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5% of the Net is Unreachable

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the but-never-the-spammer-percent dept.

dasheiff writes "A BBC Story says US researchers reveal that up to 5% of the internet is completely unreachable. However the most interesting part is that they reported that many of the lost net sites flare into life briefly when being used to send spam or to launch attacks on other parts of the net."

4 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. The article mentions US military sites by Inthewire · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...the article says those sites are "old" and "unlisted due to age" (not direct quotes)

    Maybe they just, um, are delisted due to paranoia, perhaps justified?

    --


    Writers imply. Readers infer.
  2. This leads to an interesting possibility by Goldenhawk · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... that much spam could be identified and stopped more easily by careful tracking of the routing information. The article (actually you have to follow the PDF link to get the real information, not just the executive summary) points out that much of the spam identified came from sites that were established and routed, then sent out the spam, and then shut down again immediately.

    Seems to me that you could make some progress against the spam by simply refusing any email from a domain that hadn't been recognized on the net for at least several days or maybe weeks.

    If you haven't followed the PDF link, there are some interesting time history graphs of various routing parameters. Worth checking out.

    --
    --Brandon / Split Infinity Music

  3. repeated article... by Raleel · · Score: 5, Informative

    actually,a BBC rehash of an article that was up a month ago

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/15/0517 23 7&mode=thread

    --
    -- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
  4. MILNET doesn't rely on DNS by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    The MILNET side of the Internet still uses fixed "hosts.txt" tables to some extent, rather than domain name servers. This keeps critical communications going even if DNS is messed up. (The DDN people never really liked BIND, which they didn't contract for; Berkeley did it on their own, without thinking through the security issues.)

    MILNET uses IP addresses in the same space as the public Internet. The MILNET is normally connected to the rest of the Internet through gateways, but during crisis periods, those gateways are sometimes turned off. After September 11th, much of the MILNET was inaccessable from the public Internet for a day or two. That may be what those researchers saw.