7 ms·

Some outcomes of this morning: 1. Alibaba's teamwork app, Dingtalk, crashed around 9AM due to too many concurrent video conference saturate the server and band

by est 7y ago

Some outcomes of this morning: 1. Alibaba's teamwork app, Dingtalk, crashed around 9AM due to too many concurrent video conference saturate the server and bandwitdh 2. Tencent's for enterprise messaging app, Wechat for Business, crashed. Connection is extremely unstable 3. Baidu's office VPN was busy and employees are asked to stay disconnected to leave bandwith for sysadmins 4. Huawei's WeLink was unavailable for a while 5. Bytedance (company behind TikTok)'s Lark, an online office suite like GApps was the biggest winner, only had some minor issues. 6. Zoom offered a free version to mainland users and it's extremely popular. But it lacks non-video-conf features. e.g. simple daily poll to see if your colleagues were healthy or not.

threatripper 7y ago
This "experiment" will set a new baseline on which management can act with the goal to satisfy such use cases and grant the necessary resources to implement them.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Well the clock is ticking for non-Chinese companies. When SARS struck in 2003, it took about four months for the total global number of cases to crest. Assuming the same sort of pattern here with the same WFH response, we will see peak VPN/remote usage in April/May. ....so get those requisitions in boys.
  - diroussel 7y ago
    A paper published in the Lancet on Friday said that the peak infection is persecuted to be in April. But if more curbs on movement are out in place then the total infections will be lower, but the peak will be later. But this was based on a current infected population of 75k, much higher than the Chinese official figure of 14k people. Source Dr John Campbell. https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc
    - koheripbal 7y ago
      I think your underlying point is correct - the duration of this outbreak is unknown. Regarding the Chinese figure of 14k - it is only for "laboratory confirmed" cases. Given that Chinese hospitals are refusing any patients that aren't in serious distress, the "real" number of cases is likely already much much more than 14k. There are also reports of death certificates being issued for "unknown viral pneumonia", because they don't have the time to test the dead. This would explain why there are sooo many cases abroad - despite "only" a few thousand cases in China. One virologist tweeted (can't find it now), that he believes 95% of cases are unreported in China. We also have to bare in mind that most non-western countries do not have DNA test kits for this virus. When we look at the updated map of infections, there are glaring gaps in countries like Laos and Myanmar with ALL of their neighbors reporting infections. Those countries are, of course, not immune to the virus - they simply don't have the facilities to confirm cases, and have gov'ts that would rather hide the evidence so as not to disrupt travel/create panic. I don't think we should OVER-react, but also we shouldn't UNDER react.
      - feanaro 7y ago
        Also, the 14k is over 17k by now.
      - bangboombang 7y ago
        Imo the model of those Australian scientists from a few days ago forecasting 75k infections in China by Feb. 4th was pretty spot on. Official numbers in China right now are 17k infections plus 21k estimated unreported cases.[1] Let's assume their numbers are a little too optimistic and there you go, 75k by tomorrow. [1] https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm
tmp5774889 7y ago
I've created a temp account for this to be on the safe side :) I work for a big (300k+ ) company with some tens of thousand office workers in CN We are preparing since about 2 weeks to upgrade our remote access infra in China with partial success as something which would be a soft upgrade everywhere else needs to go through various levels of local subcontractors and partners of our provider On top of that because of the Internet situation in CN it is not practically easy to use remote access via another location with higher capacity - the performance gets degraded very quickly - or use resources directly over the internet eg. RTC which is not hosted locally I doubt that local authorities will change something in the future because of this example but one can only hope
- est 7y ago
  are you the same guy on r/sysadmin? Try use MPLS. It's expensive but the latency and bandwidth is guaranteed.
  - tmp5774889 7y ago
    nope, not the same guy MPLS is used for the office network anyhow, talking about remote access here
ekianjo 7y ago
Seems like the experiment was a success: systems have very low margins to operate.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  We need peer to peer. These central hubs can’t hack the traffic.
  - philbarr 7y ago
    WebRTC is peer to peer and is supported in most major browsers.
    - yomly 7y ago
      From experience WebRTC starts to fall down in rooms of more than 8 people for video chat. Meanwhile Zoom and Discord (who use servers) can achieve much greater so YMMV That said p2p definitely has its advantages
      - dana321 7y ago
        Its just a case of p2p with people running servers (like bitcoint does) and differentiating between the two based on a bandwidth test.
    - basejumping 7y ago
      Doesn't WebRTC need a TURN server to proxy traffic when you're behind a NAT? It's not really peer to peer when all the data goes through a central point.
      - johncolanduoni 7y ago
        TURN only proxies if it’s unable to make a connection via STUN, which requires the server to handle only a few packets when the initial connection is formed and provides direct peer to peer access after. Many home NATs only need the latter.
tener 7y ago
It would be interesting to know where are the bottlenecks and how quickly they can be addressed.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  I suspect that they might be addressed in time for the next epidemic
wyxuan 7y ago
That's good to hear. Especially that last point: zoom has been repeatedly blocked by China. It would be interesting to see if they could keep those users
- est 7y ago
  IIRC Zoom released a tailored "China" version.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by est 7y ago

threatripper 7y ago

This "experiment" will set a new baseline on which management can act with the goal to satisfy such use cases and grant the necessary resources to implement them.

