What! Canada 75% internet outage

I just read a Facebook article that said there were massive power outages in Canada and ATMs were down along with Power, the poster asked if this was true. Another poster verified it as a fact and advised an Australian contact to get some cash before it happened over there. Can anyone from Canada let us know what's going on?

a reply to: anonentity

A link to the article, or a copy-paste of the pertinent text might be helpful.

Here's some more info posted on Friday.

Telecommunications giant Rogers is experiencing a massive outage on Friday morning that is impacting wireless, cable and internet customers across the country.

The outage began some time in the early hours of Friday morning, with a wide variety of services impacted.

Just before 9 a.m. ET on Friday, the company confirmed via its Twitter account that something was indeed awry.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

There was a big cellular outage yesterday on the Rogers Network, very big telecom player here, caused a lot of issues, lasted 16 hours before I had any service. There are 2 major players here, this is why monopolies are not good for anyone.

I'm not aware of any power failures, and the cell service is working ok now, but this affected anything tied to the network, businesses could not function, 911 could not be accessed..etc, it was quite the cluster#$%^!bc.ctvnews.ca...

a reply to: anonentity

C’mon man...search engines are your friend, Facebooks full of idiots who have nothing better todo than sensationalise gossip, hearsay and low-info ‘news’

a reply to: anonentity

I tried to verify the claims, but it looks like Canada does not share it's LIVE electricity consumption/generation data anywhere. Since the Canadian and US-American grid is connected, it would have impact on US power plants too.

It would be visible in the data on the US side, too. Power plants would have to regulate up or down to fetch the missing production, depends on the issue. If it's grid hardware related and Canadian powerplants are isolated from the consumers, US power plants would have to up production to keep the grids frequency stable or open the switches so the whole grid is isolated. There may be brownouts happening locally though, as part of the grid management.

If powerplants are running and no consumer is reachable but the plant can feed the grid towards the US, then US power plants would regulate. If there was 75% outage, it would be all over the news. Not saying it isn't happening, but a bit too silent for this. Websites I subscribe to, would have written about it by now, even on this side of the globe.

a reply to: TDDAgain

it seemed it did go out any reason as to why?

a reply to: anonentity

Here's an explanation form Rogers Communications CEO.

Rogers said Saturday afternoon that services had been restored and its “network and systems are close to fully operational” after a systemwide wireless and Internet outage that began Friday morning.

In the first explanation of what happened, Staffieri said the company believes the network failed after a maintenance update in its core network, causing routers to malfunction early Friday morning.
www.bloomberg.com...

As far as IT can tell so far, it was a cascade failure of the networking hardware close to where the connection to the main fibre trunk is.

The backup/redundancy didn't catch it and the outage occured. They're not ruling anything out yet, because they're still investigating why the hardware failed.

But basically, it's one of those "Shi*t Happens" moments.

I work tech support for residential internet, but through an outside company. We get emails all the time about line issues and outages. Sometimes it's amazing any of it works.

Rogers is also in the process of sunsetting the older cable infrastructure in favour of the newer fiberoptic lines. Some customers are absolutely refusing to switch over. I'm sure this played a part, but I can't back it up.

All should be back up and "normal" by Monday, IT will have a better idea of what exactly happened by then.

a reply to: anonentity
There could be so many reasons, if there is a bigger outage. It's pure speculation.

In a nutshell, since electricity can not be stored in large quantities currently, it's generation on demand. Power plants and the grid measuring devices are constantly adapting the frequency. They also influence each other that way.

The shaft of the generator inside the powerplants (no matter what type) spins at a certain RPM, if you put a lot of load onto the grid, this shaft is slowed down due to the magnetic field inside the generator, as there is more torque used to keep it spinning at that RPM.

So imagine, if a power plant goes offline, all the other generator shafts in the rest of the power plants, now experience that additional load. This can lead to overregulation and a rolling blackout. Or grid quality suffers and endangers appliances in the grid. In 3 phase systems, phase shifting and potential shifting occurs too.

A good example would be one ocurance in Europe a few years ago. A bigger hardware failure led to a pump-water-storage power plant opening the flood gates and the turbines were fed water, other decoupling mechanisms were not responding, so the grid's frequency and voltage started to go up dramatic in that region. The only solution was to activate the water pumps, who pump up the water at night, to cycle the energy that way.

The other solution would have been, cutting off that section of the grid, make sure the rest of the local grid is stable and then switch on transformer stations one after another, after the power plants PLC system was working again.

I am still not getting any information about a 75% outage in Canada, though.

Add: Oh, it's about the internet, not the power grid, I see.... nevermind!

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: anonentity

Here's an explanation form Rogers Communications CEO.

Rogers said Saturday afternoon that services had been restored and its “network and systems are close to fully operational” after a systemwide wireless and Internet outage that began Friday morning.

In the first explanation of what happened, Staffieri said the company believes the network failed after a maintenance update in its core network, causing routers to malfunction early Friday morning.
www.bloomberg.com...

A couple things strike as weird about the wording of that article... The CEO should know and use the terminology better.

- Most rogers updates start ~ Midnite - 3 AM EST, a failed update wouldn't/shouldn't take 2+ hours to show itself.
- Routers aren't really used any more in most large backends, it's pretty much all managed switches. If you need the firewall functionality, you add it in seperately.

I'm still waiting for the "it was a Russian cyber attack, we must move troops to Ukraine now".

a reply to: anonentity

Klaus Swaube was saying how a cyber attack would be the next threat the world faces. According to a few members here though he’s a nobody and talking about the WEF is tedious.

a reply to: surfer_soul

You recognized it too? Since they announced that in July last year, there have been a lot of issues with digital payment because of sudden "faults" and such. Same for companies being hacked, you hear it a lot lately.

Whole companies shut down because nothing works anymore.

a reply to: TDDAgain

I heard they were running a simulation to test systems, kind of like event 201. Strange coincidence that when they run these “simulation drills” the real thing then happens.

I’m not looking forward to winter, I get the feeling things will get really chaotic by then.

a reply to: surfer_soul

It has a pattern, remember 911 drills, Boston Marathon ...

I wonder myself, does the WEF think it makes them look prophetic and competent to the general population, to announce such upcoming events and then they happen... or at what point more people are calling it out.

Said this a.m it was "maintenance"? (75%) of the country?¿??

Tsoukolos says 'It's Aliens!"

a reply to: anonentity
No one has mentioned that also country wide there was no access to debit transactions - only credit cards were being accepted for payments on goods. Caused quite an upheaval in business & we had what people were calling a bank run - on Friday, banks were lined up with peeps taking out cash.
All connected to the Rogers blackout.

Yes it was Canada wide on the Rogers network. It began around 3 or 4 am Friday morning. I just got internet and ignite TV back around noon today, Sunday. This was very disruptive for any Rogers customer. There are many smaller companies that piggyback off of Rogers infrastructure. All down.

When it began home internet and cellular were both down on the network. Cell phone said "no service" period. Later Saturday morning they were able to connect but for 911 calls only. By Saturday afternoon Cell phones were functional but you can't call Rogers..3 hr wait. This morning they just said "we are not taking calls at this time, try again later".

originally posted by: mysterioustranger
Said this a.m it was "maintenance"? (75%) of the country?¿??

Tsoukolos says 'It's Aliens!"

We have 2 telecom giants here, Rogers, and Telus, it was a cellular/net blackout, which caused a lot of issues. We allow monopolisation, then when something goes sideways, lots of people and business in the dark..so to speak.

We really are handicapped by the technology we have allowed to run our lives.