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Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

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Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#101

Post by madaxe_again »

briandear wrote: post #15
codetrotter wrote: post #2

> some information services were still able to stay online and available I’m in Valencia, Spain. The mobile internet connectivity here during the power outage was very unstable. Cellular phone signal strength was also very very low for the majority of the time. Even sending SMS or WhatsApp messages would not work most of the day, because of just how unusable mobile connection was for me and my girlfriend and our fami…

I'm in Barcelona (Sabadell specifically,) and the cellular networks were down. Luckily I have a generator and Starlink.

It’s wild how different experiences can be of the same thing - we didn’t even realise anything was amiss until we went to pick our kid up from kindergarten, and everyone was stood around on the streets looking a bit lost.

We live off grid - independent power supply, starlink, no cell reception in our valley, EV charged off the panels. Just another day.

Worryingly, after about four hours of power cut the local town had already run out of water (they pump up to a relatively small (100m3) holding tank), so we donated our stash in the car to the kindergarten for the kids staying later.

No run on the banks here though - we are super rural and pretty much everyone keeps wads of cash (land deals etc. are almost always done with the official bit and the under the table bit) and has a full pantry at home.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#102

Post by blahaj »

rightbyte wrote: post #95
blahaj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think ISP caching would be a thing without https. It would bring a lot of additional complexity and resource requirements for them. I can hardly imagine that being worth it to save some bandwidth. Maybe it made sense in a world where bandwidth was very limited. Also I am very happy that it is not a thing and that ISPs cannot do that. When I go to a website I want to get the website from the webserver exactly…

> When I go to a website I want to get the website from the webserver exactly as the server delivers it and not some other page that my ISP thinks is how the website should look. You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking. The old method would be naive today. There would be some privacy concerns I guess. But it could be opt-in on the site owners part. I think caching some videos and pictures would save a lot…

> You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking. The old method would be naive today.

But how do you know that the cached site is up to date? How does the ISP know that? What about dynamic content? What about consistency between different requests that are part of the same page load?

> Sure but they are some switches away.

My point is that this does not matter much. Usually, at least in non sparsely populated parts of the world with modern infrastructure, these switches are close and there is lots of bandwidth capacity.

I just don't think it makes sense for ISPs to save bandwidth on these links by building their own local data centers when they peer with a CDN data center anyway.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#103

Post by madaxe_again »

dagi3d wrote: post #58

>Spaniards have a later lunch, starting around 1pm, and going on until 4 or 5pm. This could possibly be due to the tradition of afternoon siesta. It's "funny" how someone that is supposed to be so smart, can be so ignorant at the same time

But they do? At least near us? Shops close from 1 ‘til 4, and are then open until 9pm. Some businesses like mechanics too - although offices tend to stick to the more widespread 9-5, with more lunch from 12:30 to 14:00.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#104

Post by blahaj »

cesarb wrote: post #83
blahaj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think ISP caching would be a thing without https. It would bring a lot of additional complexity and resource requirements for them. I can hardly imagine that being worth it to save some bandwidth. Maybe it made sense in a world where bandwidth was very limited. Also I am very happy that it is not a thing and that ISPs cannot do that. When I go to a website I want to get the website from the webserver exactly…

> I don't think ISP caching would be a thing without https. It would bring a lot of additional complexity and resource requirements for them. I can hardly imagine that being worth it to save some bandwidth. Maybe it made sense in a world where bandwidth was very limited. Transparent squid proxies were common back when most sites were on http. They let ISPs reduce the use of their limited upstream bandwidth, while als…

The internet is much bigger, more diverse and complex today. You need a lot of storage to get any meaningful impact. Caching the http of Wikipedia won't get you much. You need to cache lots of YouTube videos. Or you just get them from the data center you peer with over the fat link you built.

With bandwidth usage the diversity of the data retrived over the internet has also gone up. You can't just cache the few most popular websites and save most bandwidth. But bandwidth capacity has scaled a lot so you probably also do not need to.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#105

Post by Vilian »

fhdkweig wrote: post #99
MisterTea wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - What’s going on? How bad is it? How long is it going to last? Very unstable mobile internet as mentioned. Silly question but do you have AM or FM radio? When the lights went out in the northeast blackout of 2003 we turned to our cars to put on AM radio. Even after Hurricane Sandy my mother was without power for 3 weeks and she was running a battery powered radio. I shudder to think of a future where moving inform…

My Android cell phone has a FM radio app that was pre-installed at the factory. It requires the use of wired headphones to act as an antenna, but otherwise works fine.

