Just a few short years ago, failure in internet services was not all that uncommon. Sites were not capable of handling a sudden influx of traffic and servers crashed more frequently. However, thanks to more fault-tolerant servers, internet services have become way steadier and way more crash-proof these days. However, it is still vital to learn the causes behind the failure of internet services so that such problems do not become commonplace once again in the future.
Operator error
The leading cause of failure in internet service is operator error. Such errors are not as easily detected as other technical faults which mean that the internet service is not even aware of the problem till it much later. This kind of error is also the most time consuming one to correct which in itself is a contributor to the severity of the problem and the cost of the failure to the company.
Configuration errors
Within operator errors, we get a subcategory of errors which is quite significant itself. These are configuration errors. These are harder to detect those hardware failures as they are often a result of faults in the front end software which itself is custom written for each service. It can be very time consuming to resolve and companies are often reluctant to make this data public which further means that non-contracted experts cannot be called in to fix these errors if the experts on the company’s rolls aren’t readily available when the error occurs.
Component failures
Component failure is the third most commonplace cause of the failure of internet services. Thankfully, it is also the easiest to detect and resolve at least in terms of difficulty. It is also an error that can easily be prevented by running regular system checks and maintenance.
