Over the last couple of days Research In Motion (RIM) had a problem when one of their switches failed and then the backup didn’t come online as planned.
In a statement released Tuesday, the company said the "messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested."
What makes this interesting is that when the switch (at least that’s what they’re claiming) failed and the backup system didn’t kick in millions of people were without texting and internet connections on their Blackberries for a few days.
And were they mad!
Now, my Tracfone is nowhere near as important to me as these devices appear to be millions of users world wide; however, it did get me thinking. Supposedly we live with redundant systems that will come online if the main system fails with our major services: electric, communications, and power.
This was an annoyance for most people, but what happens when there’s a grid failure and the backup fails for our electrical service? It’s happened many times and the results are rarely good when the power goes out for an extended period of time.
The Internet was designed by DARPA as a communications system in case of nuclear war, so one would think that we’re safe from big outages, but I wonder what would happen if a powerful virus or a few strategic switches went down at the same time incapacitating at least 75% of the ‘net ? Imagine trying to get online and there’s no internet? Most businesses today are dependent on computers to operate and the internet to communicate in one way or another. Email, texting, video conferencing, VOIP (voice over IP), and on and on.
It seems we’ve placed an awful lot of eggs in one basket as a civilization doesn’t it? Hey, I love the ‘net! Don’t think I’m arguing against it because I’m not, but sit for a minute and think what would happen if you tried to get online and there was no connection. First of all you wouldn’t be able to cruise to your favorite web site www.shtfblog.com. Horrors! And there would be no email, no online news (for that’s worth), nothing. How would it affect you?
Imagine people all over the country sitting down and seeing the same thing. Who ya gonna call? Probably your ISP, but they’ll be so backed up with phone calls that you’ll never get through.
People were mad when some of the services on their Blackberries stopped working, so imagine no communication at all other than land lines.
Have your communications plans ready folks! You never know when you’ll need them.
How do you think the world would handle a breakdown of the Internet?
-Jarhead Survivor
BTW:
The weight loss continues. I’m down about 9 lbs in three weeks, which is a little fast for weight loss, so I’m going to try and slow it down a bit. A healthy weight loss is around one to two pounds a week over a long period of time. When you first start out you might lose five or ten lbs (depending on how much you have to lose) at first, but eventually it should go down to one or two pounds.
Also, the audit is going well. I hit the last of the grapes today, but I’ve got enough oranges and apples for at least another week.
27 comments
I did not have notable problems with my Blackberry. Should the i-net fail, cell phones fail….oh well….gimme some wire and a tree and I am transmitting. Folks should seriously consider Amateur radio…I did…got my ticket.
Curious warlock, how do you see using long range (say over 50 miles) 2-way communication in survival scenarios? Just asking as I see many comments from HAMs on surv sites, but never much on how they plan to use their equipment, and to what advantage, if the SHTF.
I can understand the advantages of reliable short range 2-way comms – but beyond that, not much. The government permission slip makes even less sense IMO. What am I missing here?
From what I remember (long time ago, mind), long-term ham communications can stretch across half the planet (or farther) under the right conditions.
There are already protocols in place for communicating over ham freqs now… shouldn’t be much different post-SHTF.
> How do you think the world would handle a breakdown of the Internet?
After a week they might start looking other humans in the eye while waiting four hours in the checkout line at the supermarket.
Hahaha, that is great & so true! Let me add that it would move people away from the Darwinian method of communication with thumbs.
I had a client a few years back whom I had asked for her cell number to keep her up to date (I’m extremely hands-on). She was very successful & said she did not own one because she enjoyed her privacy. Life can go on without being shackled to these modern devices.
That’s an interesting concept. On problem is that the POS systems usually are connected to some sort of network. If the Internet is down, I’m thinking that the in store (or corporate wide) network wouldn’t fare much better.
This reminds me of a George Carlin act…
Warning: CONTAINS PROFANITY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1zoEjBraNI
A breakdown of the Internet would mean a breakdown of society in general will have had to happen first.
Let me explain a bit…
Blackberry’s network failed because RIM (the company that makes the phones) is stupid enough to keep a choke-hold over their entire push-email network infrastructure. This means any failure in the Blackberry Enterprise Network doesn’t have much (if any) redundancy, and is easily prone to failure. A key router or two goes down, and *poof* – no more Blackberry service in a region, or perhaps the world.
The Internet on the other hand was originally designed to withstand a nuclear war. I could unplug most of the routers on the planet, and even though it would be dog-slow, the Internet as a whole would still remain up.
Off-topic: That was the one thing that irritated me on the show Jericho – the ease with which the Internet was subdued to fit the plot (hint: it’s impossible to pull off like that) . Other tech irritants were the IP addresses that had numbers *way* higher than 254 in the octets (an IP address starting with 900-something? really? They could have used 127.something and pulled off the plot perfectly w/o anyone complaining – plus it would be a neat inside geek joke 🙂 ). Oh, and then there’s the improbable perfect delivery of video at full unbuffered 780p to every computer, laptop, and etc on the continent – even in BFE Kansas, after a multi-city nuclear attack, and over a typical (for then) 802-11b/g wireless connection.
And here my only complaint was the stupid survivability that the Jericho road block had against the Raven Wood convoy.
It wouldn’t be good. Too many businesses are extremely reliant on it. I accidentally bricked an edge router in one of our largest market areas several years ago at my old job. I had a “polite” little phone call from network ops within a minute or two to thank me for my job well done and the SHTF really hit once the call center was inundated with angry enterprise customers (who called via cellphone because I knocked their voice lines out too). I’ve never been a fan of VoIP since..
