Categories
Narrative

Network Degradation

Lou Corlin had arrived at work a little early today, figuring that he could get ahead of the situation for a change. However, he’d no more than started taking stock of the situation when he got a phone call. Not on the official IT department phone, but his personal phone.

He was surprised to discover that it was Autumn Belfontaine. Why would she call his personal line when she knew he would be at work right now?

Still, he was technically three minutes before the beginning of his shift down here, so he could take a personal call without any trouble. “Hello, Autumn. What’s going on?”

“What kind of network analysis software do you have access to?”

“Pretty much everything that’s legal for civilians to have, although some of it is the sort of thing that would get questions raised if I were using it.”

“OK, is it pretty much limited to the local networks here in Shepardsport, or could you run scans on networks elsewhere?”

Lou had to pause a moment to consider how to answer it. “I’ve never had to do any scans that go beyond our own systems, but I’m pretty sure it would be possible. What are you looking at?”

“I’m noticing that an awful lot of the local news websites are either intermittently available or have gone down altogether. I keep wondering if I can’t get to them because the servers have crashed, or if whole segments of the Internet are failing.”

“OK.” Lou considered the implications of that information. “Are there any patterns in the locations that are failing? I know that a lot of companies use webhosting companies in other cities, and the physical servers are often located in rural areas where electricity is cheaper, which are often some distance from the company’s business offices. But if you’ve noticed patterns, it would at least give us a start.”

That got an awkward pause. “Let me do a little looking around and put together a list. Right now it’s more of a hunch, one of those right-brain intuitions that sees a pattern as a whole, the sort that says something’s wrong to a very ancient part of the brain.”

It wasn’t like Autumn to go off half-cocked, which suggested that she hadn’t realized the implications until she was talking with him as an IT person, not an on-air personality for Shepardsport Pirate Radio. But Lou wasn’t going to criticize her — she didn’t have all that much training in IT, and certainly not that much in the operation of online networks. So he let her wind up the conversation and get the necessary data together to send to him.

It was only when the connection terminated that he realized he’d been standing here taking what was fundamentally a business call while he still wasn’t checked in. Which meant that officially he would appear to be late.

Even as he was considering whether it was worth it to ask for his official timesheet to be amended, the door opened and in walked Steffi Roderick. “What’s going on? You’re not the sort of person to be taking personal calls while you’re on the clock.”

“Um, actually it wasn’t a personal call.” Lou explained about Autumn Belfontaine’s query. “Would it be possible to do a general scan of the terrestrial Internet to see what parts are still up, and whether it correlates with reports we’re getting through other channels of whole regions that seem to be shutting down?”

“That’s a pretty ambitious task. Let me do a little research of my own while Autumn puts together her list of news sites that have gone dark. We may just have something important going on here.”