Tier One ISPs Dying 394
xbmodder writes "Two tier one ISPs are down today. At about 23:30PST both Verio and Level 3 starting having problems with routes. According to Level 3 this is a software upgrade gone awry. Is this the end for Level 3?" Many, many reports about this are coming in, and if you're wondering why the stories were rather sparse overnight, it's because it's difficult to post them without internet access. Hope everyone else is back online too.
Showing solid green now. (Score:3, Interesting)
Noticed it this morning (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems fixed now though, so no, this isn't the death of the Internet just yet.
Re:Flicker (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Call me silly? (Score:1, Interesting)
2. (Upper case "I"nternet) The largest network in the world. It is made up of more than 100 million computers in more than 100 countries covering commercial, academic and government endeavors. Originally developed for the U.S. military, the Internet became widely used for academic and commercial research. Users had access to unpublished data and journals on a variety of subjects. Today, the "Net" has become commercialized into a worldwide information highway, providing data and commentary on every subject and product on earth.
What kind of Timeframe (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:point of the internet? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, the Internet enables/permits/allows redundant routes, but...
No, it doesn't require/demand/"enforce with any government or legal authority" redundancy at all levels.
So any smaller ISPs connected to Level3, and all their customers would have had problems reaching the rest and being reached by the rest.
(sarcasm mode)Obviously this wouldn't have happened if the EU had been in control!(/sarcasm mode)
Actually, how many of these corporations are US companies, and how many are NOT?
call for distributed infrastructure (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Call me silly? (Score:5, Interesting)
These contracts were awarded for the original 15 NSF sponsored NAPs, and to become a Tier 1 ISP, you had to have atleast DS3 connectivty to all 15 NAPs.
It's a very old and crappy definition, and I wish people would stop using it, because it is very easy to meet now adays, and most of those original NAPs are now insignificant, compared to the power of the force.
flapping (Score:5, Interesting)
Takes me back... My first night on the job a rat in Berkeley chewed through the wrong cable and got himself fried -- he also happened to take the entire west-coast off the internet for the better part of a day.
Then there was the time an electrical worker got vaporized in a hole near MIT which caused quite a problem too as it overloaded the MIT power station, but the fallout wasn't nearly as bad as the day of the rat...
Re:Non event... for now (Score:1, Interesting)
Verio? (Score:2, Interesting)
The main problem areas... (Score:4, Interesting)
For a breakdown, check out this view of the data [keynote.com].
Re:What is this about? (Score:2, Interesting)
Level 3 started earlier than Verio (Score:2, Interesting)
Level 3? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know that they've replaced Sprint yet on my list of most sucktastic internet companies. Time was you lost connectivity to an important piece of the Internet (Like your favorite Quake TeamFortress server) and a traceroute would show the failure somewhere in the Sprint backbone. So far they've been more reliable than Sprint at their worst, at least for me.
If they go under, well Tier 1's don't ever really die. Chances are one of the other Tier 1's will buy their assets and it'll be business as usual. Usually the buyer is MCI.
Of course the true test is pretty easy -- has anyone who works at Level 3 had their paycheck bounce yet? Surely there are a few readers among their employees...
Re:flapping (Score:1, Interesting)
Ah, those were the days.
--ScottKin
Re:Call me silly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering that free peering is likely only established between 2 networks that have close to a 1:1 bit exchange, this is a very high bar to meet.
YES, TERRORISTS WANT TO TAKE OUR PORN!!!11! (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't make me wonder that. Terrorists do not give a shit about this kind of thing. To even invoke the word "terror" in this discussion is ludicrous.
- A.P.
Re:Guess not (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh please. You know, it's pretty easy to figure out if it's something likely to be attempted by terrorists or not. The simple test is does it cause mass "terror". As annoying as it might be, lack of internet access is an annoyance. Perhaps a very expensive and exasperating annoyance, but it won't cause mass terror. Terrorists prefer things like bombs, or poison gas, or disease. Some other things people get worked up about but terrorists are unlikely to attempt: sabotaging bridges and tunnels to cause traffic jams; sabotaging electricity distribution to cause blackouts; sabotaging railroad tracks, making commuters late for work!. Think DEATH, not irritation. Quit with the automatic "terrorist hysteria" already, people!
