Easy Prediction: Google Not Going To Buy Dow Jones

Internet2 Knocked Out By Homeless Man?

from the nuclear-disaster,-huh? dept

Wed, May 2nd 2007 5:26pm — Mike Masnick

The original purpose of the internet was supposed to be a network that the government could continue to use even after a nuclear attack. The whole point is that it's supposed to figure out ways to route around damage. However, when it came to Internet2, apparently designers didn't pay as much attention to that kind of stability. The news today is that a homeless man in Boston tossed a cigarette on a mattress, setting off a two-alarm fire that happened to knock out the Internet2 connection between New York and Boston. It's true that Internet2 is supposed to be experimenting with different methods of building network infrastructure, but you would think that redundancy would have been considered a feature worth keeping.

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22 Comments

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Buzz, 2 May 2007 @ 5:28pm

thoughts
Here is my honest opinion of this situation:
...
...
...
ROTFLOL!!! XD XD XD
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Kyros, 2 May 2007 @ 6:48pm

Lawl.
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Joel Coehoorn, 2 May 2007 @ 6:55pm

I think the key word in there is 'experimenting'. I don't think anyone at Internet2 makes the claim of having a completed project. And just because at this phase there may only be budget for one line between New York and Boston doesn't mean the protocols might not be good enough that if Internet2 ever gets the same kind of adoption as the web that more lines wouldn't be run and it would be able to route around the problem.

But yeah, I2 is not likely to ever get that kind of adoption. It's more valuable as an experimental network for testing new ideas and protocols on a scale resembling the real thing for consideration by standards bodies.
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Anonymous, 2 May 2007 @ 7:01pm

I'm in ur internets, dropping it like its hawt.
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RandomThoughts, 2 May 2007 @ 7:02pm

Mike, I know that you are out in California, but on the east coast, we have some serious homeless people.
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AndyC, 2 May 2007 @ 7:06pm

California, California. Califor-nya-nya, super cool to the homeless!
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just me, 2 May 2007 @ 7:10pm

Well, I can't remember whom did the investigating, but I heard that the regular internet main lines are not in any better shape. It wouldn't take much to knock the USA off the grid.
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Optimist, 2 May 2007 @ 7:50pm

Hey, it hasn't been knocked out by a nuclear attack, so the requirements are still being met!
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Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2007 @ 7:56pm

it hasn't been knocked out by a nuclear attack,
it's really because we're fighting them over there so they don't come over here . . . . /sarcasm
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Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2007 @ 7:58pm

re: AndyC
And that's why there are so many people begging for money on the streets of San Francisco? Right...
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Trerro, 2 May 2007 @ 8:14pm

Well, you see the BPD would've stopped the homeless guy, but they were too busy fending off mooninites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_scare
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Jeremy, 2 May 2007 @ 9:06pm

um...yeah
so the internet2 connection between two points was knocked out. It's larger than two schools, you know. If Atlanta had a serious accident, the major internet1 routers there would be useless. It wouldn't disable the whole net, but you'd see similar problems in that local area.
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|333173|3|_||3, 2 May 2007 @ 9:27pm

Nuclear War
The Net was not origianlly intended to survive a nuclear war, but rather to allow scientists to use remote computers despite thier crappy connections. Teh realisation that it might survive a nuclear war (assuming anything worth commanding survived) came later.
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XCetron, 2 May 2007 @ 10:43pm

Yea its experimenting but this is definitely not good publicity, theyre gonna get laugh at for a few months now.
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Joe Smith, 2 May 2007 @ 10:53pm

stress testing
They should buy the homeless guy a meal. They'll learn more about system reliability from this unpredicted event than they would from months of simulating problems with the system.
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Charles Griswold, 2 May 2007 @ 11:02pm

Re: Nuclear War
I thought that the purpose Arpanet was to ensure that, in the event of a nuclear war, our top military leaders would still be able to download pr0n.
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zcat, 2 May 2007 @ 11:50pm

Not a new problem
I few years back some 'homies' decided to light a fire in a rail tunnel that goes through the middle of Hamilton. The fire ended up burning through a big bundle of fiber cutting off internet to Waikato University, a few big companies, and some smaller ISPs. It also caused major bandwidth problems for our two major Teleco's who both had fiber in that tunnel.

And I've lost count of the number of times a major fiber has been cut by thieves looking for copper to steal..
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Jess, 3 May 2007 @ 12:35am

Too fast
The internet has grown too fast for people to look into building redundancy. People with "me" complexes want their internet now and don't care if it might take a couple decades to get it reliable enough for them to be online 80% of the time. Until its down that is.

Also the military most likely won't lose their connectivity so it won't do anything to knock it down just to give the military issues.

---Can you imagine Iran in charge of part of the internet? They'd shut it down until all the porn was removed. And that's just not nice!!!--"Me"
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Ben Robinson, 3 May 2007 @ 1:47am

I often hear Americans talking about X alarm fires, e.g. it was a 2 alarm fire. What does that actually mean?
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myinnershadow, 3 May 2007 @ 1:58am

fire alarm
generally speaking a X alarm fire is in reference to the number of fire stations called to the fire, i think its only 1-5 even if there are more.
Justin Pakosky
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kawlisse, 3 May 2007 @ 6:45am

Doctor in New york "Ok here I am going to do a gastric bypass" ... (internet2 goes down) "oh! shit what just happened" Patient in Boston "O my god they ripped out my liver, WTF"
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Tim, 5 May 2007 @ 11:16am

What ever happened to Bum Fights dot com?
So they take bumfights. com offline, and then this happens.
It is a slippery slope we are on!
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