Before you bite me let’s understand that being a dummy is good. Crash dummy, test dummy… ha ha I’m messing with you.
So, on the 4th of October 2021 a significant part of the internet went missing. Facebook and its associated apps stopped working for a good number of hours and it felt like all hell had been let loose. The highlight of it for me though, was in three phases: the trolling, the comments section and the chaos in the background.
The trolling: Twitter became the safe haven for those who may be partially or completely addicted to social media. Using it as an opportunity, the official twitter handle went on a rampage with very delicious memes and catchy tweets making fun of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp (rightfully so too, I needed a break anyway). Here's a few you'd like.
The comments section: while I’d have loved to pull up some tweets showing the madness that took place in the comments section of WhatsApp when they tweeted they had gone down, I think it’s best I let your imagination do this one. So think of anything people can say from telling your side piece not to come over because your partner is around, to those waist-bead posting WhatsApp vendors complaining about losing millions. I have no comment.
The chaos: this is by far my favourite, with a suspicious tweet going out that the Facebook domain name (means registered website name) was for sale. Then Jack Dorsey, our presido, the founder of twitter doing something similar to what you may call payback. Ha ha. You’d like it.
So who are the culprits?
Think of a tour guide. Think of this tour guide in khaki shorts with a torch and the safari hat. The type that missed auditions for Tomb Raider. Got it? Good.
Now the way the internet works is: your sim carriers are tour guides. They only know the area around them. So if your sim carrier is the tour guide for say, Kenya, they only know Kenya VERY WELL. Other sim carriers will be masters of their own locations too.
So if you need to go to Japan for instance, your tour guide will link you up with the tour guide in Japan. Naturally, your tour guide will only know a few but not all things about Japan. So they will set things up for you.
But to share this information they need a form of communication right? That form is called the gatekeeper.
When you need information from a website in another country, your sim carrier will send a message to the gatekeeper in that country asking for permission to speak with the sim carrier there. This is how sim carriers communicate. This is how websites communicate. They don’t know everything about each other, only a bit.
As in the image above, that is the entire process.
Before we continue, I’d like to point out that because I’m smart and I wear glasses doesn’t make me “el professor”. Thus by extension, me using nicknames for the geeky science stuff doesn’t make them… bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao.
Moving on…
Sim carriers are called ISPs. (Internet Service Providers): they are responsible for not just your WiFi and mobile data bundles or speed, but also for giving you access to your favourite apps and websites. Why? Because they know all about the websites and apps that run in your location.
Tour guides, remember?
Gatekeepers are called BGPs. (Border Gateway Protocols): they are the forms of communication that ISPs use to share information. They are so important that if they decide to not connect one ISP to another, it simply means no web or app access for you. I’m sure you once tried to download an app and you got a “this is not available in your country” message.
Yeah, blame BGPs for that.
What’s worse than losing access to a website?
Losing access to the internet.
That’s exactly what happened with Facebook yesterday. Facebook is a global company running platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, which means they have their information being distributed to thousands of sim carriers (ISPs) through millions of gatekeepers (BGPs) in over 100 countries!
So it’s a little weird when yesterday, all the gatekeepers just stopped working. This is because:
if gatekeepers aren’t giving the needed access/connections
it means sim carriers can’t gain access
and if sim carriers can’t gain access it means you are stuck. So now you see why your apps wouldn’t work and your messages weren't delivering.
TL;DR: no, it wasn’t an intern who pressed the wrong button or pulled the wrong plug. Think of it more like a strike.
Hehehe… it’s not like the internet now has a mind of its own.
That’ll be crazy… right?