Don't touch if it isn't broken?

From what I've seen in other countries, you don't update protocols for this. You introduce better ones and kill the old ones once nobody used them for a while. Which might take longer than expected, because "free instant transfers" might be seen as cannibalizing the "slightly less slow expensive transfers" any given bank might have on offer.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#12

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #2

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?

[deleted]

Re: The Fed Is Down

#13

Post by silexia »

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#14

Post by droffel »

silexia wrote: post #13

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

The Federal Reserve is a private company.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#15

Post by toomuchtodo »

silexia wrote: post #13

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

Their uptime stats seem pretty reasonable to me, exceeding their target uptime in almost all cases.

https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...

Re: The Fed Is Down

#16

Post by gruez »

ohiovr wrote: post #4
dragontamer wrote: post #2

https://engineering.gusto.com/how-ach-works-a-developer-pers... A good time to remind people that the USA's money-transfer system (aka: ACH) is a giant Rube-Goldberg machine involving FTP transfers of specially formatted files. So it sounds like the Fed's FTP server is down?? Or something like that?

Why wouldn't they use SFTP?

It's probably VPNed and/or FTP over TLS (aka FTPS).

Re: The Fed Is Down

#17

Post by toomuchtodo »

bostonsre wrote: post #8

Anyone know what the fed uptime was for last year? Or how common these types of issues are for the fed? Sounds like a massive impact if they normally move ~$3.4 trillion a day..

https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...

Target uptime for the last eight years is 99.85% (ACH service availability), exceeded in all years going back to 2012. Couldn't find a FedWire (which was also down) quality stats page, but I'd expect similar uptime targets and measured quality.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#18

Post by capableweb »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #15
silexia wrote: post #13

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

Their uptime stats seem pretty reasonable to me, exceeding their target uptime in almost all cases. https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/ach...

Am I the only one surprised that some of their targets don't even have 3 nines as availability? That's some pretty crazy stuff when it comes to how serious the context is and considering the availability of cryptocurrency transactions.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#19

Post by insertnickname »

droffel wrote: post #14
silexia wrote: post #13

This is what happens when government runs areas of the economy. Private companies can go bankrupt when they get obsolete, but government agencies have massive political pull and are never dismantled. The nation that can figure out a bankruptcy process for government agencies will be the leader in future centuries.

The Federal Reserve is a private company.

Yes, but not really.

Re: The Fed Is Down

#20

Post by schraeds »

justinzollars wrote: post #10
bostonsre wrote: post #8

Anyone know what the fed uptime was for last year? Or how common these types of issues are for the fed? Sounds like a massive impact if they normally move ~$3.4 trillion a day..

It's huge. This is a big story

Happened towards end of 2019, didn't seem to have a big impact on anything... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-19/fed-says-...
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