Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Reach out and touch someone...
In this age of global technology and the internet, when calling my friend in Beijing is a matter of remembering the time difference and dialing a few extra digits, and when email is now the favored mode of communication, it's important to remember just how fragile and tenuous those connections actually are.
When a major earthquake near Tawain cut off most phone and internet services in Asia just before Christmas, it effectively cut that part of the world off from everyone else. I could not reach Beijing by phone or computer, and she could not call out or access the internet for a week or more.
Repairing that connection, even today, is not a matter of rebooting a computer or resetting a switch. It requires a major marine expedition to locate and repair the actual cables that run along the sea floor, connecting all of us, all over the world.
The malfunctioning cable section can be fixed on board the ship. A skilled technician or "jointer" splices the glass fibers and uses powerful adhesives to attach the new section of cable to each cut end of the original—a process that can take up to 16 hours. The repaired cable is then lowered back to the seabed on ropes.
Any physical network is susceptible to disruption by virtue of "act of God." At the same time, though, the Internet does allow problem spots to be routed around when a problem or failure occurs. The bigger problem comes in with how the smaller entities route around this problem.
That said, the lesson here is that the various entities that relied on this large connection is a lesson in contingency planning. Always have a plan B, and make sure plan B works.
From what I can see here on the ground, the Chinese don't plan: period. They don't even publish a bus or train schedule -- so who's to know when they're late? As for contingency planning, that's coming across as another one of those funky western concepts. Hopefully this recent outage will herald a new approach.
Any physical network is susceptible to disruption by virtue of "act of God." At the same time, though, the Internet does allow problem spots to be routed around when a problem or failure occurs. The bigger problem comes in with how the smaller entities route around this problem.
That said, the lesson here is that the various entities that relied on this large connection is a lesson in contingency planning. Always have a plan B, and make sure plan B works.