Saturday, April 25, 2009
When is normal use a DOS attack?
Answer: when your network is undersized.
Most of us have heard about the iPhone debacle at SXSW Interactive in March, when there were so many iPhone users in Austin that AT&T's network was overwhelmed. Users of iPhones were frustrated, angry and unable to find the good parties.
I'm in Lafayette, Louisiana, at Festival International de Louisiane. It's a music festival, so the iPhone density isn't even close to SXSW. Nevertheless, last night my friends John St. Julien and Geoff Daily were sitting to my left and right. The music was loud. Texting was the way to go. Yet, both had to try numerous times to send messages on their iPhones. The failure message said, "Network unavailable."
[Eventually after multiple attempts, both John and Geoff were able to send their messages.]
Yogi Berra said it best, "so crowded nobody goes there anymore." The iPhone is an amazing advance. But if enough customers use it normally on AT&T's network, it is tantamount to a Denial of Service (DOS) attack.
AT&T, to its credit, is planning a massive cap-ex program for its wireless network. But it should have thought of that sooner. I wonder if AT&T's wireline division is learning anything. Or Time Warner Cable's broadband guys.
Normal use, and lots of it, should be the kind of problem a vendor WANTS to have. It shouldn't hose your service. It shouldn't give your PR face a black eye. It shouldn't require all kinds of post-hoc fixes.
Understanding how one's business is growing and planning accordingly is, in most businesses, an imperative. C'mon folks, WTF? (This stands for, "Where's the fiber?)
Most of us have heard about the iPhone debacle at SXSW Interactive in March, when there were so many iPhone users in Austin that AT&T's network was overwhelmed. Users of iPhones were frustrated, angry and unable to find the good parties.
I'm in Lafayette, Louisiana, at Festival International de Louisiane. It's a music festival, so the iPhone density isn't even close to SXSW. Nevertheless, last night my friends John St. Julien and Geoff Daily were sitting to my left and right. The music was loud. Texting was the way to go. Yet, both had to try numerous times to send messages on their iPhones. The failure message said, "Network unavailable."
[Eventually after multiple attempts, both John and Geoff were able to send their messages.]
Yogi Berra said it best, "so crowded nobody goes there anymore." The iPhone is an amazing advance. But if enough customers use it normally on AT&T's network, it is tantamount to a Denial of Service (DOS) attack.
AT&T, to its credit, is planning a massive cap-ex program for its wireless network. But it should have thought of that sooner. I wonder if AT&T's wireline division is learning anything. Or Time Warner Cable's broadband guys.
Normal use, and lots of it, should be the kind of problem a vendor WANTS to have. It shouldn't hose your service. It shouldn't give your PR face a black eye. It shouldn't require all kinds of post-hoc fixes.
Understanding how one's business is growing and planning accordingly is, in most businesses, an imperative. C'mon folks, WTF? (This stands for, "Where's the fiber?)
Technorati Tags: Cableco, Caps on Service, Cellco, DenialOfService, fiberoptics, FIOS, FirstMile, GeoffDaily, LafayetteLA, SustainingTechnology, TimeWarner
Comments:
Is that crowd density going to be normal through the year? If not, AT&T may find it not worth the expense to actually increase the number of towers.
It's like a normally small site which gets hits by the Slashdot effect once or twice a year. I would not advise the site to implement for the slashdotting.
Your events are just the equivalent in real life.
This isn't an excuse for bad service, just a note on why it may never be implemented.
It's like a normally small site which gets hits by the Slashdot effect once or twice a year. I would not advise the site to implement for the slashdotting.
Your events are just the equivalent in real life.
This isn't an excuse for bad service, just a note on why it may never be implemented.
Hi David,
Heavy usage at Festival Internatonal did bog down AT&T's network pretty badly. And, as you note, it wasn't even a tech festival. But it was a Lafayette festival. Geekdom in Lafayette actually attend music festivals in droves (check twitter :-) ) and they have converted from blackberry to iphones over the last 8-12 months. A while back I was at an 8 person table of techy type citizens at a "whatta we gonna do with the fiber" lunch convocation when the natural question arose of whether we could find a sack of crawfish that early in the season for the dinner meal. 8 of the 9 folks whipped out an iPhone to call their favorite provider....There were probably more iPhones in the city than the national numbers would lead one to project.
Not that we couldn't have done with one or two of those special vans AT&T used at the Obama inauguration. —Or to have the LUS WiFi network up and running with bandwidth fed from our local fiber. That would have been sweet. And it would have made it a whole lot easier to direct friends to the current hot venue. And to stream, as you suggested, the video out to the world.
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Heavy usage at Festival Internatonal did bog down AT&T's network pretty badly. And, as you note, it wasn't even a tech festival. But it was a Lafayette festival. Geekdom in Lafayette actually attend music festivals in droves (check twitter :-) ) and they have converted from blackberry to iphones over the last 8-12 months. A while back I was at an 8 person table of techy type citizens at a "whatta we gonna do with the fiber" lunch convocation when the natural question arose of whether we could find a sack of crawfish that early in the season for the dinner meal. 8 of the 9 folks whipped out an iPhone to call their favorite provider....There were probably more iPhones in the city than the national numbers would lead one to project.
Not that we couldn't have done with one or two of those special vans AT&T used at the Obama inauguration. —Or to have the LUS WiFi network up and running with bandwidth fed from our local fiber. That would have been sweet. And it would have made it a whole lot easier to direct friends to the current hot venue. And to stream, as you suggested, the video out to the world.
