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Communications

Blackberry Network is Down 243

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
Brian writes "According to CNET and others, "A system failure at Research In Motion has affected BlackBerry users in the Western Hemisphere, a news channel reported on its Web site late on Tuesday. The infrastructure failed on Tuesday night, and e-mails were not being delivered to the handheld devices.""
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Blackberry Network is Down More

Blackberry Network is Down

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  • Better headline needed (Score:5, Funny)

    by neoform ( 551705 ) <djneoform@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:37AM (#18780437) Homepage
    Common, this was an easy one!

    "Blackberry Blackout"

  • OH NO! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jhon ( 241832 ) * on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:37AM (#18780443) Homepage Journal
    My thumbs are twitching!

  • Crap! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gen. Malaise ( 530798 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:38AM (#18780449) Journal
    Now I have to go in to work and explain that I dont control the Blackberry network........Cmon RIM!!
    • I know.. my lusers have been having Blackberry issues for a couple of months, and I keep trying to tell them that our email servers are fine, it's their crappy network that is causing their delays!!!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Aladrin ( 926209 )
        That's okay, my BOSSES have been having issues with their Crackberries. And yes, I get to keep explaining that our email servers are perfectly fine.
        • Well actually it is my Bosses that are using them (apart from a few people who like me are using WM5 phones), and I've been trying to restrain myself from telling them not to hassle me about it again :p
          • ha! We just deployed blackberries to everyone here about three months ago. As the IT person, I fought strongly for WM5 phones, but I was shot down. I love being able to say "I told you so".
            • Indeed. They're more complex to setup (as in I doubt the average user here wouldn't be able to do it themselves what with needing the certificate put on and then the server configured in ActiveSync), but they give great results. Another Microsoft product that I actually have a little respect for.. the list is growing, albeit very slowly, heh..

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by arivanov ( 12034 )
          All I can say - thanks god I changed jobs and I am no longer anywhere near the cretinous gooseberry service. I remember with extreme "fondness" how our sales and marketing director at the time rang half of the company at 1am after we deployed greylisting on the mailservers and his crotch stopped receiving the necessary stimulation. If something like this would have happened at the time the mayhem would have been complete. And anyway, this is for the better. At least some people will finally realise that i

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by PinkPanther ( 42194 )

        it's their crappy network that is causing their delays!

        Being a heavily-addicted user (and admin) myself, I have to say that the VAST majority of the time the RIM network is quite responsive. Often I'll send something to my work account from my gmail account and the browser screen just barely finishes refreshing from clicking "send" and my hip is vibrating from the new love.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by somersault ( 912633 )
          Regardless, I'm kind of thinking that they're a victim of their own success, and every time my users have been having delays I'm thinking that RIM are doing a poor job of keeping up with demand. It could just be problems with the local telcos of course, but here we see that the whole network has gone down, and I really am not surprised after the Blackberry issues we've had for the last couple of months.

  • I feel a disturbance in the net... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:39AM (#18780453) Homepage
    ...as though a million voices just cried out and were suddenly silenced.

  • There's some other coverage on this.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by 8127972 ( 73495 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:40AM (#18780467)
    .... In the following locations:

    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070418.wblackberry18/BNStory/Business/home [theglobeandmail.com]
    http://www.wnbc.com/news/12339359/detail.html [wnbc.com]

    But I can verify that their network is up (sort of) and Engaget.com confirms this:

    http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/blackberry-o utage-update-its-kinda-up-253214.php [gizmodo.com]

    So YMMV.

  • must resist Great Disturbance In The Force joke... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:43AM (#18780505)
    Because millions of voices really ARE crying out in pain. Man, the cooler we make things, and the more that entire business cultures get built around this stuff, the more fragile it is. Just think of the war stories we're going to hear about people who've come to utterly depends on their Crackberries having lost a deal, not heard that a critical server was down, not realized that a surgery had been rescheduled, and so on. I wouldn't make a living if people didn't depend on fancy networked technologies, but it sure does feel like a house of cards, some days.

    • Man, the cooler we make things, and the more that entire business cultures get built around this stuff, the more fragile it is.


      To (mis)quote someone(s) I don't remember:
      Society is a millipede - the millipede has a thousand Achilles heels.

    • It IS a house of cards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:14AM (#18780867)
      Reason? It's cheaper than bricks.

      Seriously, that's what's gonna break our neck sooner or later. We strip systems of their redundancies to make them cost less, we use cheaper components and the lowest bidder, we downgrade specs to the bare minimum because price makes right.

      Technology already starts learning from nature, copying structures and models from millenia proven concepts. I think business could learn a thing from them too. Because nature has down what business wants to achive: Maximum output for minimum input. There is no such thing as waste and surplus in nature's makeup, if there was, it would be used for more output instead. So why do we have 2 kidneys, why is our brain able to adapt to damage, if it wasn't for the simple fact that this proved to be the more successful way in the long run.

      But as long as companies are run by managers who care more about their next quarter report than the company itself, this won't fly.

      • Re:It IS a house of cards (Score:5, Funny)

        by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:44AM (#18781339) Homepage

        Technology already starts learning from nature, copying structures and models from millenia proven concepts. I think business could learn a thing from them too. Because nature has down what business wants to achive: Maximum output for minimum input. There is no such thing as waste and surplus in nature's makeup, if there was, it would be used for more output instead. So why do we have 2 kidneys, why is our brain able to adapt to damage, if it wasn't for the simple fact that this proved to be the more successful way in the long run.

        You must be new here. (To life that is...)

        You will realize the fallacy of your statement soon after your 50th birthday. Nature isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Those bouncy little disks in your back will start taking on the appearance and flexibility of cardboard. Your prostate (assuming you are male) will enlarge and back your bladder up into your nostrils. Your uterus (assuming your female) will simultaneously enlarge, flop over and quit working. Your eyes will go bad. Various other bits will quit working while parts of your body that you didn't know existed will start creating problems.

        While modern medicine can approach some of the problems, any repairs will be more like soldering a few new capacitors on to a Pentium II motherboard (and charging for an eight way Opteron system) than anything really useful. Oh, and you want a warranty?

        Death and taxes to you sir!

        • Re:It IS a house of cards (Score:4, Insightful)

          by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <hiland.gmail@com> on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @09:02AM (#18781673)
          Disclaimer: I am 27.

          You do have a good point about things going out when you get older, but that's not nature's fault. Because if it were not for all our complicated medicines, we'd still have about a 45 year lifespan, and we'd be dead before a lot of those things started to happen. So Nature does have it worked out to the extent that it thinks we should be living... all the other things that happen stem from our ability to extend life through knowledge.
        • All that really illustrates is that those under 50 are so productive that they can take the time to keep those over 50 alive just for sentimental reasons.
        • You forgot knees, they start to go around the same time as the funny looking hairs start popping out of odd places, I think they could be related.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 )
          The human body wasn't meant to last for 80 years. That's way past warranty, and the menopause certainly stresses that. After you're no longer able to procreate, you are no longer "valuable" in the eyes of mommy nature.

          Yeah, she's a real bitch. Never said she's nice.

          We're actually more built for about 40-50 years, tops. The rest is human work. Also, we weren't meant to eat trans fat and spend our life in front of a TV inhaling the thermal waste of some plant. We were actually meant to spend it hunting and ga
      • You might read "To Engineer Is Human" by Henry Petrowski, at some point. He talks about this at length. Basically, his argument is that, aside from the business/accounting demands for lower prices, it is an emergent characteristic of engineering that iterative development is done to optimize a system until it breaks. It always ends up breaking. Then, the engineers have a better idea of the breaking point, so they use that data for the next series of iterations, until something else breaks. It's not jus

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Illserve ( 56215 )
        So why do we have 2 kidneys, why is our brain able to adapt to damage, if it wasn't for the simple fact that this proved to be the more successful way in the long run.

        Actually, evolution puts our design under the exact same pressures: do more with less. That is, in fact, the definition of natural selection.

        Reliability and redundancy are just one aspect of our optimality, and it's not something that's always at the top of the priority list. One might counter your point about 2 kidneys by asking why we do
    • You raise a really, really good point. This is why it's important for their to be a wide variety of hardware and software makers out there, all using like protocols to communicate. Email as a whole is never going to go down because there are too many different ways handle it... even if every exchange server in the world were to blow up, there are alternatives, and the system as a whole keeps going.

      In other words- beware things that are popular, as you'll be subject to the same problems as everyone else

  • BES users potentially not affected? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WolfTattoo ( 732427 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:43AM (#18780507)
    For what its worth, my employer (in Washington D.C.) has their own Blackberry Enterprise Server (an on-site server that interfaces directly with corporate mail systems), and it appears to be unaffected by this outage.
    • Good opportunity to wander in, smack the server repeatedly with a hammer and take the rest of the day off cos you cant get hold of anyone on their blackberries if you ask me.

    • Re:BES users potentially not affected? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Philosinfinity ( 726949 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:28AM (#18781085)
      RIM lost their primary NOC last night. Your BES transmits data to their NOC including mailflow routing and SRP information. This issue affects the Americas entirely and is currently fixed for Sprint and Nextel. GPRS/EEDGE providers are still unable to contact back to RIM at the present time. So, if you are a Sprint or Nextel shop, this would explain why you are not experiencing the issue at this time. However, everyone was experiencing it from 6:30PM CDT to about 3:00AM CDT.
      • I'm on T-Mobile and it just came back up!

      • Re:BES users potentially not affected? (Score:5, Funny)

        by dr_dank ( 472072 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @09:01AM (#18781645) Homepage Journal
        RIM lost their primary NOC last night. Your BES transmits data to their NOC including mailflow routing and SRP information. This issue affects the Americas entirely and is currently fixed for Sprint and Nextel. GPRS/EEDGE providers are still unable to contact back to RIM at the present time.

        I'll LOL if RIM is FOOBAR and can't GBTW but my PHB won't ROFL that the BOFH at RIM is AFK. LBC, 213.

  • Not very reassuring. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:45AM (#18780535) Journal
    A single point of failure can bring down the entire network? Not very reassuring, especially considering Blackberry is predominately a business tool.

    Dan East

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 8127972 ( 73495 )
      A single point of failure can bring down the entire network? Not very reassuring, especially considering Blackberry is predominately a CRITICAL business tool.

      There. Fixed that for you.

      • Re:Not very reassuring. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:40AM (#18781275) Journal
        especially considering Blackberry is predominately a CRITICAL business tool.

        Contrary to popular belief. E-mail is NOT a critical business tool. You don't believe me? Then compare e-mail with the following:


        Supply Chain Systems? Critical.

        Customer Order/Customer Relationship Systems? Critical.

        Manufacturing systems? Critical.

        Payroll? Absolutely the single MOST critical application at most enterprises (especially during pay runs).

        But, e-mail is not critical. When I've been involved in storage meetings, e-mail is always a Tier Three [wikipedia.org] application. In other words, while it is a useful tool, there are other ways of contacting people in an emergency. You know, like by telephone.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by fabs64 ( 657132 )
          This is a ridiculous statement, quite often those things you stated rely on email, as it is a means of COMMUNICATION, and in quite a few businesses, the primary one. Supply chain is worthless if crm can't communicate with them, ditto for manufacturing, payroll is worthless if they can't communicate with accounting or HR. Also note, for those things the phone is not an option, it must be in writing. Try to keep in mind that many, many businesses do not reside in one office, or one building, or one postcode,

          • Re:Not very reassuring. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @09:58AM (#18782549) Journal

            Wow, you must be one of the users that is freaking out over Blackberry today.

            Supply chain is worthless if crm can't communicate with them, ditto for manufacturing, payroll is worthless if they can't communicate with accounting or HR.

            Most of the systems I describe have a DR and/or failover capability because they are considered critical to the operations of the business. Personally, I have NEVER seen an e-mail system that has had DR or Failover. Beyond DR, ask an even more important question: In the event of disaster, how quickly does e-mail come back up on-line? Is it the first system recovered? Or are there 35 other systems that are recovered before e-mail? That should tell you how important e-mail is in comparison to your company's other systems.

            Now, let's talk about using e-mail as an interface: Does the communication you describe have to occur via e-mail? I have been working in IT for 15 years and I have never seen a place that depends upon an e-mail to interface between any of the systems I described. For example, if I am running a Supply Chain system, I can keep the supply chain moving for hours without worrying about ANY e-mail communication with external systems. Well-designed Supply Chain systems use EDI (not e-mail) for communication. And, EDI is usually built with redundancy and DR capability If they don't use EDI, they depend upon someone manually entering the information into a screen, or even a flat file. If I absolutely MUST contact someone, I just call their phone. As for Payroll, payroll runs at even small companies are not dependent upon e-mail. The timekeeping systems interact with the Payroll systems via EDI or some sort of file transfer that is NOT dependent upon Exchange/Domino.

            Hell, even if I am in hardware support and my e-mail server crashes, I should be smart enough to log directly into my messaging console to keep an eye on the status of my other servers. Most monitoring tools use e-mail to send messages to Operations. My operations department had better be able to log into their consoles to check the systems real-time and not be waiting for the e-mail system to recover.

            Also note, for those things the phone is not an option, it must be in writing.

            There are a few options here: If you are running a normal PO approval process, then there is always an expected time-lag in approvals. My manager cannot be expected to drop everything to approve my new business-card order system. And, if there is an emergency, well-designed systems have an override that allows for exceptions.

            Try to keep in mind that many, many businesses do not reside in one office, or one building, or one postcode, or one country, before you make a silly comment like "e-mail is not critical".

            Firstly, I work for a Fortune 500 company. We are spread all over the world.

            Secondly, There is nothing silly about my statement. E-mail is NOT critical. People THINK it's critical because it is the system they have the most 'face-time' with. But, face-time is not equal to criticality. If your organization has built interfaces or business processes that depend upon someone approving something via e-mail, then you have a very poorly designed system. You can easily have interfaces move directly between systems without ANY human interaction. You can build custom web-pages to allow approvers the ability to make their approval directly in the purchasing system.

        • Most businesses have adapted to the point that no useful work can be done during a long email outage. Even when everybody does have a phone, the directory is stored online, not as paper phonebooks. Most of the communication that email is used for cannot be done effectively over the phone. Email is also the fastest method of business communication that is still precise enough for critical tasks.

          Consider the effect when email goes down, as compared with other things you list. When an ordering system goes down

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by lbmouse ( 473316 )
      Maybe they're on a shared server with Turbo Tax [slashdot.org].
  • Well, it was bound to happen with a centralized/heirarchical service model. Perhaps RIM will learn and go decentralized. Perhaps not.

    More interesting will be the addicts reaction. Some people really hang on the devices and get addicted to their Crackberries. I wonder how they will adjust (most people will do just fine) and what lawsuits will result. Or if the plantiffs are too worred about simply having their service cancelled!

    • Re:Cold-turkey for Crackberry-heads (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:53AM (#18780639)
      Lawsuits? Surely any network-based buisness with a legal department worth a lick of salt would include provision in their terms and agreements of services that cover such instances of blackouts, loss of service, or even financial collapse of the company leaving addicts with their network device without a network.

  • Can't be true.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by JohnHegarty ( 453016 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:52AM (#18780627) Homepage
    Can't be true... I would have got an email telling me if it was......
  • This wasn't really Tuesday night methinks. My boss who is Deaf and uses a blackberry like the dickens for contacting outside the office said she couldn't send from it all Tuesday day, starting in the morning.

  • Just count it like a Snow Day... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:57AM (#18780677) Homepage
    ... and tell everyone to stay home.

  • Two Reactions (Score:5, Funny)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:57AM (#18780679) Journal
    I can predict at least two possible reactions from end-users.

    First: jumping out of a building due to the terror and pain of sudden withdrawal. It happens to heroin addicts, it can happen here too, folks.

    Second: people wandering the streets of major cities bright-eyed and staring in open wonder, as though they were waking up from a long dream. Joining hand in hand, they frolic in the parks or whatever greenspace they can find chanting "Free at Last, Free at Last..." The clouds part, and an auspicious rainbow graces the sky. Oh, and I suppose there are other reactions: incoherent rage at no one in particular (ever chat with a cold-turkey smoking quitter?), unjustified rage at corporate IT for letting this happen, curling up in a fetal position in the corner, uncontrollable thumb twitching (almost like phantom limb pain).

    Then there's another reaction: simply shrugging and going back to computer-based email and cellphones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xdroop ( 4039 )
      Actually Corporate IT is probably safe -- it is only the RIM BES servers which are down. Here in Canada, if you have your own BES, it's business as usual.

      So Corporate IT is only in trouble if they cheaped out and didn't buy their own BES.

      • Not true. RIM lost their primary North American NOC last night. Even if you have a BES, you are constantly transmitting data and messages to RIM (SRP for instance). Because SRP ping and because even when it was back up, RIM's DB wasn't online, even if you have your own BES (we have 3), you'd still have experienced the issue.

    • ...unjustified rage at corporate IT for letting this happen

      This seems the most plausible

  • Not quite 'Western Hemisphere' (Score:4, Informative)

    by Peregr1n ( 904456 ) <ian.a.ferguson@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @07:59AM (#18780695) Homepage
    It's fine here in the UK, and the rest of Europe. As far as I can tell it's the US server, which 'only' serves the USA and Canada. As mentioned by others though, one point of failure destroying such a large portion of the network is bad planning at the very least!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Scutter ( 18425 )
      Western Hemisphere [wikipedia.org]

      While it's true that some parts of Europe are west of the Prime Meridian, the Western Hemisphere is generally take to mean the Americas, especially in the context of this story.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xoyoyo ( 949672 )
        Would it be churlish to suggest that "The Americas" would therefore be a better term to use as unambiguous and less likely to irritate those of US who happen to be sat less than a dozen miles west of the prime meridian but who don't count for some reason?

        The Wikipedia article you cite is accompanied with an extensive discussion of exactly this sort of ambiguity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Western_Hemisphe re [wikipedia.org]
    • Europe isn't the Western Hemisphere. The Western Hemisphere is North & South America. You guys are just the western part of Eurasia. :-P
    • Silly Europeans... the Americas are in the Western Hemisphere while Asia and Australia are in the Eastern Hemisphere. You guys like thin the Central Hemisphere. Geez, go to American schools and learn something...

      This is meant as a joke. Like haha funny.
  • "Officials with RIM said they are trying to reset the system and told NewsChannel4 that they are concerned that the backlog of data, which will rush through when it comes back on line, could cause a bigger problem"

    When in doubt, reboot!

  • Oh, nbw it makes sense! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Xenophon Fenderson, ( 1469 ) <xenophon+slashdot@irtnog.org> on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:01AM (#18780735) Homepage
    I got in trouble with my wife last night for not reading her emails to me, and I could not figure out why synchronization wasn't working. Thank you, Slashdot! You saved my marriage!!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by schwartzg ( 1089259 )
      Well, this is certainly unusual. Slashdot saving a marriage......

