Oliver (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} okosut) wrote,@ 2007-12-12 13:19:00 |
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Google-sale
There is a concept for a coordinated attack against a society called a fire sale, when you take down the communication, transportation, financial, and utility networks in close succession. It was recently featured in "Live Free or Die Hard". I've determined that a good fire sale would have to take down Google as its first target.
About an hour ago, I was working away (or at least pretending to do so), when suddenly, gchat stopped working. Thinking this was some hiccup in gmail, I refreshed. But it didn't come back. Usually that means that the ethernet cable has become dislodged, but no, it was firmly in place. Now the network must have been down, so I checked the Washington Post website. It was working. A few more checks and I realized that Google, and only Google, was not working. Panic set in. What sort of horrific natural disaster would take down Google and nothing else?
I told my officemate, who discovered the same thing on his machine. After about a minute of discussion, I realized that, through the thin walls in my building, I could hear the people in the adjacent office also discussing the lack of Google. We rushed over there and continued talking with them, as I was increasingly coming to grips with the enormity of the event.
Soon the cell phones popped out, as we called everyone we knew, trying to determine how far-ranging this catastrophe was. Finally our fears subsided as we realized that it was only people within Cornell who were experiencing the problem. A few more minutes passed before Google finally came back. Disaster averted.
Our best guess is that it was some Cornell DNS issue or something (though I hear rumors that something similar may have happened at Caltech...). But still, I'm amazed how instantly it affected everyone around me. Because once Google goes down, how could you find out what's going on?
There is a concept for a coordinated attack against a society called a fire sale, when you take down the communication, transportation, financial, and utility networks in close succession. It was recently featured in "Live Free or Die Hard". I've determined that a good fire sale would have to take down Google as its first target.
About an hour ago, I was working away (or at least pretending to do so), when suddenly, gchat stopped working. Thinking this was some hiccup in gmail, I refreshed. But it didn't come back. Usually that means that the ethernet cable has become dislodged, but no, it was firmly in place. Now the network must have been down, so I checked the Washington Post website. It was working. A few more checks and I realized that Google, and only Google, was not working. Panic set in. What sort of horrific natural disaster would take down Google and nothing else?
I told my officemate, who discovered the same thing on his machine. After about a minute of discussion, I realized that, through the thin walls in my building, I could hear the people in the adjacent office also discussing the lack of Google. We rushed over there and continued talking with them, as I was increasingly coming to grips with the enormity of the event.
Soon the cell phones popped out, as we called everyone we knew, trying to determine how far-ranging this catastrophe was. Finally our fears subsided as we realized that it was only people within Cornell who were experiencing the problem. A few more minutes passed before Google finally came back. Disaster averted.
Our best guess is that it was some Cornell DNS issue or something (though I hear rumors that something similar may have happened at Caltech...). But still, I'm amazed how instantly it affected everyone around me. Because once Google goes down, how could you find out what's going on?