Has to be said... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:flapping (Score:5, Interesting)
OT, but it brings back memories of working at Purolator Courier in the machine room. IBM mainframe shop.
We had had trouble with the damn fire suppression all day. On third shift, around 3 AM, the trouble alarm went off (again) for the umpteenth time. One of the operators, a nervous fellow who was a little bit green, went over to the annunciator panel and opened it to see what the Trouble Might Be.
A fire technician he was not, and he apparently didn't know the difference between the trouble bell and the klaxon that would sound when a halon dump was about to occur; so he reached around the open panel door and hit the halon defeat.
Or so he thought.
It was actually the Big Red Switch.
The whole room (full of 3420 and 3480 tape drives, the 3745s, the 3800 laser printers; and the floor above, containing trivial bits like the DASD and the CPU all plunged into a deafening silence.
We all stared at each other and at the newbie BOFHeck.
A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was the Indianapolis air hub for Purolator, wondering why (when they were about to receive about 150 planes from all over the country) they didn't have anything useful displayed on their green screens.
That was a fun morning.
Ah, those were the days indeed.
Re:FFS, what a fucking dreadful summary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nitpick - gang of thugs (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:flapping (Score:3, Interesting)
Every Sunday night they would switch from mains to batteries to exercise the system. So at around 1am the air conditioners and lights would go out and the silence would be deafening. It always made your heart skip a beat while you checked to make sure the lights on the drives were still on. 30 seconds later the lights and air conditioning would come back, but I never got used to it.
Oh, and I also worked in a Gov't datacenter for a while. So of course, Halon wasn't allowed. The VAXen were 'protected' by a sprinkler system. The disaster plan was for one operator to hold the sprinkler abort button while another pulled the t-bars and covered the machines with plastic. Then of course, I worked Sundays as the sole operator. Hmm, do you burn holding the button or get electrocuted pulling t-bars. Good thing we never had a fire, because I would have been listening for the explosion from my car.
Halon stories (Score:3, Interesting)
Some time after my contract had ended I visited the place and it was a total disaster.
During the model change shutdown (when most of the plant maintainence and rearrangement was done) the millwrights were welding on some cableways on the ceiling of the plant floor below. The fumes from the welding, of course, rose to the ceiling and escaped through the first hole they could find - around the big fire sprinkler pipe that went up through the floor of the computer room and into the space beneath the raised floor.
It tripped one ionization smoke alarm and sounded the warning - but nobody was around during the shutdown to hear it. Shortly thereafter it tripped a second one and the halon system went off. The computer power shut down and $10,000 worth of halon blasted into the computer room. Half of it came out through vents under the floor, throwing the raised floor panels and a decade's accumulation of fine dust (much of it byproducts of metal cutting and anealing) all over the room. And finally sounding an alarm at the guard shack.
The guards came over and found the room in disarray but no slightest sign of a fire. A couple million bucks worth of computer equipment, slated for replacement in another few months but still critical to the plant's operation, was standing there, covered with dust (likely to cause trouble for the disk drives later) but otherwise intact. So they followed procedure and reset the halon system, switching to the backup cylinder, to protect the computer in case an actual fire made it to the comp room. (Normally that's a good idea, since smouldering that sets off smoke detectors is often followed some time later by an actual fire.)
Of course the welding was still going on - just not at the moment the guard sniffed the comp room. (Welders out to lunch, pulled out due to the alarm, or having decided to come down off the ceiling for a bit after the blast of gas from above.) And they still had work to do. So of course they went back to it.
In less than an hour the situation repeated, dumping the SECOND $10,000 worth of halon on the non-fire. B-(