Network equipment crashes
Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2025 3:43 am
power strip failures, unexpected configurations and firmware upgrades gone wrong. Unaccounted growth in files, surprise operating system limits, and countless other snags and roadbumps have hit the archive over nearly three decades. These problems are definitely not unique to the archive’s existence – many other websites and computers in the world experience the same snags.
Some of the snags have been localized – an item stops loading, or a e-commerce photo editing renders wrong in some browsers. Others will take out a rack of machines, a fleet of drives, and late nights or long days bring them back to service.
Further issues are even more generalized: Power outages due to weather or fire, or a cable (power or network) is sliced through by a misinformed construction crew. A solid heatwave takes some of the machines out for hours at a time.
Across the years, the Archive has had outages lasting minutes, hours, and even days.
In 2024, for the first time in recent history, it was weeks.
The Archive staff was now spending long days and nights auditing, assessing, and improving the entire infrastructure of the Archive, top to bottom. To the public, we looked completely down, and to some, waiting patiently and then less-patiently for the return of the site, they came to a conclusion: this was it.
For some people, the era of Internet Archive was over. The Wayback Machine, Open Library and the Internet Archive were, in one shocking stroke, gone.
Some of the snags have been localized – an item stops loading, or a e-commerce photo editing renders wrong in some browsers. Others will take out a rack of machines, a fleet of drives, and late nights or long days bring them back to service.
Further issues are even more generalized: Power outages due to weather or fire, or a cable (power or network) is sliced through by a misinformed construction crew. A solid heatwave takes some of the machines out for hours at a time.
Across the years, the Archive has had outages lasting minutes, hours, and even days.
In 2024, for the first time in recent history, it was weeks.
The Archive staff was now spending long days and nights auditing, assessing, and improving the entire infrastructure of the Archive, top to bottom. To the public, we looked completely down, and to some, waiting patiently and then less-patiently for the return of the site, they came to a conclusion: this was it.
For some people, the era of Internet Archive was over. The Wayback Machine, Open Library and the Internet Archive were, in one shocking stroke, gone.