    • Thank you, Slashdot! You saved my marriage!!!

      You must be new here. Everyone knows that /.-ers aren't married.

      (And, yes, I noticed you're #1469. That's part of the funny.)

  • And I don't want to carry one, first I heard is when a user asked me about it. Sure enough, my boss is asking me why their blackberries aren't working and I'm in a meeting trying to show them how the system works... CURSE YOU RIM!

    They could at least tell a time they plan on having it working again...

  • There were so many double-quotes in that write up that I thought it was a """paean to VMS""" [compaq.com]. It's nice to see that Python continues the practice [python.org].

  • More Info On Outage and Status (Score:5, Informative)

    by Philosinfinity ( 726949 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:19AM (#18780945)
    I was on RIM's rolling conference call last night and received some additional information. It seems that somehow they lost connectivity in their NOC. When they failed over to a co-lo they couldn't get the SRP communication up and running, causing all BES to fail in their connection to RIM. Fast forward a few hours and SRP is back up, but they cannot get critical components for email delivery to connect to their DB. Fast forward a few more hours and they get this up and running also. Currently, Sprint and Nextel are up and running, but the GPRS/EDGE service providers are still not receiving consistent mail flow.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Avatar8 ( 748465 )
      So in other words RIM supports themselves and their servers as poorly as they support customers with Blackberry Enterprise Servers?


      I just see this as a major backlash of karma that has built up over the past 10 years.

      • Actually, if you're willing to shell out the money for T5 support, their service isn't too bad. When we were on T2, the hold times and quality of support was absolutely horrible. Recently we jumped to T5, have a dedicated technician, experience no more than 5 minute wait times, and get some extremely qualified support personnel. However, I think we're paying well over 100K/year for it.
    • The EDGE/GPRS issue (where the signal type is showing up lower case), may have been resolved. RIM is claiming that there was a backlog of registrations and messages hitting their database. This was causing the wireless provider's inability to get a better signal from the relays. RIM states that they may have resolved this issue by removing burden from their DB. If users are still seeing a lowercase edge or gprs, the device may need to have the radio recycled or the power recycled. This is assuming that

  • one word response to this tragedy (Score:3, Funny)

    by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:21AM (#18780963) Journal
    Yippee!

  • Good ole' government. Last night at 11:37 PM the DoD distributed an email to all Blackberries informing them that the Blackberry service was down.

  • Eedundancies and dependencies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:29AM (#18781113)
    A single point of failure is always a bad thing. Especially if a lot depends on it. But it can be some cascading effect too, for example power plants running on top output that couldn't swallow the sudden additional load when some parts of the network blew up.

    It's a lack of redundancies. Redundancies cost money, and we want everything as cheaply as possible. So no redundancy. But hey, it "works". Usually. The question is, though, can we afford the blackout?

    Imagine communication breaking down. No cell, no net, no data transfer, nothing. You could hear commerce grind to a halt. Nothing could be scheduled, nothing could be delivered on time, we'd simply break down. And that scenario isn't as impossible as it seems, because telcos don't have a lot of redundancies in their networks anymore either.

    But we're depending on them. Often enough with our very lives. Yet we're not willing to pay the price.

    But even if we did, would it be invested? I mean, afaik it's not like RIM made some kind of promise that the service would work. And as long as you can't hold them responsible for the loss, of money and maybe even life, they certainly won't add anything that costs more than it has to.

  • Damnit man, I need details! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Darth_brooks ( 180756 ) <clipper377@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:34AM (#18781191) Homepage
    It'll be interesting to see just how much detail we get concerning what exactly failed and why the current level of redundancy didn't kick in.

    I mean, it's not like the power supply failed on an NT 4 server (you know, the one with the post-it taped in place that says "East Coast B-berry server, DO NOT POWER OFF!!!"), it's not like somebody accidentally drove a nail trough some coax in the wall at RIM's HQ, it's not like somebody accidentally typed "rm -r *" at the wrong prompt. There has to be some serious "Thank God I'm not the one stuck cleaning up that mess" stuff going on here.

