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How an unfixed Net glitch could strand you offline
- Locke1689 16y agoUgh, reading mainstream media reports on technical topics is almost physically painful. It takes almost half the article to get to the topic. The subject is BGP hijacking. I assume most people who have taken a networking course are familiar with the basics, but here's a basic link which carries links to more information if necessary. http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4975 http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4975
- shaddi 16y agoReally? I thought this was a quite good lay description of BGP and BGP hijacking. The example about driving with no road signs seemed particularly lucid for someone with no technical background. Edit: What /is/ physically painful is reading the comments on the story... face palm
- quicksilver03 16y agoWhat's weird is the final comment, especially coming from a CTO: > "You make some phone calls and hope and pray" With so much phone traffic going over VOIP these days, if there's really a BGP hijacking then his phone calls haven't much chance of be effective.
- jurjenh 16y agoThat made me think of an old story - never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon. If the internet does go out (and phone with it, because most main carriers use VOIP in the main trunk lines I believe), how many people would actually think of doing something the old physical way? Guess this would be a demonstration of just how seriously we depend on the net in daily life. Would banking be affected - do banks use entirely separate comms lines? Emergency services? Power networks - how is energy usage monitored in nation-wide grids? And what sort of fail-over systems exist?
- count 16y agoPeople are doing something about it - https://www.arin.net/announcements/2009/20090706_rpki.html https://www.arin.net/announcements/2009/20090706_rpki.html