Sadly some new models are removing that function :/

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#106

Post by makeitdouble »

coldpie wrote: post #54
makeitdouble wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hazing against the cash-first minority That's...a pretty strong opinion. Otherwise cash will still have it's issue during a blackout. For instance I'm not sure most shops would operate their POS during a blackout or without any connectivity, at least if there is any hope of resuming normal operations within days, it would screw the ledgers. ATMs of course are dead. Vending machines are also probably not ready for t…

> That's...a pretty strong opinion. If you're a person who uses cash a lot, the comments you hear do start to feel a bit like hazing. You very often hear jokes like "who uses cash anymore?" both directed at you and not, like you're a crazy person for preferring not to support Visa's advertising empire with a ~1-3% tithe on every purchase.

I think there's the disconnect between the US perspective and the other countries which makes the discussions difficult.

The EU caps the credit card rate at 0.2-0.3%, so the moral argument for not using card payments is a lot weaker, and most countries have also widely used non credit card electronic payment.

SEA countries are mostly in the same boat, with higher credit card fees but more competition.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#107

Post by xlii »

bombcar wrote: post #79
makeitdouble wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hazing against the cash-first minority That's...a pretty strong opinion. Otherwise cash will still have it's issue during a blackout. For instance I'm not sure most shops would operate their POS during a blackout or without any connectivity, at least if there is any hope of resuming normal operations within days, it would screw the ledgers. ATMs of course are dead. Vending machines are also probably not ready for t…

It's interesting and informative to watch how different places handle power failures (which where I am in the USA are not common but not entirely rare, either). Most of the bars keep serving to cash customers, and use paper to make notes for future bookkeeping. Some even start using paper tabs. Big companies switch to backup generators (Walmart) or immediately cease business (also Walmart, because the card communicat…

Which IMO highlights what the money is. It’s a trust bond, nothing more and nothing else.

Paper money isn’t guaranteed to be always accepted. It only takes most governments a one day to say something like “because of we’re no longer accepting as they’re subject to ”. Paper money becomes fireplace material in an instant. (Or dystopian scenario - dictator decides that currency transactions can be done only by citizens, all other transactions are void).

What is really weird is this dualism in trust. On one side there’s distrust to government controlled organizations about online money, and on the other there’s trust that government (own or foreign) won’t regulate it into oblivion for some silly reason.

If we get to apocalypse level crisis one is much better off on stocking cigarettes, coffee and chocolate anyway…

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#108

Post by rightbyte »

blahaj wrote: post #102
rightbyte wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I go to a website I want to get the website from the webserver exactly as the server delivers it and not some other page that my ISP thinks is how the website should look. You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking. The old method would be naive today. There would be some privacy concerns I guess. But it could be opt-in on the site owners part. I think caching some videos and pictures would save a lot…

> You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking. The old method would be naive today. But how do you know that the cached site is up to date? How does the ISP know that? What about dynamic content? What about consistency between different requests that are part of the same page load? > Sure but they are some switches away. My point is that this does not matter much. Usually, at least in non sparsely populated p…

The root html would govern what caches are up to date with the hash for some non-dynamic payloads and the root html would not be cached. Etc.

It would be interesting to know how much bandwidth would be saved by caching X gb of the most downloaded films, pictures and textfiles at a neighbourhood level.

In the 90s early 00s I think the share was way bigger than it would be now.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#109

Post by unwind »

wink wrote: post #72
bryanlarsen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar noon in Madrid is at 2:13PM due to the absurd time zone that Spain's in. Having lunch at 1PM is early, not late.

But why would you take your lunch break according to the sun, especially if you work in an office? I'm not trying to play dumb, but sun rises at 6 in the summer in Germany - most people take their lunch break at 12. Sun rises at, I dunno, 8? in the winter - lunch break at 12. Nothing changes and people are usually awake for a while already. I couldn't tell you when the majority of office workers starts. I would say 9…

Sweden checking in: Wow, imagine sunrise at 6 in the summer. :)

Today's times here (Stockholm region) are: sunrise at 04.36, sundown at 20.54. The days are still getting longer of course, summer solstice is June 21st.

Re: Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal

#110

Post by INTPenis »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #100
retSava wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also interesting with the sharp 10AM spike on both desktop and mobile in Germany. Video calls, I presume.

I was surprised by the same thing. Is it a common time for meetings? Is there some cultural thing that happens exactly at 10am?

Not sure but I do have daily standups at 10am here in Sweden. It seems like a time when most people have had time to get to the office, but it still leaves a couple hours until lunch.
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