The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility
- Reference: 1647419413
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/03/16/panic_stations/
- Source link:
But it was electricity I worried about first. I use top of the line surge protectors so my most sensitive devices – computers and monitors, of which I have many – all seemed fine. But I'd overlooked two other connections that come into nearly every home: the antenna and the phone line.
My television seemed to have taken a direct hit. It still worked – mostly – but appeared unable to receive any digital broadcasts. That circuit, lying on the other side of the antenna lead, likely took a big hit from the lightning strike. But the rest of the television seemed fine – at first. After a few days, and several spontaneous reboots, I began to intuit that devices don't always immediately fail when hit by lightning. Sometimes they gradually shed their functions and utility.
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My phone line runs directly into a modem that connects my home to the fiber-to-the-curb equipment that in turn connects to more wires and stuff in the street. That modem needed a hard restart, but otherwise appeared fine – until two days later, when some repair work performed on the equipment out under the footpath (possibly hit by the surge as well) left me disconnected from the network. My modem refused to connect, leaving me without a broadband connection.
[2]
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At the beginning of the last decade, such a minor tragedy would have been rated as #firstworldproblems – suck it up, and get on with it. But the world has changed a lot in the last few years. Nearly every major electronic appliance wants to be connected – for control, for status, [4]for surveillance . All of this works more or less flawlessly – when there's a network connection. Take away connectivity and the whole thing begins to flail about like the proverbial headless chicken.
My smart lights, [5]gone dumb , stay dimmed. My television – what's left of it – can't receive any of the streaming services. And my computers? They're cast back into a pre-web world of productivity apps. Anyone for eight hours of Microsoft Word? Modern apps and the devices they run on have been built around an assumption of continuous, high-quality, high-bandwidth connectivity. Deprive them of that oxygen and they all begin to choke – an experience worse even than trying to get serious work done connected to [6]aircraft Wi-Fi .
[7]Internet backbone Cogent cuts Russia connectivity
[8]Fibre broadband uptake in UK lags behind OECD countries
[9]Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites
[10]Comcast fixes broadband cables 'peppered' with holes after Oakland drive-by shooting
All of that would have been bearable if only it had been brief. Instead, I got to watch the unedifying spectacle of my retail internet service provider and [11]Australia's monopoly wholesale broadband provider – pointing fingers at one another, each claiming the fault lay on the other side of whatever line of demarcation determines responsibility for the fix. Whole days passed as I waited – disconnected and increasingly dyspeptic – for someone to take ownership of what should have been a straightforward problem to solve.
A problem that I now began to realize we do not yet take seriously enough.
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Certainly not as seriously as we take outages to electricity or running water, incidents that demand fixes within hours. Connectivity stealthily entered this category of necessities over the last decade, but it appears we're going to need to rethink the entire apparatus of both network resilience and service uptime to accommodate this new reality.
While I wait for the arguing to end and my service to be restored, I've had time to think about what such a resilient, high-uptime network might look like: very open, very competitive, very easy to repair with common devices and easy-to-learn techniques. A broadband network designed to favor uptime and repairability means that pretty much everyone should be able to fix almost anything that goes wrong – or can feel confident they can ask a more knowledgeable neighbor to have a look in.
Yes, we need to be careful about security, spoofing, and the like. But security-by-obscurity is an even worse design goal for a physical network than it is for an application. Openness means more help can be delivered to fix what's wrong, whenever it goes wrong. Paradoxically, monopolies can foster openness – they have nothing to lose. We urgently need to rethink our networks around their new significance – but before that, can we please get me reconnected? ®
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Postscript : On day six of disconnection, a technician visited and reported that another repair person had replaced some equipment under the footpath in front of my home and then neglected to re-connect my line.
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/05/samsung_tv_ads/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/01/philips_hue_api_dark/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/spacex_viasat_legal_dispute/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/04/cogent_cuts_off_russia/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/11/oecd_broadband_stats/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/09/starlink_satellites_burned_by_geomagnetic_storm/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/01/comcast_xfinity_oakland_gunfire/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/23/australian_national_broadband_network_complete/
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[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
But the one owner paradigm has the problem of the monopoly. You mention already, finger-pointing is prevalent when another uses the infrastructure. A typical blame game. That is one of the reasons why infrastructure should be publicly owned. It is a shared resource we all need and benefit from.
Human factor
...and then neglected to re-connect my line.
