<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div></div><div><h1 class="wsj-article-headline" itemprop="headline" style="margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.2em; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-weight: 400;">Cut and paste from WSJ,</span></h1><div><span style="font-size: medium; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-weight: 400;"><br></span></div><h1 class="wsj-article-headline" itemprop="headline" style="margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.2em; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-weight: 400;">Network went down three times Sept. 17-28, blocking outside developers from accessing Facebook data</span></h1><div><font size="3"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Facebook Inc, says a rare string of outages last month were the unexpected result of planned software changes.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The social network went down three times between Sept. 17 and Sept. 28, preventing users from logging on or accessing mobile apps through Facebook for up to two hours at a time. Facebook says the incidents weren’t related.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“In the last several weeks, we’ve fallen a bit short on our availability,” Pedro Canahuati, Facebook’s director of production engineering and site reliability, said in an email to The Wall Street Journal. “Each unrelated issue began as a planned code change that had unintended consequences in our ability to respond to server requests.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The string of outages is rare, according to Internet-analytics firm Dyn. The Sept. 28 outage appeared to be the most serious because it spread globally, says Dyn. The firm tried to reach Facebook from 200 locations world-wide, and found just a handful up and running during the outage.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The outages blocked outside developers from accessing Facebook data, meaning some users couldn’t log into mobile apps such as Tinder and Getaround with their Facebook accounts.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Sept. 28 outage reduced that day’s revenue at GSN Games, a maker of online games like GSN Casino and Bingo Bash, by 5%, said Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Frisch. Others like mobile video app Pheebo were unable to sign up new users for about an hour.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The issues underscore the importance of Facebook as a source of traffic for publishers and app developers. Facebook understands the root causes of each case and is working to prevent similar issues in the future, Mr. Canahuati said.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A Facebook spokesman declined to elaborate. It is unclear if Facebook will provide a public explanation for the outages as it has sometimes done in years past.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Facebook also experienced less severe problems with its service last month. On four other days, Facebook had problems delivering a feature to developers that enables apps to automatically receive updates in Facebook data. Just before the first outage on Sept. 17, Facebook reported a problem with its payments platform.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The demands on Facebook’s infrastructure have grown in recent years as its user base expands. Nearly 1.5 billion people access Facebook at least once a month, while Facebook-owned apps WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger are adding users at a rapid clip.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 28px; background-position: 0px 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Facebook has been investing in data-center technologies that rely on software that can be updated quickly to respond to a spike in users. This includes networking equipment powered by Facebook-written software that funnels data among its computers and between Facebook’s computers and the Web.</span></p></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: 600; vertical-align: baseline; background-position: 0px 0px;">Write to </span>Deepa Seetharaman at <a href="mailto:Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com" target="_blank" class="icon " style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-size: 30px; text-decoration: none; outline: 0px; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com</a></span></div><div><br></div><div>regards,</div><div>/virendra </div><div><br>On Oct 5, 2015, at 3:43 PM, Jay Hennigan <<a href="mailto:jay@west.net">jay@west.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>On 10/5/15 3:31 PM, Outages wrote:</span><br><blockquote type="cite"><span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-says-planned-software-changes-caused-outages-1444058402">http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-says-planned-software-changes-caused-outages-1444058402</a></span><br></blockquote><span></span><br><span>Behind a paywall. Workaround is to search Google for the string "facebook-says-planned-software-changes-caused-outages". WSJ whitelists if referrer is Google search results.</span><br><span></span><br><span>--</span><br><span>Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - <a href="mailto:jay@impulse.net">jay@impulse.net</a></span><br><span>Impulse Internet Service - <a href="http://www.impulse.net/">http://www.impulse.net/</a></span><br><span>Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV</span><br><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>Outages-discussion mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:Outages-discussion@outages.org">Outages-discussion@outages.org</a></span><br><span><a href="https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages-discussion">https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages-discussion</a></span><br></div></blockquote></div></body></html>