When I was ready to turn on my computer this morning, my wife got a message on her phone that the internet was out of service and would resume around 10 am. But not until 2 pm could we have the internet service again. Later, I learned from local news that the disconnection had affected over two thousand households in my neighborhood.

It is not unusual to encounter internet breakdowns once in a while. Ironically, it happened in Silicon Valley, the pioneering place of the internet, not least that the headquarters of network tycoon CISCO is less than a ten-minute driving distance away from my place.