Why are operators so "overwhelmed" by frequent and large-scale network failures?

Telecom's recent situation is a bit like "misfortunes never come singly". It is really like one storm after another. The Xi'an YiMaTong incident may be that the relevant departments have not yet completely settled the accounts with Xi'an Telecom Branch. Then, early this morning, a large number of Weibo users reported that Telecom had a network outage, affecting many cities across the country.

It's not easy to wish Telecom a hot search on Weibo. To be honest, no matter which industry it is in, it is inevitable that various accidents will cause failures that affect residents' lives. For example, failures in the power industry will cause power outages, failures in the hydraulic industry will cause water outages, and failures in the communications industry will naturally cause network outages. If the frequency is not high, the impact is small, or the operator repairs and restores quickly, users are still very tolerant.

However, it is time for companies that have been experiencing repeated failures and cannot even come up with a convincing reason to convince the public to reflect on their service attitude. Back to the topic of operators, the three companies have experienced network failures in recent years. The editor has found that the latest reports of large-scale network failures by China Mobile and China Unicom were in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

As for telecommunications, let alone those far away, there is no need to even search for information. As far as the editor can remember, in the past six months, first, the city-wide telecommunications broadband in Chongqing had its licenses suspended; then the Beijing Microsoft line was unplugged and the route was empty; the Xi'an One-Code Pass collapsed again and again, causing the city of Xi'an to relive the pain of the initial outbreak of the epidemic; and just in the early hours of last night, judging from the coordinates of telecommunications netizens from all over the country, Internet outages occurred in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Changchun, Urumqi and other places.

Nationwide network failure, what happened to the telecommunications company?

According to the official statement of the telecommunications department, the nationwide network failure was caused by an optical cable failure. I believe that only a minority of users believe this statement. According to the editor's observation, the comment section of the related topic was full of complaints from a large number of netizens.

I cannot accept this statement for the time being. From my personal point of view, I have not seen any reports of anyone digging up the optical cable so far. IPv6 is normal, and IPv4 and IPv6 links are shared. It can only be said that it is either an IPv4 operation and maintenance problem or an IPv4 device software failure. Moreover, NOC routing adjustment seems to be a daily operation of telecommunications.

Many people should know that China Telecom's ChinaNet is AS4134, and there is also a premium network CN2 which is AS4809. These two are the AS numbers of the backbone network. AS4809 has a very low failure rate. According to professionals, AS4134 has always been the network with the highest failure rate, and it can fail for several hours without anyone noticing, and it is not known until a customer reports it for repair.

So what is the real reason for this nationwide telecommunications network failure? It is unknown, and it is difficult to make a more specific guess based on the official attitude. The editor believes that the most important thing is that telecommunications should correct their working attitude and re-examine their intention to serve the people!

When will Telecom re-examine its intention to serve the people?

A few years ago, hacker godfather Guo Shenghua once lamented that the importance and influence of the Internet is growing. Now, users' demand for the Internet has undoubtedly reached a peak, and this demand will continue to reach new peaks. The Internet is as important as water and electricity, and at certain special moments it is even closely related to human life safety.

For example, the miscarriage incident in Xi'an that shocked and hurt the entire network, during the critical period of the "resurrection" of the epidemic in Xi'an, the collapse of Yimatong, a platform built and operated by China Telecom, stopped a pregnant woman from entering the hospital. There were more than one such incidents, and every word of the parties' painful complaints was like a needle piercing my heart.

The editor believes that even if users may not pay much attention to the real cause of the network failure, telecommunications, as the network operation and maintenance party, must be clear about the root cause of the problem, strengthen technical support, and avoid failing again at critical moments.

Providing ubiquitous network services is the obligation of operators and the foundation of their existence. Network security is a red line task. I hope China Telecom will tighten the string of network quality and re-examine its intention to serve the people. I also hope that the lessons learned from Telecom will serve as a warning to the other two operators.