Aug. 15, 2003 — Major Internet backbones and web sites have so far withstood the massive power blackout, a network analysis group, Keynote Systems, said Thursday.
Keynote said its monitoring of all major U.S. Internet backbones from the 25 largest U.S. cities showed no difficulties and major Web sites were accessible and performing normally.
A few news sites, such as www.usatoday.com and www.cnn.com, had minor problems at the start as masses of surfers scrambled for information, but they quickly recovered, it said.
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"As is true of the telephone system, the Internet and major web sites have been engineered with redundancy and backup power systems to withstand power outages," said Keynote Internet analyst Eric Siegel.
"It's not surprising that a power outage, no matter how widespread, didn't appreciably affect the Internet and the Web," he said in a statement.
"As long as there isn't major physical damage, such as that caused by the July 2001 Baltimore tunnel fire, or major congestion, such as that caused by the 'SQL Slammer' worm in January 2003, the Internet and the Web have enough redundancy and resilience to withstand most problems."
Industry analysts at CERT Coordination Center rejected speculation that a fast-spreading Internet virus might have triggered the mass U.S. and Canadian power blackouts, being called the most widespread in history.
"There is no information available at this time to indicate that the power outages in the northeast United States and Canada are related to intruder activity," the CERT Coordination Center said.
"The CERT/CC will continue to monitor the situation," said a statement by the center, which is part the Software Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University.
The center said it was responding to questions about whether the U.S. and Canadian blackouts were related to the recent "W32/Blaster" worm or other intruder activity.
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