Sandy Causes Major Internet and Mobile Outages on East Coast

Overall, the Internet weathered the impact of Hurricane Sandy; however, there are lessons to be learned for anyone relying upon the Internet and mobile web to conduct business, communicate with online users, or get important information to concerned citizens.  First, it is critically important to build robust business continuity plans around your online presence. This means having your online content and websites available from multiple data centers, in different parts of the United States or world, as well as implementing technologies to allow for quick failover to those redundant data centers.

Testing and monitoring of these contingency plans are absolutely important—especially testing and monitoring from where your online users are located, connecting to the Internet from mobile phones and web browsers. Second, be sure any 3rd party content on your web site adheres to the same high expectations and policies you have for your content and servers. Your site might be doing fine; however, content from a different provider could bring your entire website to a halt. Use external load testing and monitoring to ensure your 3rd party content providers, analytics vendors, and others are living up to your Service Level Agreements (SLA) and that you have monitoring in place to quickly alert you when they don't.

Finally, recognize the fragility of the mobile web. In highly dense populations, even a single mobile cellular tower taken offline can wreak havoc for everyone in that area. Voice calls, SMS messaging, social media and news updates put a significant stress on existing infrastructures. Be sure to provide multiple ways for your online visitors/customers to connect with you—be it the web, mobile, phone, and other creative ways.”