Is the Internet Falling Apart?

How secure and dependable is the Internet? The Great Twitter Outage of 2009, which shocked the microblogging community and amused many other observers, called into question the reliability of Web-based communications and transaction capabilities that are easy to take for granted.

According to Nielsen NetRatings, the Twitter user base grew at almost 1,400 percent from February 2008 to February 2009. Microblogging, online auctions and email may be a convenience for some users, but others view these features as critical to their connected lifestyles. Is the Internet falling apart, or can we depend on the Web to be there when we need it?

The Twitter outages in August surprised many Internet observers with their persistence -- repeated failures over several days -- as well as the size and speed of the shock waves sent around the world. Denied their ability to tweet, users turned to blogs, online forums and other channels to vent their frustration. Web and TV outlets were clogged with commentary and speculation by reporters and pundits, many of them Twitter users themselves.

The uproar only increased when word got out that the cause of the outage was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack with political motives. When the dust settled and tweets began flowing again, the big question remained: Will it happen again? To answer that question, it is helpful to look back at other Web service outages of similar scale and review their causes.

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Source:- Technews world, http://www.technewsworld.com