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Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

cnbc.com

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Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#411

Post by bobthepanda »

steelframe wrote: post #402
jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

> Traffic worsened because drivers weren't able to optimize their routes This might explain a huge random traffic jam I hit in the middle of my town this morning. I had no idea any kind of an outage was happening because I've intentionally scaled back my dependence on my phone. I always used to automatically pull up Google Maps to navigate no matter how short the trip. At some point I realized I was losing my ability…

there is also a big of fear, that if you go to an alternate route it may also be congested, and it will all have been for nothing.

radio is pretty good with traffic news, but how many people would even think of local radio?

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#412

Post by bobthepanda »

sandworm101 wrote: post #346
jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

>> Traffic worsened because drivers weren't able to optimize their routes I'm not sure that is a thing. The vast majority of drivers are on familiar routes and are not navigating via electronic means. Better question: How are the autonomous cars doing? Are they parked by the side of the road unable to navigate without cell coverage.

ups is known for optimizing route planning for time and fuel efficiency purposes, particularly biasing towards three right turns instead of a left

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#413

Post by steelframe »

bobthepanda wrote: post #411
steelframe wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traffic worsened because drivers weren't able to optimize their routes This might explain a huge random traffic jam I hit in the middle of my town this morning. I had no idea any kind of an outage was happening because I've intentionally scaled back my dependence on my phone. I always used to automatically pull up Google Maps to navigate no matter how short the trip. At some point I realized I was losing my ability…

there is also a big of fear, that if you go to an alternate route it may also be congested, and it will all have been for nothing. radio is pretty good with traffic news, but how many people would even think of local radio?

> if you go to an alternate route it may also be congested, and it will all have been for nothing

Yeah, I get that there can also be a bit of a sunk cost thing along with regret minimization going on too. I think game theory suggests that you should switch routes the instant you hit significant congestion though, because P(congestion on the current route)=1 as soon as you hit it.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#414

Post by calfuris »

sandworm101 wrote: post #358
taurath wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only takes a few people missing an exit and swerving to create a bunch of traffic. So many people are used to not navigating manually anymore I can’t imagine it doesn’t have a big effect.

I have a 20-mile commute. I used my phone on day one at the new job, then never again since. It just isn't worth the effort for a road I've driven literally hundreds of times before. Do people also use google maps to get them from their front door to their garage? From the grocery store to wherever they parked their cars?

I use it every day. There are two roughly equivalent paths that I could take, so I use it for information on traffic conditions, and then I leave it running on the off chance that it might route me around a slowdown that wasn't present at the start of my commute.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#415

Post by Decentino »

While it’s true that our phones have essentially become an extension of our being today, you can still recognize when someone is being excessively protective about theirs. If your wife never leaves her phone unattended, doesn’t allow you to use it, and always places it screen-down, you can be sure it holds proof of her transgression. Her actions reflect the characteristic behavior of a cheating wife. The question now is, how to catch a cheating wife? If only you could get your hands on her phone, you’d have all the proof you need to know whether your suspicions were unfounded or spot on. To catch a cheating wife using her cell phone, be prepared to sacrifice some sleep. Once you’re sure she has dozed off, retrieve her phone and unlock it using her fingerprint on the touch id (or whatever biometric it uses). That is if you don’t know her passcode. Then, hire Tomcyberghost @g mail.com to hack the target's cell phone information without physical access

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#416

Post by teleforce »

I think this is the main reason developers should always be designing their software with local-first (aka offline-first) approach in-spite of the Internet and the cloud [1].

Regarding the cellular based authentication, it is perfectly doable to be securely authenticated even without the any connectivity and there is a solution to this based on combination of MFA and OTP [2].

[1] Martin Kleppmann talk on local-first (LoFi):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39444519

[2] A lightweight and secure online/offline cross-domain authentication scheme for VANET systems in Industrial IoT:

https://peerj.com/articles/cs-714/

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#417

Post by Scoundreller »

tharkun__ wrote: post #400
Scoundreller wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put that on Interac single-homing itself without redundancy. Their ops are critical enough you'd expect better from them. Not the kind of shortcut Canadian banking takes for core stuff.

The funny thing there is that Interac "did" have redundancy i.e. another network provider to fall back onto. Unfortunately they failed to notice that this was a reseller for Rogers lines.

that explains a lot

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#418

Post by jrochkind1 »

Animats wrote: post #331

This is a serious architectural flaw. In the entire history of electromechanical switching in the Bell System, no central office was ever out of service for more than 30 minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster, or, on one single occasion, a major fire in NYC. The AT&T Long Lines system in the 1960s and 1970s had ten regional centers, all independent and heavily interconnected. There was a control center,…

I've been thinking about how pretty much no USA infrastructure of today is as reliable as of the last half of the 20th century. Just my imagination, or true? And what does it mean?

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#419

Post by devgonewild »

jader201 wrote: post #276

Something I'm not seeing discussion on: What is/were the cascading effects of this, particularly for drivers? Many people in buildings were unaffected, as they could fallback to wifi. But I imagine this had a pretty broad impact to drivers. Just a few things I can think of: - Packages delayed (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, truck drivers, etc.) for drivers that relied on their phone's mapping apps to get them to their deliverie…

In Australia we recently had a telecom outage with Optus; there were untold amount of damage - card payments at shops/cafes were out. - rural towns completely cut off (a few in particular are only serviced by Optus) - emergency services unavailable; for example a snake wrangler was unable to receive his call-outs - hospitals infrastructure came to a halt

And I'm only going off of examples I have heard. These outages are very damaging.

Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users

#420

Post by lor_louis »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #418
Animats wrote: post #331

This is a serious architectural flaw. In the entire history of electromechanical switching in the Bell System, no central office was ever out of service for more than 30 minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster, or, on one single occasion, a major fire in NYC. The AT&T Long Lines system in the 1960s and 1970s had ten regional centers, all independent and heavily interconnected. There was a control center,…

I've been thinking about how pretty much no USA infrastructure of today is as reliable as of the last half of the 20th century. Just my imagination, or true? And what does it mean?

Redundancy was needed because individual nodes/machines were more prone to failure. As machines got more and more reliable, having highly redundant infrastructure was seen as an extra cost.
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