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I learned how routers really work from Ericsson's seminal video on the matter, The Good Warriors of the Net: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9XWxD6cJuY https:/

I learned how routers really work from Ericsson's seminal video on the matter, The Good Warriors of the Net: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9XWxD6cJuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9XWxD6cJuY Though I always thought the "router switch" was much more fun.

dec0dedab0de 6y ago
Haha I forgot about this video. It was required viewing at my first job.
sgillen 6y ago
Haha thanks for sharing. Interesting how much emphasis there is on "the ping of death" compared to literally any other exploit. Does anyone know if this was really such a big problem when this video came out?
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  I do remember hearing about it causing issues here and there in the 90s/early 00s, but rarely. Never hear about it anymore. But I do remember AppleTalk causing issues more frequently on a network I helped manage that had radio studios with two Macs per studio, but mostly Windows PCs through the rest of the building. That place also had a Macintosh 512K running its phone system until around 2010!
- schoen 6y ago
  What I remember is that the ping of death was extremely surprising in terms of the number of OSes affected, the ease of exploiting it, and the super-noticeable consequence of instantly crashing the target machine. And it came out at a time when there wasn't as much vulnerability research and very few extensively cross-platform vulnerabilities. Also, with the ping of death, the only way to use it was to very noticeably crash systems -- not to secretly build a botnet or something, as might have been done with RCE vulnerabilities.
- kitteh 6y ago
  It was popular for booting people off IRC, but there were other exploits around the same era that did the same such as land and teardrop. It wasn't super notable. What was more horrific was the amount of windows machines that had tcp ports for various windows services open to the internet that led to not only crashing but remote compromise and rootkits/botnet stuff. That went on for years and only got mitigated by people deploying routers with fw/Nat functionality.
jpxw 6y ago
Just watched the whole video, amazing, nostalgic but also subtly wrong in a number of annoying ways!
- whoisburbansky 6y ago
  For someone with only a passing understanding of router innards, what should I watch out for from this talk to avoid coming away with an incorrect understanding of how things work?
  - fiatjaf 6y ago
    In my experience programmers are very friendly and kind and are always eager to help everybody understand what they do understand about programming. In contrast with that, people from the "networking" world often look with despise to people who don't understand what they do and want to prevent them from learning, they love to just say what is wrong and never point to what would be right and why, they also will most of the times just keep saying they must hire someone to do the job instead of learning. That is my experience on Networking Stack Exchange, on ##networking channel on Freenode and also the impression I have from a friend that deals with networking, although I try to not talk about it with him for the reasons above.
    - pfundstein 6y ago
      To counter your anecdote with my own, I've been working for 10 years on a team which has seen Network Engineers, Systems Engineers and Software Engineers come and go, and I've seen three(!) very arrogant Software Engineers who as it turned out didn't know what they were doing. But the same goes for other disciplines, we've had a straight up antisocial Network Engineer who only worked from home and never answered his phone (he did excellent diagrams though). We've had an arrogant Systems Engineer that refused to document anything. These people were fired, but my point is that you should blame the person rather than the discipline.
    - inopinatus 6y ago
      I've been working alongside network engineers for thirty years in a variety of ISP, IXP, RIR, corporate, carrier, DC and public cloud environments, and do not recognise the people you are describing. These colleagues run the usual gamut of human personalities, but invariably the most respected and senior contributors are those that enable others through sharing their knowledge and experience. They were never anything but helpful and patient even when I was just getting started and full of basic questions about BGP and mixing up my fibre modes. However, I have also contributed to Stack Overflow and managed IRC channels and servers. The negative traits you've described do correlate to the hostile attitudes endemic within many StackExchange and IRC communities. They are not correlated to my workplace experience of network engineers.
Spare_account 6y ago
I watched this decades ago and forgot just enough about it that I couldn't find it again recently when I tried. Thank you
lelandbatey 6y ago
Slightly higher quality version here: https://youtu.be/PBWhzz_Gn10 https://youtu.be/PBWhzz_Gn10
hoten 6y ago
"accidents happen [in LAN]", "at least the router is exact (for the most part)" What does this mean? Then towards the end... "the packet is recycled". What?
- geerlingguy 6y ago
  I don't know about packet recycling, but at least with the 'for the most part', packet collision and packet loss used to be a lot more common for some reason. Nowadays the only times I see them on local networks is when cables get badly kinked or terminations are poorly done.
methou 6y ago
Someone gotta make this in Factorio

dec0dedab0de 6y ago

Haha I forgot about this video. It was required viewing at my first job.

