In anticipation for the release of Ralph Breaks the Internet, Bluebird Network did some ‘breaking’ of our own! We asked our team some questions about how they see the internet and how Bluebird plays a role! Bluebird Network provides industry insight on the topic of: “Breaking the Internet”. Is it truly possible to do? If so, how? How would Bluebird fix it? How does Bluebird Network help prevent it? Check out our answers below!
1. Ralph Breaks the Internet visualizes the internet from more of a cultural viewpoint, with millions of websites making up major cities with different districts and buildings. From an engineering and operations standpoint, how do you visualize the internet? What part does Bluebird play in providing internet service?
From an engineering and operations standpoint, the internet would function like a series of libraries along a train track, the train track being the network itself and the libraries being information drop off and pickup points provided by the end user.
Bluebird Network provides Dedicated Internet Access to customers via a resilient, carrier grade IP/MPLS network. The connectivity that Bluebird Network provides to customers, enables full access to the entire Internet. This full access to the entirety of the internet is achieved through connectivity between Bluebird Network and other large Internet Service Providers (ISP). Each ISP is connected to several other ISPs creating a “web” of connectivity that spans the globe.
2. In doing research for Ralph Breaks the Internet, Disney employees toured One Wilshire, claimed to be the world’s most densely populated Meet-Me room, with around 260 ISPs carrying one-third of internet traffic from the U.S. to Asia. What role does a meet-me room play in providing internet to customers? What are some of Bluebird Network’s local Meet-me rooms and how does Bluebird maintain them?
Bluebird Network has presence in Mid-West major “meet-me-rooms”, usually a connectivity room within a “Carrier Hotel”, where major ISPs and content providers have presence. Bluebird Network connects to meet-me-rooms in Kansas City 1102 Grand, St. Louis 900 Walnut and 210 Tucker, and Chicago 350 E. Cermak. Within these meet-me-rooms Bluebird connects to other ISPs, content providers and customers.
3. Now, the term ‘break the internet’ usually refers to causing a large commotion on the world wide web with many social networking sites and news outlets discussing the same thing. In telecom terms, is it possible to ‘break the internet’?
Yes, facets of the Internet can be broken. One way is via routing mis-configuration. Routing tables are exchanged between ISPs via BGP to give instructions on how to reach destinations. If a router is mis-configured, providing bad instructions on how to reach destinations, that information may be propagated to other ISPs leading to destinations being unreachable. Other ways “the Internet can be broken”, include failed destination computers, or data centers. Very large content providers like Google (YouTube), Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, etc., have enormous data centers that may host another customers content. If these large providers have network failures, in many instances entire services become unavailable across the Internet.
4. In the lead up to the release of the film, both YouTube and Facebook ‘went down’ for a short time. Many joked that Ralph Breaks the Internet truly had ‘broken the Internet’. What are some measures Bluebird Network takes to help prevent the internet from ‘breaking’? In the event that Bluebird internet goes down, what are some ways of fixing it?
Bluebird Network keeps our portion of the Internet working through multiple measures including resiliency, diversity, configuration safeguards and more. Resiliency takes the form of multiple network elements protecting the function of each other, so if one fails, the other picks up the load. Diversity measures are achieved through diverse physical fiber paths our network utilizes, diverse ISP connections to the broader Internet and diverse Points of Presence within our network to provide service access from geographically diverse nodes.
When Bluebird Network encounters Internet issues, we use logical troubleshooting and advanced key performance indicators to determine the likely cause of the issues. The likely causes may be trouble with the connected ISPs, equipment failure on the network, fiber cuts in the physical plant, or even misconfiguration of customer’s equipment.
To learn more about Bluebird’s internet expertise, visit our service pages for Carrier and Enterprise customers. We also provide collocation and data services for Data Center customers. Request a quote here to find out how Bluebird can serve you or contact us for general inquiries here.