koheripbal 7y ago
Well the clock is ticking for non-Chinese companies. When SARS struck in 2003, it took about four months for the total global number of cases to crest. Assuming the same sort of pattern here with the same WFH response, we will see peak VPN/remote usage in April/May. ....so get those requisitions in boys.
- diroussel 7y ago
  A paper published in the Lancet on Friday said that the peak infection is persecuted to be in April. But if more curbs on movement are out in place then the total infections will be lower, but the peak will be later. But this was based on a current infected population of 75k, much higher than the Chinese official figure of 14k people. Source Dr John Campbell. https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc https://youtu.be/z05ZrMfKUDc
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    I think your underlying point is correct - the duration of this outbreak is unknown. Regarding the Chinese figure of 14k - it is only for "laboratory confirmed" cases. Given that Chinese hospitals are refusing any patients that aren't in serious distress, the "real" number of cases is likely already much much more than 14k. There are also reports of death certificates being issued for "unknown viral pneumonia", because they don't have the time to test the dead. This would explain why there are sooo many cases abroad - despite "only" a few thousand cases in China. One virologist tweeted (can't find it now), that he believes 95% of cases are unreported in China. We also have to bare in mind that most non-western countries do not have DNA test kits for this virus. When we look at the updated map of infections, there are glaring gaps in countries like Laos and Myanmar with ALL of their neighbors reporting infections. Those countries are, of course, not immune to the virus - they simply don't have the facilities to confirm cases, and have gov'ts that would rather hide the evidence so as not to disrupt travel/create panic. I don't think we should OVER-react, but also we shouldn't UNDER react.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      Also, the 14k is over 17k by now.
    - bangboombang 7y ago
      Imo the model of those Australian scientists from a few days ago forecasting 75k infections in China by Feb. 4th was pretty spot on. Official numbers in China right now are 17k infections plus 21k estimated unreported cases.[1] Let's assume their numbers are a little too optimistic and there you go, 75k by tomorrow. [1] https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm https://news.qq.com/zt2020/page/feiyan.htm

tmp5774889 7y ago

I've created a temp account for this to be on the safe side :) I work for a big (300k+ ) company with some tens of thousand office workers in CN We are preparing since about 2 weeks to upgrade our remote access infra in China with partial success as something which would be a soft upgrade everywhere else needs to go through various levels of local subcontractors and partners of our provider On top of that because of the Internet situation in CN it is not practically easy to use remote access via another location with higher capacity - the performance gets degraded very quickly - or use resources directly over the internet eg. RTC which is not hosted locally I doubt that local authorities will change something in the future because of this example but one can only hope

est 7y ago
are you the same guy on r/sysadmin? Try use MPLS. It's expensive but the latency and bandwidth is guaranteed.
- tmp5774889 7y ago
  nope, not the same guy MPLS is used for the office network anyhow, talking about remote access here

ekianjo 7y ago

Seems like the experiment was a success: systems have very low margins to operate.

quickthrower2 7y ago
We need peer to peer. These central hubs can’t hack the traffic.
- philbarr 7y ago
  WebRTC is peer to peer and is supported in most major browsers.
  - yomly 7y ago
    From experience WebRTC starts to fall down in rooms of more than 8 people for video chat. Meanwhile Zoom and Discord (who use servers) can achieve much greater so YMMV That said p2p definitely has its advantages
    - dana321 7y ago
      Its just a case of p2p with people running servers (like bitcoint does) and differentiating between the two based on a bandwidth test.
  - basejumping 7y ago
    Doesn't WebRTC need a TURN server to proxy traffic when you're behind a NAT? It's not really peer to peer when all the data goes through a central point.
    - johncolanduoni 7y ago
      TURN only proxies if it’s unable to make a connection via STUN, which requires the server to handle only a few packets when the initial connection is formed and provides direct peer to peer access after. Many home NATs only need the latter.

tener 7y ago

It would be interesting to know where are the bottlenecks and how quickly they can be addressed.

onetimemanytime 7y ago
I suspect that they might be addressed in time for the next epidemic

wyxuan 7y ago

That's good to hear. Especially that last point: zoom has been repeatedly blocked by China. It would be interesting to see if they could keep those users

est 7y ago
IIRC Zoom released a tailored "China" version.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]