Network Blackout

An anonymous reader writes "Renesys put together a special report on the effects of the recent blackout on routing and network reachability on the Internet. It includes a cool animation of networks dropping off the internet (presumably as a result of the power outage). It is interesting to see how localized some of the outage was--networks in New York state right up to the Vermont border go dark while everything on the other side of the border is quiet. New York City obviously gets clobbered."

I can see my house from here.

[Purosesuchi-Zu]

That little red dot at the tip of LI is my home LAN going down...

This is why we need that Martian Nuclear PP

[binaryDigit]

Everyone could have switched over to ConMars power. Being a Russian installation, they would have just strung about 17million Home Depot Heavy Duty extension cords all plugged together from here to Mars (the outdoor version of course) to access it.

What's that I see?

[Exiler]

Is that a red circle on the webserver hosting that gif?

Apology

[ticklemeozmo]

I'm sorry. I had apparently text'd most of my friends saying electricity was poor, and almost immediately word spread around the north east..

Re:Summary

[alexre1]

Pah! You dont need a power grid to run computers. Just hook up the computer to your handy Mr. Fusion, toss in an old banana peel or two, and get cracking!

Seriously though, this has to be one of the stupidest articles ever. It's like putting together a report on "the effects of a gas shortage on cars". Duh! Then again, micheal submitted the article, so I guess we shouldn't be too surprised.

Re:backup?

[soliaus]

I would find it hard to believe that in the USA they don't have similar systems?

We prefer the rat on a wheel approach to power backup. It usually works, we just forgot to feed them so it failed on such a wide spread application

Re:I can see my house from here.

[seinman]

You don't have backup power on your home LAN? Pffft, and you call yourself a geek.

Re:I can see my house from here.

[Purosesuchi-Zu]

Ironically I do, but my ISP doesn't

Re: Don't backbone routers have backup?

[notque]

I had fun doing traceroutes as the power came back up and seeing how far I could get as more and more routers along the way were returning to service.

Seriously, you've got to get out more.

Go Canada!!!

[akorvemaker]

Woo hoo! Notice how all the outages are south of the border? We are so good! ;-)

Slashdotting animation

[psylent]

Would love to see an animation of a webserver being slashdotted.

Imagine...

[ChopSocky]

A beowulf cluster of network blackouts... Wait... Somebody shoot me.

Canada was still alive

[thexdane]

i'm up in canada and when the power went out our internet conenction didn't. i know this because one of the guys from our offices out west called and asked me what was going on. tho our network did go down due to our ups running out of juice.

the only thing that did NOT go down during the power outage up here was our telephone system. i'm not sure about our other net conenctions tho, i know my home cable connection went down, that's cause cable was out in certain areas, tho in other areas the cable was fine, our bell dsl was fine because bell's authenication servers are in quebec, who would have guessed the french were useful?

i'm guessing that all of our networks were up, i guess the diesel generators a lot of the big data centers have installed came in handy.

Re:Slashdotting animation

[Anonymous Coward]

> Would love to see an animation of a webserver being slashdotted.

It probably would look something like this [ramb.ethz.ch] the entire time....

Slashdotting animation-Server smoke.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Would love to see an animation of a webserver being slashdotted."

Hot enough [simson.net] for you?

Old Nodes

[spineboy]

Those were all the old nodes that retired and moved south to Florida.......

Oklahomah had a node go down too..WTF? Ya got me on that one...Can't even make a joke about that..

Re:This is why we need that Martian Nuclear PP

[aleph+]

You're off by a factor of at least 100. The minimum distance between Earth and Mars is about 1,500 million extension cords (assuming 50m cords). Right now the two planets are pretty close, but later we'll need as many as 7,500 million cords, plus a few extra so we can swing the cable over the sun.

Re:speaking of network blackouts

[korgull]

oh man, you gotta let us know how the sushi worked out !!!

Re:Quick and Dirty LIVE UPS Recharging Ideas

[balbeir]

You wouldn't be that guy from the redgreen show by any chance ?

Snowblower Couch Racing

[BigBlockMopar]

You wouldn't be that guy from the redgreen show by any chance ?

Steve Smith? No. But we are on first name basis (no kidding!) and I wear lots of flannel. He once did something on the show which really reminded me of snowblower couch races with friends, and I can't remember if I told him about it or not...

(Snowblower couch racing? You scoop sofas, mattresses and box-springs from the garbage and store them in your backyard. You buy beer and sharpen the ice-cutters on your snowblower. Then you invite over some friends with their own snowblowers and see who can demolish the upholstered furniture the fastest. Truly a good reason to own a snowblower in a warm climate.)

Re:Quick and Dirty LIVE UPS Recharging Ideas

[ahaning]

I see no mention of duct tape in the grandparent's post, so it's pretty safe to say that it's not him.

Atari / Missile Command

[AgentPhunk]

Who else here (who's old enough) thought of Atari's old Missle Command when you watched that animation?

anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

(sigh)

Re: Don't backbone routers have backup?

[ZorinLynx]

Whereas a 200HP car engine can put out nearly 150KW of power at peak, which is enough to run several suburban homes, the alternator can probably only put out around 1KW max. Be careful not to overload and burn it out, costing you more money than a couple extra batteries would have. }:)

Cars are designed to haul themselves and your ass around, not keep your little server farm running.

Perhaps...

[carrier lost]

...it's time to revisit AC power over TCP/IP.

MjM

Groovy. Gear. Mod.