[70479] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Flash crowds and DOS on POTS
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Iljitsch van Beijnum)
Mon May 17 04:34:16 2004
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0405162239340.24373@clifden.donelan.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>
Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 10:32:32 +0200
To: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On 17-mei-04, at 4:53, Sean Donelan wrote:
> All networks are vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks and flash
> crowds. Broadcasting & Cable investigates the problems with the
> telephone and SMS voting with the Fox television show American
> Idol.
This is _very_ old news. Something like this happened in Holland ages
ago, and it was even named the "Henny Huisman effect" after the show's
host.
The phone network is very fragile. Just about anything unusual causes
massive congestion. For instance, the 9/11 problems in New York
disrupted long distance service throughout the entire US and even
international service in some unrelated parts of the world. But even
more mundane problems such as last summer's power outage have similar
effects.
> The difference is when people get a "busy" signal on the phone
> network, they don't think phone network is collapsing.
If they knew the difference between a busy signal and a congestion
signal they probably would...
BTW, what do you think happens when everyone starts running the water
tap at the same time?