sgillen 6y ago

Haha thanks for sharing. Interesting how much emphasis there is on "the ping of death" compared to literally any other exploit. Does anyone know if this was really such a big problem when this video came out?

geerlingguy 6y ago
I do remember hearing about it causing issues here and there in the 90s/early 00s, but rarely. Never hear about it anymore. But I do remember AppleTalk causing issues more frequently on a network I helped manage that had radio studios with two Macs per studio, but mostly Windows PCs through the rest of the building. That place also had a Macintosh 512K running its phone system until around 2010!
schoen 6y ago
What I remember is that the ping of death was extremely surprising in terms of the number of OSes affected, the ease of exploiting it, and the super-noticeable consequence of instantly crashing the target machine. And it came out at a time when there wasn't as much vulnerability research and very few extensively cross-platform vulnerabilities. Also, with the ping of death, the only way to use it was to very noticeably crash systems -- not to secretly build a botnet or something, as might have been done with RCE vulnerabilities.
kitteh 6y ago
It was popular for booting people off IRC, but there were other exploits around the same era that did the same such as land and teardrop. It wasn't super notable. What was more horrific was the amount of windows machines that had tcp ports for various windows services open to the internet that led to not only crashing but remote compromise and rootkits/botnet stuff. That went on for years and only got mitigated by people deploying routers with fw/Nat functionality.

jpxw 6y ago

Just watched the whole video, amazing, nostalgic but also subtly wrong in a number of annoying ways!

whoisburbansky 6y ago
For someone with only a passing understanding of router innards, what should I watch out for from this talk to avoid coming away with an incorrect understanding of how things work?
- fiatjaf 6y ago
  In my experience programmers are very friendly and kind and are always eager to help everybody understand what they do understand about programming. In contrast with that, people from the "networking" world often look with despise to people who don't understand what they do and want to prevent them from learning, they love to just say what is wrong and never point to what would be right and why, they also will most of the times just keep saying they must hire someone to do the job instead of learning. That is my experience on Networking Stack Exchange, on ##networking channel on Freenode and also the impression I have from a friend that deals with networking, although I try to not talk about it with him for the reasons above.
  - pfundstein 6y ago
    To counter your anecdote with my own, I've been working for 10 years on a team which has seen Network Engineers, Systems Engineers and Software Engineers come and go, and I've seen three(!) very arrogant Software Engineers who as it turned out didn't know what they were doing. But the same goes for other disciplines, we've had a straight up antisocial Network Engineer who only worked from home and never answered his phone (he did excellent diagrams though). We've had an arrogant Systems Engineer that refused to document anything. These people were fired, but my point is that you should blame the person rather than the discipline.
  - inopinatus 6y ago
    I've been working alongside network engineers for thirty years in a variety of ISP, IXP, RIR, corporate, carrier, DC and public cloud environments, and do not recognise the people you are describing. These colleagues run the usual gamut of human personalities, but invariably the most respected and senior contributors are those that enable others through sharing their knowledge and experience. They were never anything but helpful and patient even when I was just getting started and full of basic questions about BGP and mixing up my fibre modes. However, I have also contributed to Stack Overflow and managed IRC channels and servers. The negative traits you've described do correlate to the hostile attitudes endemic within many StackExchange and IRC communities. They are not correlated to my workplace experience of network engineers.

Spare_account 6y ago

I watched this decades ago and forgot just enough about it that I couldn't find it again recently when I tried. Thank you

lelandbatey 6y ago

Slightly higher quality version here: https://youtu.be/PBWhzz_Gn10 https://youtu.be/PBWhzz_Gn10

hoten 6y ago

"accidents happen [in LAN]", "at least the router is exact (for the most part)" What does this mean? Then towards the end... "the packet is recycled". What?

geerlingguy 6y ago
I don't know about packet recycling, but at least with the 'for the most part', packet collision and packet loss used to be a lot more common for some reason. Nowadays the only times I see them on local networks is when cables get badly kinked or terminations are poorly done.

methou 6y ago

Someone gotta make this in Factorio