Heh – don’t feel bad… we’ve all pulled boners before 🙂
You’re perfectly right, though – business network connections usually come with SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that often have large sums of money at stake if things go splat.
The closest I’ve seen was a satellite manufacturing facility at my old job taken out for two days because of a dumbass CAL-TRANS backhoe operator digging up a fiber line, taking out half of Ventura County (California). The site lost about $900k in product manufacturing over those two days. The state actually paid up for that one…
I use a cell phone. It is turned off 99% of the time but if I need to call someone I turn it on. I do not understand people who are texting, on the phone or otherwise addicted to their electronic devices. I find the phone a distraction and I’m so happy we finally canceled our landline. The chances of me getting or needing a blackberry are zero. Get outside and enjoy life.
GWTW – same here. Mrs Jarhead just called me and told me I’d left my cell phone on the deck for the last couple of nights and now it’s totally waterlogged. Oops! I knew it was missing, but I do that all the time and don’t think much about it.
GWTW,
My smartphone has an app (application) that can locate any commercial enterprise such as a WalMart in any city across the US. You may find it useful in finding McDonald’s restaurants(?) while on the road. Could save time & gas, I mean petrol.
I’m so funny I can hardly stand it.
True. My wife’s smart phone can go on the internet and find anything we want/need. I indulge that and it does indeed sometimes come in handy. I just wish she would shut it off the rest of the time.
The Blackberry I have is a turd. If it wasn’t free from my job I’d never pay for it. Excellent point on the what if. I’ve started going through the trouble of printing off the stuff I think is really important just in case we have a grid down scenario.
Same here. I have a Blackberry courtesy of my employer, and no other phone aside from my land line. Saving $1200/year that way. 🙂
In the unfortunate event that cell phones, internet, heck the whole doggon grid were to go down whether by natural disaster, man made disaster, or the government itself, yes, there would be a week or so of everybody whining, crying and freaking out about it. Then they would come to the realization that the world has not completely ended just because they can’t use their gadgets. Businesses would do a quick restructure as best they could so as not to lose extensive money due to lack of communication. Kids would learn how to open a book, or ride their bike over to their friends house to actually talk to them. Millions of people go everyday without the luxury of cell phones, computers, and such and manage wonderfully. These things are only a necessity if it is readily accesable.
Jarhead, congrats on being down 9 lbs. I hit 5 the day before last and I am actually starting to feel better. I know right now it’s more psychological than physical, but that’s okay with me.
Let’s say the Internet & cell service got knocked out, would there really be anarchy? Heck no – it may be inconvenient but so what?
Let us not forget the wise saying “necessity is the mother of invention”. We seem to overly concern ourselves more with the what if’s rather than what is, in this silly & evolved entitled culture.
Becoming aware of “reality” in terms of less finances we used to buy “things” is one of the most fantastic benefits of a down economy. Funny, we all seem to be surviving pretty well except for the manufactured thoughts of the “what if” paranoia.
So boo-hoo if we can’t have our smartphone, Internet, which hives us the ability to read some senseless diatribe, that is just a distraction from real life.
Now if I could my iPad working for my 6 year old, I could get back to texting my neighbor …
Hey – ever seen the South Park episode where the Internet went down?
For some odd reason that’s the picture I keep getting…
I’ve never seen South Park – not my type of humor.
The biggest thing about the Internet going down, imho, would be the loss of credit card/debit card processing. A silver coin for 10 gallons of gas might be more readily accepted then even cash at that point.
Very few places have the ability to process credit cards the old way and if I was a store owner I would expect all the criminals to pass bad cards on me to take advantage of the situation. Around here after they steal one, they rush to a gas station and try to sell a tankful of gas for $20-$30 with some kind ofBSexcuse.
Yes and no – a lot of debit/credit transactions are still driven by modem, so as long as there is a telecom structure of some sort up, credit/debit cards in many areas (especially remote) can be processed.
My iPhone died a little while back and I went through iPhone withdrawals for a couple of days. But then, I started noticing how I never got distracted or had to stop doing something and check what was going on on the net or look up some bit of trivia RIGHT NOW that really could wait for later. I ended up going for a couple of weeks with no phone at all and then got a cheap regular cell phone with a pay as you go plan.
The net going down for a while would be a huge disruption, but life would go on and some people might even decide they like it better without the net. Personally, I’d miss online banking and the blogs I read.
I refuse to get any smart phone. It’d be a waste of my time and money. I pine for the old days when the best cell phone was a Nokia that had a monochrome LCD display and that snake game came free with the phone. I even had an external antenna for it. Ahh the memories. And the battery lasted forever.
Girlfriend was driving to meet a friend way over the other side of town. I’d warned her that Blackberry comms was intermittent(we got he warning through our work – we use Blackberries a lot).
Alas for her, her only map in the car was google maps on her Blackberry. She dumped the paper copy years ago. She had to go to a different place to meet the friend, and now she was totally stuck. Her only option was to call me(at work) to look up maps on my internet connection, and guide her through.
So if you had a bug out situation, with lots of people taking unfamiliar routes, and you had failed service then, expect lots of trouble.
It really is scary that we are all so linked into technology. We sell and manufacture freeze dried foods and survival products at http://www.survivalcave.com and most of our business is conducted over the internet. It is ironic that we sell products that help people prepare when there is no technology and we use technology to sell these products.