RIM affirms that BlackBerry services are down -- again
By Darren Murph 
posted Feb 11th 2008 5:18PM
posted Feb 11th 2008 5:18PM
Oh noes! BlackBerry addicts everywhere have reason to panic this afternoon, as their beloved network is indeed experiencing technical difficulties -- and it's certainly not the first time that this has happened in the past year. Reportedly, an e-mail sent by RIM support account manager Bryan Simpson affirmed that a "critical severity outage" had taken place. The message went on to say that it was acting as an "emergency notification regarding the current BlackBerry Infrastructure outage," that was (is) affecting enterprise subscribers and "users of the Americas network." So much for that "won't happen again" line, huh?[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
oh snap.
was wondering what the dealio was!
I do not understand how a critical system outage can occur.
No one knows about...you know...redundancy in the Far North?
Eh?
I think the joke here would be:
"No one knows about...you know...redundancy in the Far Far North?"
dont think you want to go there buds :)
We've been down for ~2 hours (since 3:18 PM Eastern).
You know, with all these outages I am shocked that they still have users!
They'd like to cancel, but every time they send an email it gets delayed.
My bb is still working?
I'm on a BES, Cali, on AT&Ts network.
So like, with Windows Mobile and Exchange 2007... tell me again why BlackBerry is better?
Because everyone (read: people who don't understand technology in the slightest) knows what it is, of course, and naturally, something they haven't heard of couldn't possibly be any better. Besides, who wants to show off some lame thing called a Tilt to their golfing buddies? Better make IT order whatever they think they need...
Coming from a system admin, RIM officially needs to get their act together! If they want to keep their market share, they need to find out why this keeps happening...and/or fire someone who keeps tripping over the wrong network cable.
It was obviously the Chinese. They know that most of our Government uses Blackberries, including the White House, so they took the service down do disrupt communications prior to launching the first wave of attacks.
I agree.. there is a reason this is happening, and with the type of I.T. budget that I assume RIM has, there really isn't a good excuse for this type of mass outtage! Bad form, RIM.. BAD FORM!
@Mike --All these outages. RIM's Noc located in the great white north handles all of NA's BlackBerry emails every single one passes through that NOC. With 2-3 million users in the area thats alot of messages. They maintain a 99% up time and sometimes as we all know things dont always go as planned. They have and will always have customers because this sort of thing rarely happens.
All in all its still the best solution out there isnt it?
Everyone and their mother can claim a 99% uptime and be technically correct.
This is why those extra .99999%'s are important! ;)
Microsoft exchange over WinMo or even Symbian and Palm is more reliable because is pushed the email load onto each companies own email servers versus one centralized location.
Actually, I think XBL's running annual uptime is lower than 99%... so much for 'anyone'.
And there-in lies the problem. A company of this size that relies on a single service to bring in it's customers should NOT be located in a single place with a single system to handle all the traffic. They should have multiple data centers in different parts of the country with back-up systems at each. So if internet/power/infrastructure goes down at one location, they can either switch to it's backup system or reroute the traffic to a part of the country that is out.
Remember when Steam went down for a couple days because Valve based the login server in a single location and then they lost power? Yea, people weren't very happy to hear that their service was down because a company who's whole business revolves around a couple servers wasn't able to function because they didn't think about being redundant.
www.dataoutages.com
My berry was down on Saturday and Sunday, came back up Monday morning then went away in the middle of the afternoon. This was not just mine but everyon in my organization so twhat is this bull about a sudden problem developing today? It has been developing for days!!!!
BIS here on Sprint in northern cali and all is fine. Weird
I have a blackberry pearl. I can use it just fine. So not EVERYONE is without coverage...Or I am severely lucky.
if the system is down, *to whom* did they send the email? will we get it when the system comes back up?
did msft buy rim when we weren't looking? this kind of service is redmond-like.
Customers with RIM support contracts that are "hueg liek Xbox" get network updates. Reuters broke this, so presumably someone there qualifies.
From CNN:
"BlackBerry maker Research in Motion did not immediately return a phone call."
Well duh..
The bad news keeps getting worse. First I hear they're raising the price of a stamp by one cent, now this!
LOL @ kevjohn
hmm
A component of the network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption.
Devices may not receive new service books. BlackBerry Connect and BlackBerry-enabled devices that require a new PIN may be unable to receive the PIN.
BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may be unable to connect to the BlackBerry Infrastructure.
Wireless service providers and device resellers may be unable to use BlackBerry administration web sites or perform activities such as creating subscriber accounts or provisioning services for subscribers.
Incident Window Start Date and Time: 11 February 2008 15:20:00 (EST) Downtime Duration: Ongoing % of Subscribers Affected: 50.00 (estimated)
Cause: To Be Determined
EST = GMT - 5 hours
EDT = GMT - 4 hours
AEST = GMT + 10 hours
Hmm my iPhone is working just fine. And to think I got lol'd at by my Blackberry toting comrades.
