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Toronto Online Media Goes Offline

Posted by Jerrold Litwinenko / September 3, 2009

20 Comments

toronto star website downHow is it that the Toronto Star and Eye Weekly (Torstar), the Globe and Mail (CTVglobemedia), and CityNews (Rogers) websites went offline with technical troubles this afternoon... all at the same time?

The "media blackout" was relatively short-lived, with all sites coming back online in under an hour, but it got me wondering.

Was this some sort of multi-targeted DoS cyber-attack? Do all of the bigger Toronto-based media companies use the same web hosting providers? Was this was all just some sort of freaky coincidence?

eye weekly website down

citynews website down

(The Globe and Mail didn't Tweet about their technical problems.)

Not all of the majors got knocked offline though. The National Post appears to have stayed online throughout the mayhem, and in humorous, opportunistic style, had this to say:

national post opportunism

I'm thinking that if it was a cyber-attack, we're sure to hear more about it soon from the horses' mouths. If, on the other hand, all of the above are hosted on the same racks, well... isn't that something we should be concerned about (in a too-many-eggs-in-one-basket kind of way)? If it's just a coincidence (and I'm having a hard time imagining that this is the case)... well, I'll be darned.

On a related note, Gmail was down the other day and is down for some people again today, and I've been having data and voice connectivity problems on Rogers mobile lately. Tech failures aplenty are indeed part of life nowadays.

Which reminds me... I should do some file backups on my personal computer. It's been a while.

rogers 3G down

Discussion

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Chuck / September 3, 2009 at 06:50 pm
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Thank God, I thought I was the only one when I called Rogers late last night because the Internet (and 3g) was down, only to feel like a chump when the rep suggested unplugging the modem and router then plugging them back in.....
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Zoriana / September 3, 2009 at 07:06 pm
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it's because of mercury retrograde!
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nigel / September 3, 2009 at 07:16 pm
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Skynet was activated. not to worry.
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Dan D / September 3, 2009 at 07:21 pm
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All of the above sites may have been hosted at the same co-location facility in Toronto, and that site may have been having troubles. Many large companies use such co-location sites and its rare for them to have outages like this, but it does happen.
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Steve / September 3, 2009 at 07:56 pm
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Torontosun.com didn't go down either...and quite frankly they do a better job if posting local breaking stories anyway.
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Jerrold / September 3, 2009 at 08:59 pm
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Here's our answer: They all share the same system --> http://twitter.com/CityNews/status/3746264035
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John Leschinski / September 3, 2009 at 10:02 pm
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Nice to see my poster for PodCamp London on BlogTO, even if it's via twitter avatars.
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RBeezy / September 3, 2009 at 11:13 pm
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yep. they all use the G&M publishing tool as their CMS. or at least they did when I worked at CTV.ca. the talk at the time was that there would be a migration to the Star's pub tool.

my Rogers wireless went out too. right around 5.
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kstop / September 3, 2009 at 11:56 pm
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How does your CMS going down take out your website? Surely all it should do is stop you updating it?
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John Leschinski replying to a comment from kstop / September 4, 2009 at 01:07 am
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The CMS is also responsible for serving files, maintaining the url for each page, and directing requests for files.

It doesn't just create a new HTML file for every page, story and update.
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Sean / September 4, 2009 at 04:26 am
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Not the first time either. It happened last weekend as well.
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IWonder? / September 4, 2009 at 08:39 am
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How long till someone blames Michael Bryant for this?
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Gabe replying to a comment from John Leschinski / September 4, 2009 at 08:48 am
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Please reconfigure your CMS
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John Leschinski replying to a comment from Gabe / September 4, 2009 at 08:54 am
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It's how they all work. Not just theirs.
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Nigel / September 4, 2009 at 09:31 am
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Yes, it's how they all work. I believe CityNews was using RedDot CMS (now open text) at one point in time however, all these media companies should not be on the same install or server cluster for that matter. I find it unbelievable they would be sharing the same co-located servers and not dedicated systems. Perhaps they are running their systems on the same cloud to account for high bandwidth spikes? Who knows. The Rogers mobile network is entirely different issue.

I still believe it was a internet hiccup when Skynet was activated.
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RBeezy replying to a comment from Nigel / September 4, 2009 at 09:53 am
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Shhh! don't mention Skynet, they'll hear you!
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Diane / September 4, 2009 at 10:31 am
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Yeah, I called Fido because the voice and data connection on my iPhone (I know, I know) ranged from crappy to non-existent yesterday all the way from the city to Mississauga.

They told me I wasn't using my phone right.

Today I am apparently much smarter.
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Matt / September 4, 2009 at 11:56 am
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They all use a system built by Torstar Digital (http://torstardigital.com/properties.html) called TOPS. It was built in house by Torstar Digital and sold to other companies.

There bave been numerous problems with it and I can't believe that other companies are using something built by a non-software company.
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John Leschinski replying to a comment from Diane / September 4, 2009 at 03:32 pm
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Ya, I was driving to London and couldn't check gas prices, twitter, or GPS.
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Efehan replying to a comment from Diane / September 7, 2009 at 02:07 pm
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Haha, silly you! Using your phone upside down?

Thank god customer service is there to help us make sure our batteries are in our phones and our cable modems are plugged in.
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