You don’t miss the water until it’s gone. This past week has seen the most time I have spent without the internet…ish.
A severed fibre optic cable took down most of the internet in several African countries. Many things can go wrong in my day, but I typically have a triple backup for my internet service. Last week, there was a single point of failure for all those backups. It was pretty surreal.
The most baffling thing was that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp (text only) worked. You could run Google searches but not read any of the links. Slack only worked on my mobile service but not on MTN Fibre Broadband service. It was a bit of cat and mouse trying to figure out what did and didn’t work. However, we were effectively living in the dark ages for all intents and purposes. God forbid there was Dumsor, and your water pump stopped working, and your generator stopped working…
I’ve learnt a few interesting things about the internet and tubes since then. Like how to use Dante as a proxy server and what BGP announcements are. I didn’t understand how only some of the internet went off, but I suspect someone misconfigured something because the internet came back (ish) before their 5-week estimate. I’m still figuring out what the best way to have more internet backups (👋🏾 Elon Musk) is because my job, my finances and my whole second brain depend on it. Or maybe I’ll give it all up and become a farmer.