Dublin Air Traffic Control Brought Down By Faulty NIC 203
Not so very long ago after passengers were left hanging by a similar glitch at LAX, Gilby4mPuck writes with another story of NIC failure leading to a disruption of air traffic, this time in Ireland, excerpting: "Data showing the location, height and speed of approaching planes disappeared from screens for 10 minutes each time. ...
Thales ATM stated that in 10 similar air traffic control Centres worldwide with over 500,000 flight hours (50 years), this is the first time an incident of this type has been reported. ...
'[They] confirmed the root cause of the hardware system malfunction as an intermittent malfunctioning network card which consequently overcame the built-in system redundancy,' said an IAA spokeswoman."
There's only one way to solve this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:testing and QA (Score:5, Funny)
Whatever happened to testing of installed hardware? You'd think they might csider that sort of thing important when it involves the lives of thousands of people. Then again, maybe they were drunk at the time.
Well, when we set up some cheap NAS boxes with redundant nics .. some load balancers and other goodies .. we tested it by yanking cables on the bonded nics and making sure everything still worked.
This was for an e-commerce site.. I would agree in hoping more testing with real failures would be done on systems that monitor air traffic.
Also, we were very drunk when yanking cables during our test .. so I don't think intoxication is really a factor. In fact, turning a drunken monkey loose in a data center with a clearance to pull cables is _very_ good fail over testing :)
NICtzche (Score:4, Funny)
if this piece of hardware was capable of "overc[oming] the built-in system redundancy", perhaps its ilk ought to be patrolling the transistorized wunderplatz of interconnected morsels governing our most hubris means of transportation? I, for one, would certainly feel safer.
Re:testing and QA (Score:5, Funny)
Only The Spice confers prescience.
It's a success story. (Score:5, Funny)
"...an intermittent malfunctioning network card which consequently overcame the built-in system redundancy"
But it's one of the lucky ones.
Every year, thousands of NICs fall victim to built-in system redundancy; if you know a card whose activity indicators are darkened and lifeless, it may have a redundancy problem. With your support and donations, we at Ethernetics Anonymous can help more network cards beat the scourge of built-in system redundancy, and make them feel like a useful part of society again.
In the queue (Score:4, Funny)
I was due to fly the evening it all went wrong. Here's a lesson: if you're standing in a three-hour queue for the Ryanair desk, and they tell people to rebook on the web, and you take out a laptop and 3G modem, be prepared for a stampede.
Was it running windows? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:testing and QA (Score:5, Funny)
Any number raised to the power 0 is 1. So if you don't install anything, hence n is 0, it will always work since the probability of failure is 1-1 = 0.
Why!? (Score:5, Funny)
I am flying to Florida tomorrow, it will only be my fifth plane flight in total and my first transatlantic flight. Despite being a rational scientist, who knows how safe it is statistically, I am having trouble suppressing my anxiety.
And at this point, fate sees fit to bombard me with horror stories about flying. This news about air traffic control comes on the heels of a headline I just saw on the front page of the Independent about pilots not reporting faults on aircraft and thus unsafe ones still flying about. I can't remember the exact wording because my brain parsed it as "TOMORROW YOU WILL DIE IN FLAMES"
Re:Why!? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Why!? (Score:3, Funny)
Irish Examiner, ha! (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone in Ireland knows that the Irish Examiner used to be the Cork examiner - and they never miss an opportunity to point out how Dublin is doing a bad job.
This is because Cork thinks that it's the centre of the friggin' universe. The 'Real Capital', my arse! Just a bunch of thunderin' ejits, living in their little Blarney fantasy land. Sure they can't even talk right. What the hell is a 'langer', anyway. They wouldn't even know how to spell NIC.
The fact that they are right is quite beside the point.
(For a North American cultural equivalent, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_Bigger%2C_Longer_%26_Uncut [wikipedia.org])
Anyone who mods me down is from Cork - believe it!
Re:Why!? (Score:3, Funny)
--INT: PLANE COCKPIT
PILOT #1: Oh wow, I really hope we don't have a crash.
PILOT #2: Me too.
PILOT #1: But they say it's safer than crossing the road!
PILOT #2: Yes, but we have to do that too.
PILOT #1: Best not to think about it.
But what is a "contol"? (Score:3, Funny)
What is a "contol" and why is this so important?
Re:testing and QA (Score:3, Funny)
So if you don't install anything, hence n is 0, it will always work since the probability of failure is 1-1 = 0.
Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it would never fail. ;)
Re:testing and QA (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah. Fortunately I just got back from going outside. OTOH, it was just raining, and I saw all the millions and millions of tiny water drops falling from the sky. Which made me think of Interrupt 80 and all those forked off-processes it would spawn with that code...
Re:Last time (Score:3, Funny)
Lucky Charms never pissed me off so much as Trix did. I remember one commercial where the rabbit actually *bought his own cereal* and the kids took it because "trix are for kids". I wanted to see him mow the little fuckers down for home invasion or something...
Silly rabbit, supersonic lead is for thieving, speciesist little pricks.
Re:testing and QA (Score:3, Funny)
So putting in a faulty NIC card and seeing what happened wouldn't have done anything at all, huh?
You keep a bunch of 'faulty' NICs around?