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February 11, 2005
Bye bye, Internet
So I came in to school yesterday morning to have a meeting and get some work done, when I was told that the Internet was down. "Whaaat!?" I said, astonished. The professor I was meeting with had to reschedule the meeting, but his aide was unable to see his schedule, because there was no internet. I decided I would just go back to my office and start up on my work, when I realized it was all on the 'net. Sure, I could load things onto my USB key, but uploading it somewhere always seems more convenient to me for some reason. I was relatively shell-shocked, and surprised that I put myself in a position where I could not do anything because I was completely cut off from all my work (not to mention my main source of entertainment). Luckily, I had grading to do, and the professor requires the students to turn their work in on paper (which I found annoying at first), so I was able to get that done.
The thing that was really astonishing was that work must have stopped all across campus because of this internet interruption. I cannot imagine being one of the technicians trying to restore the system. Their phones must have been ringing off the hook. I'm sure professors were unable to give lectures (because their powerpoints were on the network), and many meetings were unsuccessful.
The repurcussions of losing the internet are severe, as yesterday's "experiment" showed. If that sucker were to be destroyed, we'd all be in some big trouble. But what to do? Do I (and those around me) stop depending on the net? Probably not, but let's just hope it never goes down indefinitely.
The original internet was developed by the U.S. Military in the late 1960s as an information transport system that was not vulnerable to single attacks. That is, it was a network built such that destroying one of its communication nodes would not cut off the entire system. This was obviously a Cold War effort to protect ourselves from devastating atomic bomb attacks. So why did the Internet die at Indiana University yesterday? I thought these computer systems were able to come up with their own work-arounds. I'm just full of questions...perhaps someone can explain this to me...
Posted at February 11, 2005 02:09 PM