Internet2 Knocked Out By Homeless Man?

from the nuclear-disaster,-huh? dept

The original purpose of the internet was supposed to be a network that the government could continue to use even after a nuclear attack. The whole point is that it's supposed to figure out ways to route around damage. However, when it came to Internet2, apparently designers didn't pay as much attention to that kind of stability. The news today is that a homeless man in Boston tossed a cigarette on a mattress, setting off a two-alarm fire that happened to knock out the Internet2 connection between New York and Boston. It's true that Internet2 is supposed to be experimenting with different methods of building network infrastructure, but you would think that redundancy would have been considered a feature worth keeping.
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  • identicon
    Buzz, 2 May 2007 @ 5:28pm

    thoughts

    Here is my honest opinion of this situation:
    ...
    ...
    ...
    ROTFLOL!!! XD XD XD

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Kyros, 2 May 2007 @ 6:48pm

    Lawl.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Joel Coehoorn, 2 May 2007 @ 6:55pm

    I think the key word in there is 'experimenting'. I don't think anyone at Internet2 makes the claim of having a completed project. And just because at this phase there may only be budget for one line between New York and Boston doesn't mean the protocols might not be good enough that if Internet2 ever gets the same kind of adoption as the web that more lines wouldn't be run and it would be able to route around the problem.

    But yeah, I2 is not likely to ever get that kind of adoption. It's more valuable as an experimental network for testing new ideas and protocols on a scale resembling the real thing for consideration by standards bodies.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous, 2 May 2007 @ 7:01pm

    I'm in ur internets, dropping it like its hawt.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    RandomThoughts, 2 May 2007 @ 7:02pm

    Mike, I know that you are out in California, but on the east coast, we have some serious homeless people.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    AndyC, 2 May 2007 @ 7:06pm

    California, California. Califor-nya-nya, super cool to the homeless!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    just me, 2 May 2007 @ 7:10pm

    Well, I can't remember whom did the investigating, but I heard that the regular internet main lines are not in any better shape. It wouldn't take much to knock the USA off the grid.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Optimist, 2 May 2007 @ 7:50pm

    Hey, it hasn't been knocked out by a nuclear attack, so the requirements are still being met!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2007 @ 7:56pm

    it hasn't been knocked out by a nuclear attack,

    it's really because we're fighting them over there so they don't come over here . . . . /sarcasm

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2007 @ 7:58pm

    re: AndyC

    And that's why there are so many people begging for money on the streets of San Francisco? Right...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Trerro, 2 May 2007 @ 8:14pm

    Well, you see the BPD would've stopped the homeless guy, but they were too busy fending off mooninites.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_scare

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jeremy, 2 May 2007 @ 9:06pm

    um...yeah

    so the internet2 connection between two points was knocked out. It's larger than two schools, you know. If Atlanta had a serious accident, the major internet1 routers there would be useless. It wouldn't disable the whole net, but you'd see similar problems in that local area.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    |333173|3|_||3, 2 May 2007 @ 9:27pm

    Nuclear War

    The Net was not origianlly intended to survive a nuclear war, but rather to allow scientists to use remote computers despite thier crappy connections. Teh realisation that it might survive a nuclear war (assuming anything worth commanding survived) came later.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Charles Griswold, 2 May 2007 @ 11:02pm

      Re: Nuclear War

      I thought that the purpose Arpanet was to ensure that, in the event of a nuclear war, our top military leaders would still be able to download pr0n.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    XCetron, 2 May 2007 @ 10:43pm

    Yea its experimenting but this is definitely not good publicity, theyre gonna get laugh at for a few months now.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Joe Smith, 2 May 2007 @ 10:53pm

    stress testing

    They should buy the homeless guy a meal. They'll learn more about system reliability from this unpredicted event than they would from months of simulating problems with the system.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    zcat, 2 May 2007 @ 11:50pm

    Not a new problem

    I few years back some 'homies' decided to light a fire in a rail tunnel that goes through the middle of Hamilton. The fire ended up burning through a big bundle of fiber cutting off internet to Waikato University, a few big companies, and some smaller ISPs. It also caused major bandwidth problems for our two major Teleco's who both had fiber in that tunnel.

    And I've lost count of the number of times a major fiber has been cut by thieves looking for copper to steal..

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jess, 3 May 2007 @ 12:35am

    Too fast

    The internet has grown too fast for people to look into building redundancy. People with "me" complexes want their internet now and don't care if it might take a couple decades to get it reliable enough for them to be online 80% of the time. Until its down that is.

    Also the military most likely won't lose their connectivity so it won't do anything to knock it down just to give the military issues.


    ---Can you imagine Iran in charge of part of the internet? They'd shut it down until all the porn was removed. And that's just not nice!!!--"Me"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Ben Robinson, 3 May 2007 @ 1:47am

    I often hear Americans talking about X alarm fires, e.g. it was a 2 alarm fire. What does that actually mean?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    myinnershadow, 3 May 2007 @ 1:58am

    fire alarm

    generally speaking a X alarm fire is in reference to the number of fire stations called to the fire, i think its only 1-5 even if there are more.
    Justin Pakosky

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    kawlisse, 3 May 2007 @ 6:45am

    Doctor in New york "Ok here I am going to do a gastric bypass" ... (internet2 goes down) "oh! shit what just happened" Patient in Boston "O my god they ripped out my liver, WTF"

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Tim, 5 May 2007 @ 11:16am

    What ever happened to Bum Fights dot com?

    So they take bumfights. com offline, and then this happens.
    It is a slippery slope we are on!

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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