dmr@dutoit.UUCP (08/07/85)
An interesting report, entitled "National Data Network Crashes", is in the 11 July issue of Nature. To quote, "... [N]ow and for two months, Transpac, the French and the world's most-used packet-switched data network, will be out of bounds to individual users. Last week, private users so overloaded the system with their messages and consultations of electronic newspapers now on full-text database that the whole system crashed. "The cause is a bug in Transpac software for assembling data packets .... [PADs] are designed to shut down when overloaded. At the highest levels of use reached last week, however, one PAD shut-down caused such an increase of traffic through others that they also shut down, leading to a chain-reaction which closed the whole of Transpac almost instantly." The article goes on to say that the system supports various classes of users. There are 800,000 or so home users who can dial up screens of telephone directory and other information. I'd already heard of that effort; the French PTT has been distributing free terminals to encourage use of the service (they have stopped now, for a while). Apparently it also allows bboard and mail activity, for -- "Transpac could cope with this if it were not that Minitelistes [terminal users] were not behaving as expected.... [they] spend much more time sending electronic messages to other users [than in looking up telephone numbers]." The real crunch arose because banks, airlines, and other companies also have come to rely on Transpac. Thus the PTT turned off individual use of the service. It is supposed to be fixed by September. The article is nowhere more specific than in the quoted part about the details of the problem. Anyone have any more information? Dennis Ritchie