    Funny unrelated story. We had an exec looking at one of the blackberry's. He put in back in the hard case and was fumbling around with it and saw the "RIM" on the back. Then he asked, in the innocence that only an exec can have, "So, how does one go about getting one of these 'RIM' jobs anyway?" When I am canonized as a saint, one of my miracles will be "not laughing at the VP who asked how to get a rim job."

  • For a communications company (Score:4, Insightful)

    by philo_enyce ( 792695 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:35AM (#18781209)
    RIM is pretty bad at communicating with their end users. They do not have a network status page. When you call in to TSupport, there is no message indicating a general interruption in service. This is totally unacceptable. I spent two hours on hold last night after checking over a client's BES and not finding any issues locally. That hold time could have easily been reduced to a couple of minutes if RIM had a system in place to notify users of problems. Even Time Warner, which has terrible customer service, has service outage notices as part of the call tree when you call in for support. I would guess that this is a conscious choice on RIM's part, to try and appear as if they never have problems. Bad idea. Customer frustration sets in big time when you don't talk to them during outages.

    RIM: Get better at communicating with your client base or they will go elsewhere.

    philo

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by userlame ( 885195 )
      Actually there was an option (I called in to the number listed on their website last night) "if you are calling about an outage press 5." Bam, pre-recorded message telling you there was an outage and they had no ETA but expected things to be back up soon. Although I feel your pain, I spent a good few hours triaging with one of our on-call engineers looking into a customer's BES servers only to find it had nothing to do with us.
  • I don't understand how the ENTIRE network can be down. Hasn't anyone learned from the design of email?

    But then again I can't see what Blackberry gives you that you can't get with an IMAP server anyway.
    • > But then again I can't see what Blackberry gives you that you can't get with an IMAP server anyway.

      Partial message retrieval and message push (IMAP is pull-only, which is a real problem for slow networks.. and GPRS ain't exactly DSL).

      Not to mention "wireless client".

  • Oh, no (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skidge ( 316075 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @08:38AM (#18781249)
    Now what's a busy executive supposed to do when you're giving them a presentation? Actually pay attention to you?
  • In the meantime, my Treo is working fine. Why? Because it relies on the POP protocol used over a TCP/IP network. Traditional, boring, standards-based and reliable.

    Yes, my TCP/IP is provided over GPRS, but I hope that my next Treo (linux-based?) will offer a Wi-Fi connection as well.

    Pascal

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Churla ( 936633 )
      This is something which mystifies me...

      How does RIM plan on maintaining this behemoth it has created when more smart phones that know how to use TCP/IP are in play and people realize "wait, we can just set up an exchange or IMAP server..."

      Is there something THAT magical in their kool-aid?

  • It's back up... (Score:2, Informative)

    by zubinjdalal ( 816389 )
    ... 9:52am EST (Rochester, NY)

  • New service outage updates at ZDNet (Score:3, Informative)

    by russjourn ( 1089981 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @09:38AM (#18782219)
    This is Russell Shaw. I do the BlackBerry beat blog for ZDNet. I've just called all the carriers, and RIM, and have just posted the latest at: http://blogs.zdnet.com/blackberry/?p=135 [zdnet.com]
  • From the statement: "Root cause is currently under review, but service for most customers was restored overnight and RIM is closely monitoring systems in order to maintain normal service levels."

    http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1416 9 [networkworld.com]

  • This just in! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Catbeller ( 118204 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2007 @10:04AM (#18782605) Homepage
    Karl Rove in ER being treated for shock following Crackberry failure. Nation's government falls. Peace breaks out, we run a surplus, Crawford is consumed by tornados that miraculously miss the protestors.

    Wait, am I awake now? Damn.

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