I watched The Social Network last night. It’s an excellent movie – but one scene in particular struck a chord.
Mark Zuckerberg launches campus hot-or-not site facemash.com, and within hours brings down the entire Harvard network. The stated overload traffic – 22,000 pageviews – should not have been an issue, according to some tech observers - but that’s not the funny part.
In the movie, as soon as the network is down, we cut to what is presumably the Harvard data centre. I think I remember seeing banks of flashing control panels, possibly even a semi-transparent campus map with red LEDs in it signifying network traffic spikes – similar to what you might see in Bond movies or The Hunt for Red October.
At 4.30am, a nerd in the data centre responds to the emergency network blackout by calling either his boss or possibly the head honcho of the university (Chancellor or Principal or something). He actually wakes him up; this is a Code 10 (to use a Bourne-ism) – a severe issue demanding immediate attention.
24-hour network monitoring may be a reality for top-tier Ivy League institutions – but it sure ain’t at University of the Arts London. If UAL had a comparable hacker incident late at night, no-one would notice for several hours. Possibly after morning coffee someone might try and check their emails and notice something amiss.
Do UK universities generally have rock-solid networks with sprightly nerds monitoring traffic around the clock? Or is the reality a bit closer to this: