Internet Not working. Hope it’s not a blackout! History of Blackouts of Internet world !!

Internet in so many ways is part of our lives, accomplishing almost every task that we could ever imagine. Even a thought of a world without the internet can scare you for a bit. Yes, you would get used to it, since humans are meant to be adjusting by nature. But again, we might be a hundred years back in time. Cross-nation cultural education and distribution, economic transfer, media and marketing, and so much more are all made possible by Internet existence.

It’s so frustrating sometimes when your internet stops working or a particular website is on upgrading mode. Thanks to the IT support service providers, who help in getting it back. But imagine, if a globally accessed website gets shut down on a global scale- what rage it could bring among the loyal users of the particular site. Not only affecting the present business, but it also leads to the spreading of grapevines regarding data security or identity theft like wildfire. 

Generally termed as “blackout”, it had been a common phenomenon in the past and had led Internet giants to suffer heavy economic losses and public outbursts. It’s only in days of the crisis, you get to understand what public sentiments could lead up to. Sometimes even IT support services can’t touch the blackout so big.

Well on that note, let’s see what all Internet blackouts have been witnessed in the past 

Oops! Dug too deep!

It would sound funny to you, but back in 2011, the whole country of Armenia had to suffer a 5 hours loss of internet connectivity due to a lady’s ambitious digging task. Actually, not so sure if she really found out the scrap metal she was excavating so deep into the ground but did damage internet cables that made the whole country go www-less, for five hours. Then the IT support services stepped in to save the day. The moral is: Internet wires are very fragile. 

DDoS – Chill runs up the spine!      

Well technically yes, since so many damages and blackouts have been blamed upon Distributed Denial of System (DDoS) attacks, it’s important to mention here. Almost all big Internet giants like Yahoo, CNN, eBay, Dell, and Amazon have been severely attacked by these DDoS attacks, from time to time, and have faced massive wrath from internet users for long hours of inconveniences caused. Project Rivolta, in February of 2000, set out by Mafiaboy (Michael Calce, then 15 years old) bought Yahoo! down by one such attack. Nobody would have ever thought what destruction a 15-year kid brings, to then the most popular search engine.

Internet’s own Frankenstein Monster       

Well, have you given a thought to the total size of data present over the Internet? Well if yes, it looks like somebody not only thought but took some desperate measures to analyse the total capacity of Internet shared material. Robert Tappan created a worm and set it over web medium for a Columbus ride. Homework is important – if done poorly leads to drastic consequences. The worm replicated itself and infected almost every system during the late 1988’s. It became quite difficult to get rid of that kind of worm since it affects the Internet, speed, and computers every time. Boston Museum of Science, still has the snippets of code in a Floppy Disk (nostalgia, right?) as a showcase.

Gmail had it too

Frankly speaking, saved the best for the last. August 2008, as everybody knows, didn’t go very well with Gmail. 1 Billion Internet users had to suffer the same fate for a few hours at least. It looked simple sometimes, but for people relying on business with heavy mail communication – it became a heavy outage. Learning the issues well, Gmail must-have ensured some precautionary measures which finally landed to another blackout day of February 2009. Well, Google made sure to publicize backing up of email regularly, as a result of two blackouts in less than 9 months. Sounds great, at least you have old mail, in case you cannot receive or send new.  

Wrapping it up:

Its year 1950 which brought concepts of node linking and data sharing through “wide area networking” – doesn’t it sound familiar. And the 1960s become the year when the ARPANET project was launched under Robert Taylor and Lawrence Roberts. You might not know, but the name “Internet” itself was not heard until 1974. Well since then, Internet has not looked back. However, the glitches are always there as nothing is perfect. IT support services always try to advance and offer the best solutions. 

Well, next time you face an Internet issue, call your friend – this could have been a world phenomenon you might get to witness.