[outages] Ping to Google 8.8.8.8

[Mark Tinka]

On 2/9/22 20:29, Grant Taylor via Outages wrote:

>
> So ... an end user education issue.
>
>  - No, the Internet is not down.
>  - The specific test you are doing is (now) bad (for reasons).
>  - See how your $StreamingServiceVideo is still playing?  --  Did you 
> receive the test email I just sent you?
>
> The Internet is /up/.
>
> Who should be responsible for an ISP's user base?  I'd naively think 
> that the ISP should be responsible for their own user base. Why should 
> we foist this responsibility off onto another organization?

I'd be fine with that, only if it were feasible. Most ISP's do not have 
the capacity to educate the thousands, tens-of-thousands or millions of 
customers they service, about why pinging 8.8.8.8 is a bad thing. In 
some cases, it's because there are simply too many customers to educate 
in a formal and structured way that sticks. In other cases, the ISP's 
simply don't have the resources to execute this sort of thing.

This does not mean that Google should be responsible for providing a 
ping target. It just means that the day they choose to stop doing so, we 
have a massive problem, one we could have been prepared for, but seem to 
be too lazy to.

In any event, providing an alternative that is globally standard, would 
be far easier than trying to educate customers who only care about 
getting their MTV.

Mark.