WHO'S LAUGHING NOW!?!?
Lol im using an iphone too.
But you my friend are being a jerk. haha
My BlackBerry on T-Mobile (in NJ) hasent had any issues and all of my mail has been going through just fine...
actually, it may be that one too many bby users tried to get google maps to work . . .
Blackberry sux! iPhone FTW!
haha, just kidding, i don't own an iPhone. stupid Sprint.
I have had plenty of E-mails lost to the ethereal "internet" over the years ( I have been breaking these damn chip stuffed boxes for nearly 35 years). I have a love hate relationship with all of it. At least my Blackberry does tell me when it doesn't go through (no delivery receipt). When it doesn't, I actually dial a freakin' phone number and follow up (yeah, I get out of breath with all that exercise, lol). As far as I know email isn't "legal service" of information in any fashion so anyone relying upon it as such is a fool. And oh, by the way, mine has worked fine since I have owned it, and I have never lost any email to any outages here in Southern Cal. Like Kat Williams says, "don't be surprised when haters hate. It's their damn jobs."
Blackberry's infrastructure is ridiculous. There are several levels of servers that all of your emails have to go through in order for an email in your Exchange inbox to your Blackberry. Windows Mobile + Exchange Activesync has a HUGE step up on BB in this fashion. I've done a few conversions for clients this year taking them from 30+ BBs to Windows Mobile devices and they can't be happier.
Northern Cali Sprint BIS now is having 1 hour delays or more getting emails to the BB
Oh, oh!. Better look out for an increase in suicide rates. When one can't get push e-mail every minute, the world is definitely coming to an end.
Running BES on VZW in NJ and not a glitch all day. Guess I'm in the lucky 50%.
Well the BES I manage just cleared out all it's mail queues over the last 10 minutes or so. Guess whatever was broken over at RIM is fixed now.
Same here - fixed.
My BB 8820 using BIS on at&t hasn't seen any hickup all day (Utah, USA)
I'm typing this on my Blackberry Curve, and haven't noticed an outage. This service has been by far the most relia
Sorry. I know it makes no sense regarding the mail outage, but it had to be done.
shouldnt have added the follow up, if someone didnt get how funny that was you dont want them reading your posts ;)
The follow up wasn't to help people get the (lame) joke, but to acknowledge that it made no sense. A blackberry mail outage wouldn't effect posting a message on the browser.
People have to stop with this BlackBerry non-sense and just start using "the source" its called Exchange! ActiveSync has been around forever and it works like a charm and does everything BlackBerry does. You know why? Because in most cases BlackBerry actually relies on Exchange for all the back-end mail/contacts/calendar functionality.
All blackberry users should seriously consider getting the iPhone.
Yea, at least they can just use push or exchange...oh wait.
Not until iPhone seriously supports exchange. I can rip out a line of meaningful text on a BB keyboard tens times faster than on the pocket ego mirror.
But what if you can't stand Windows Mobile because of it's utter crap user interface? I say this as somebody who has access to and has used many Win CE -> Pocket PC -> Windows Mobile devices over the last eight year. My last run-in involved spending some time with a Blackjack. What a joke! Makes the Blackberry UI seem fluid and silky smooth. I know i can do the MS Exchange push thing to a Symbian device, but I hate the various Symbian UIs (s60, UIQ, etc) worse than I hate Win Mobile. I think the Plam OS is still the most genius/simple user interface going, but Palm is hellbent on grinding that puppy into the muck.
I know it is subjective and that others think Windows Mobile is great (hard to say that without launching into '...but your all blind, stupid, and f#@!ing nuts!!!' lol), which is why I think it is important that we continue to have the coice of using Blackberry. I hope to god MS never dominate the push email market.
someone big sat on the server, thats all
I kept repeating, "there is NOTHING wrong with our server". I almost got fired today... and then the CFO walked in sheepishly with a headline in his hand... "BlackBerry service out in N. America
Disruption affecting all wireless carriers" Oops :)
Almost got fired? You need to find a new place to work.
ya the collective whining was fun today. Life sure gets peaceful after you can flash the news artlce and tell them to go away.. no buzzing. Aaaaaaaah
I agree to the new place to work part, sucks when you know everythign is fine on your end but just cant prove it, well untill... :)
You know it's probably taking them so long to fix the outages, because the guys that need to fix it are un-reachable by Blackberry eMail.
Looking at my inbox it seems i did not have a disruption here. I have a 8703e on Verizon BIS in coastal south Georgia.
How about sending smoke signals...worked in the past.
Great post. I linked to it from my blog: http://lowtechtimes.com/2008/02/12/i-like-blackberries-theyre-delicious/