The fault was not of the purely technological kind. In fact, it was a human error (or oversight) that caused the prolonged problem. I do believe that open systems are absolutely preferable and should be encouraged. However, it is debatable if "open" would have helped significantly in this specific case.
Most people will never be capable of grasping the network's working, even at superficial levels. Let alone performing repairs. Computers are magic for most people. Many have learned that a square plug fits a square socket. And even that seems to be a hard lesson for some. So, doing repairs private will only be for a select small group.
That said, we may need liberalization in the repair market . Just like you can call any plumber or electrician to solve your problems. That kind of open (network) may be beneficial to us all.
Re: Human factor
Many have learned that a square plug fits a square socket. And even that seems to be a hard lesson for some. So, doing repairs private will only be for a select small group.
In the mid 2020's we called these people "Survivors".
The others we called "rat tucker"
Re: Human factor
> we may need liberalization in the repair market.
Backed up by beefy statutory measures in the *repairability* market - an area where raw capitalism and especially the tech giants have failed us miserably. If you can't unscrew the case and replace the battery, you shouldn't be allowed to sell it - even if that does mean that the user pays an extra buck for it at the outset.
Re: Human factor
I'm trying to work out exactly what the lack-of-openness actually was in this case.
The TV and the modem were fried. The only realistic solution is to replace them. There is a problem with a lot of ISPs that they won't let you supply your own modem but I don't know whether this was the case here and even if it were, it's not owing to a lack of open standards, it would be simply a lack of regulation of the ISPs contract terms. But even a new modem wouldn't fix a disconnected wire outside the property. And the new TV will work as a replacement for the old one because of .... standards.
Of course if your Internet connectivity is so critical you'd have some sort of wireless backup. Doing that is not hard if you have even 3G mobile connectivity. Doing that transparently is quite hard with IPv4 and NAT, but again it's not because we lack an open solution (IPv6) or that the present deployment is proprietary - it's a business choice. Much like the choice to build so much overhead into the provision of "customer service" that you can't afford to employ people who can deliver it.
Lightning Protection
Protecting equipment from lightning is somewhat complex; there are [1]standards for this that vary by industry.
One of the primary issues is that the circuitry can get quite complex quite quickly and the testing can be difficult.
I have had models (SPICE) for devices commonly used that had little resemblance to reality (the model predicted clamping within picoseconds but the reality was about half a microsecond which is ancient history in electronics). Another issue is that full clamping may only limit the surge to twice the rated voltage of the protection.
Protecting data carrying ports (such as modems) is very complex.
Failure modes vary from immediately dead to (as the author found) malfunctions over a period of time (this is the same problem as even a mild static discharge).
Transient protection for consumer goods (i.e. inexpensive) is not likely to survive a very localised hit, and things downstream may get the hit as well, depending on the specific 'protection'.
Disclaimer: I have designed flight control computers that are required to be protected against lightning strikes.
[1] https://do160.org/lightning-induced-transient-susceptibility/
You get what you pay for
If our experience of being connected to the NotVeryBN is anything to go by, the author's connection was probably done by a Nepalese technician on slave pay brought in on a restrictive visa.. Thank you Mr Turnbull...
I’m kind of struggling with what “right to repair” means or how it would work in this context.
Plug your own broadband router/modem in? Fine.
Look after the cabling on your side of some agreed boundary (like the old BT “master socket” or it’s equivalent)? Fine.
Random people diving in and repatching a kerbside cabinet or equivalent (which is what appeared to be required in this particular case)? Errr… No thanks!
resilience
If your life is so critically important to be online at all times, then maybe you need to be responsible for yourself and have some backup. Just a 4G connection would get you up and running in 99% of circumstances that causes a fixed line to fail.
Mains electricity fails from time to time. That's why we all have a battery powered torch at home, Or some candles, maybe four of them. I have no sympathy for someone who does not have the forethought to think ahead for blindingly obvious scenarios...
As for having devices and software that do not work when it cannot phone home? Well that is your own fault. Smart device. Dumb user.
Where I live, in France, I use Orange for my Internet/TV/landline connection needs. Orange owns the backbone and everything up to my house. If I have a problem, there is no finger-pointing to be done, it's all Orange's responsibility from start to finish.
That is why I have no intention of leaving Orange for SFR, as SFR regularly asks me to.
If I did that, then I would be right smack in the middle of the same problem you had, SFR saying that it's Orange's fault and Orange saying the reverse.
I've been there before, I have no intention of going there again.