RIM Clueless about Cause of BlackBerry Outage

[scandal 951]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/241917/rim_clueless_about_cause_of_blackberry_outage.html

RIM Clueless about Cause of BlackBerry Outage

By Antony Savvas, Computerworld-UK Oct 14, 2011 10:24 am

BlackBerry maker RIM still does not know why the core switch at its Slough data center crashed, to cause what it now admits is its biggest network outage in its history.

At a service update conference held on Thursday afternoon RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis said: "We don't know why the switch failed and why service never failed over to another alternative switch."

Asked why the company couldn't avoid network traffic backlogs by re-routing traffic by bypassing Slough, RIM didn't give a straight answer.

It said the company used a "complicated global system" and it didn't want to "infect" other parts of the network, and that it "stood by that decision."

The plain truth, however, is that RIM did not have the capacity to re-route traffic to the countries served by Slough, as it is one of only two main network operating centers in the world used by RIM. As a result, the traffic that stopped at Slough backed up to its other main NOC in Waterloo, Canada and other parts of the grid and crashed the whole RIM network.

The simplicity of RIM's network gives it an advantage of usually delivering users' e-mails in a speedy fashion through the use of compression. It also allows the company to fully encrypt users' data -- something some governments, in the Middle East and India for instance, aren't happy about.

But the third major BlackBerry outage since 2007 will put the company's network under further scrutiny, particularly as RIM's devices are facing even stiffer competition from the iPhone and Android devices.

A 2007 outage in North America was caused by a software upgrade, and a further North America outage in 2008 was the result of a router upgrade. While the focus on the latest outage has been on a failed core switch, the Guardian newspaper said it understood the problem was linked to a database update. As with all past RIM outages -- small and large -- we may have to wait some time to get more definitive answers.

After the two previous large outages in North America, RIM added two further data centers to its network in 2009 to increase capacity.

On the question of compensation for RIM users, Lazaridis said it "was something we are thinking about." For the last 18 months, he said, RIM had enjoyed "99.97 uptime" to its network.

There was however an outage in Canada and Latin America last month, and at least one significant outage that affected the UK last year.

Earlier today, Ovum analyst Nick Dillon told ComputerworldUK.com that RIM may have to add regional NOCs to help re-route traffic, if RIM could not keep a lid on future outages.

[mawilson 2,133]

Nice - a technology company that "has no clue" why its products are not working.

Good thing they keep detailed logs to help them diagnose the problem [/sarcasm].

[scandal 951]

On the question of compensation for RIM users, Lazaridis said it "was something we are thinking about."

I'm waiting for that one. As if.

We had a production outage on Wed as a result of the Blackberry blackout. Not on our side, but one of our vendors. I sent them an email telling them to hold off on a production change that we weren't ready to implement. They didn't get the email, put the change in anyway. You think RIM is gonna pay for the out trades?

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Buy an iPhone 4S. Problem solved.

[MyLittlePony 340]

BlackBerry is so early 2000.