Write Robert MacMillan of the Washington Post, \u201cno refrigeration, no subways, no smooth traffic flow, no air conditioning\u2014well, at least the Internet worked.<\/p>\n
So did the phones, at least in theory. That was the big message in the tech media\u2019s coverage of the mega-blackout that took down the power grid serving much of the northeast United States and southern Canada yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Internet 1, Blackout 0<\/strong><\/p>\n No refrigeration, no subways, no smooth traffic flow, no air conditioning\u2014well, at least the Internet worked.<\/p>\n So did the phones, at least in theory. That was the big message in the tech media\u2019s coverage of the mega-blackout that took down the power grid serving much of the northeast United States and southern Canada yesterday.<\/p>\n Oh, and the FBI said the Blaster worm had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n The largest blackout in U.S. history did not affect Internet service because the data networks are \u201credundant, robust\u201d and all those other cliches that tech companies typically apply to their networks, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia-based Keynote Systems, which monitors average traffic times across the net\u2019s backbones, said it saw no appreciable slowdown of traffic when the power cut hit,\u201d the BBC continued. \u201c\u2018As is true of the telephone system, the internet and major websites have been engineered with redundancy and backup power systems to withstand power outages,\u2019 said Eric Siegel, a spokesman for Keynote. \u2018As long as there isn\u2019t major physical damage,\u2019 he said, \u2018such as that caused by the July 2001 Baltimore tunnel fire, or major congestion, such as that caused by the SQL Slammer worm in January 2003, the internet and the web have enough redundancy and resilience to withstand most problems.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The BBC also cited AT&T spokesman Dave Johnson\u2019s rosy comment: \u201cThere is no impact that we are aware of. All data switching centers and long-distance switching centers have large battery racks and diesel generators which automatically kick in whenever we have a power failure such as this.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n