Massive intenet outage in Western US

[jim mcnamara]

as of 16:48 MST
https://downdetector.com/status/centurylink/map/

Century link affected a large area. Verizon and other providers were also affected to to line sharing/piggy-backing.

 

[StevieTNZ]

Good grief!

EDIT: news article - https://www.businessinsider.com.au/...outages-reported-nationwide-2018-12?r=US&IR=T

 

[jedishrfu]

Santa took out some lines while heading back home.

The map shows it to be isolated to individual cities although I imagine its much bigger than that.

Kind of reminds me of the 1987 ATT outage which took out the whole East coast of the US. It was a software bug in a new OS update for ATT network machines. Two things happened:

1) The ATT phone server would overload, transfer phones to the next one in line and reboot.
2) During the reboot, if any call came in it would reboot again creating network fibrillation where servers were caught in an endless reboot cycle.

At least that's how I remembered it was presented at the time by a shamefaced AT&T.

However, this very long article suggested the initial cause was that the AT&T technicians were attending a class about power failures and how to handle them with no one manning the network room to hear the actual alarms that the system was running on emergency battery power.

http://www.mit.edu/hacker/part1.html​

 

[OmCheeto]

I just received notice that there was a cyber attack around the same time.
They also said that there was still no claimed cause for the phone/internet outage, but I checked, and it appears to have been "a network card"?
Is that possible?

Report: Huge CenturyLink outage caused by bad networking card in Colorado
BY TOM KRAZIT on December 29, 2018 at 3:44 pm

Outage Start: December 27, 2018 08:40 GMT [Thursday]​

Not sure if the cyber attack is related or not.

Foreign cyberattack hits Los Angeles Times, Tribune newspapers across the country, triggering delays and distribution problems
By TONY BARBOZA, MEG JAMES and EMILY ALPERT REYES
DEC 29, 2018 | 7:30 PM

The attack seemed to have begun late Thursday night...​

Kind of suspicious though, being so close together.

 

[Tom.G]

An outage map as of December 28, 2018

A CenturyLink outage map on Dec. 28, 2018.Downdetector.com

And, in the vein of "New and Shiny" ≠ "Best"

In Boston, a man tried to call 911 with his cell phone to report a house fire on Friday but it didn't work due to the outage, according to Boston fire spokesman Mark Sanders.

That man was quick to pull an alarm on one of the city's old-fashion, street-side alert boxes at 5:14 a.m. ET, officials said. That sent a Morse code to dispatchers, telling them help was needed near box 1212 at the corner of Cooper and Endicott Streets in the old, densely populated North End neighborhood.

Response to 94 Endicott St. North End at approx. 5:14 AM for a building fire. Smoke showing on arrival. Fire was quickly extinguished. Because of today’s 911 outage the resident pulled the fire box. Fortunately, our fire box system has been operational since 1852. No injuries. pic.twitter.com/Pg69ksPqDo

— Boston Fire Dept. (@BostonFire) December 28, 2018
"It was a small fire that we were able to put out, but it could have been much worse" had the man not reached for the manual alarm, Sanders said.

There are still 1,249 such boxes still operating in Boston, using battery power and copper wiring that's not dependent on any utility company.

"There are people new to Boston who don't realize those still work and assume they're just there for historical purposes," Sanders said. "Back in 1852 (when the first boxes were erected), this was high technology."

(above from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...enturylink-wake-nationwide-911-outage-n952681)

Cheers,
Tom