Internet Meltdown - Fail Whale - Down for just me?

I just picked up my hard copy edition of July CRNtech. Inside I found another article about the Internet Meltdown. You can find CRNtech on http://www.crn.com/. You can search for “Internet Meltdown” from their search box in the upper right of the page. It was just before the back cover of the hard copy version.

I’m not going to quote their article - I’ll let you go visit and read it right on there if you like, but basically with all the Michael Jackson news and events a lot of users got on the Internet to Twitter (the “Fail Whale” supposedly happens on there) and to read and post on web sites and blogs and such. Some large web sites and services had problems remaining operational under that stress of the massive amounts of network traffic. Even Google had an Infrastructure problem that cause it (or them?) to shut down any searches related to Michael Jackson.

The article, which is in a journal mostly for I.T. technical type of people, does bring a good point that I thought was worth mentioning. A lot of users and even companies don’t know what to do when they experience network (Internet) troubles. They may not understand why they can’t get to web sites and services like Twitter at times (especially in situations like huge events causing massive Internet Traffic Surges.)

There are some tools that come with Windows and Mac OS X that can be used to “ping” and “traceroute” (in Windows “tracert”) from your computer to test a web site or web domain name to see if it is reachable. Personally I like better how “traceroute” works in Unix (Linux) or a Mac OS X terminal.

If you ping or tracert a web site name it will tell you…

1.) That DNS is working and resolves the name to the Internet Protocol (I.P.) Address on the Internet.

2.) That your own Internet router and perhaps the one at your Internet Service Provider (I.S.P.) is working. If you get to hops 3 and 4 or better on a trace then chances are your Internet connection is still up.

3.) If part of the Internet is still actually there besides you and your ISP. You will start seeing other ISP or Backbone Provider names in the hop listings or at least the IP Address range should show changing out of the range of your nearby ISP routers to other routers on the Internet.

* Many content providers - like Google and Microsoft - or anyone distributing video and such content to a LOT of users - usually has a distributed system set up to handle load-balancing of the traffic and to provide a “presence” in more geographic areas, and also to cache the traffic (to save it in a place, in a server, much closer to the users) to speed up the access for you.

The Internet is made of a lot of backbone carriers carrying traffic for the long haul and carrying the bulk of the traffic going both near and far. There are communications circuits, Routers big and small that handle the traffic, and Interconect Points where different backbone providers and other large companies peer together to exchange traffic. There are often multiple paths or “routes” that your Internet Traffic can take. The proper routes are usually announced by Routing Protocols automatically - mostly the larger companies and backbone providers (Internet Service Providers included) by using Autonomous System Numbers (ASN’s) to basically say “Everything for the following chunks of IP Address Space comes here…”. Other routers will trust that and that’s what they will do - send it to the big guys, who distribute it down to the smaller guys, who distribute it down to the servers or end users.

Sometimes the announced path goes down. A router or circuit failure occurs. It takes some length of time for the system to figure that out, and then announce the failure. Hopefully there is an alternative path that can then be announce and the traffic again flows normally. Sometimes you will notice that your favorite web site won’t load. You get an error in your program or web browser. A few minutes later (or longer?) it seems to reappear. If it lasts more than 15 minutes then likely something more severe is going on.

A neat web site that I found recently when I had this exact question was:

Is it down for just me? Or for everybody? And interestingly there was a web site just for that question: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/. So you might want to try that the next time you have that question. Am I just down? The web site? or Everbody?

It’s very unlikely that the whole Internet is down. Although I often here that question “Is the Internet down?”. I’m usually pretty nice when I answer that, although it’s tempting to say “NO the Internet’s not down. But maybe you are”.

* Anyway … I do consulting on communications for Sail and Motor Yachts as well as companies and individuals on land. So if you are looking for that kind of help - give me a call or drop me an email.

—
Alan Spicer

DBA Alan Spicer Telcom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
Computer Services, Wired/Wireless Networking,
Cell/Sat/Landline Communications, General Consulting…
Marine, Business, Small Office and Home Office (SOHO)

* Cost Savings and Integration of Multiple Internet Technologies
on board Sail and Motor Yachts * Documentation, Operating
Instructions, and Support after the Sale *

* http://www.marinetelecom.net/
* http://www.internetforyachts.net/
* http://www.wifiyacht.net/
* 954-683-3426

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This entry was posted on 15. July 2009 at 23:24 and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.