5% of the Net is Unreachable

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."

Comments

Ironic

[Scutter]

That link appears to be unreachable from my network.

In related news...

[Brento]

The article also reports that approximately 13% of network admins are unreachable. These are the same people believed to be responsible for leaving Windows NT/2000 machines serving web pages without any service packs or security patches. These admins surface from time to time when they respond to said spam.

Unreachable?

[WinstonSmith]

If it is unreachable, is it really part of the Internet?

When I turn off my router, I don't really consider my home machines part of the Internet even though they are running and connected by a physicall wire.

Re:Unreachable?

[d5w]

If it is unreachable, is it really part of the Internet?

Check out the Arbor Networks presentation the BBC is referring to. Their definition of "dark address spaces" is

"The range of topology accessible from one provider, but unreachable via one or more competitor networks"

So, yes, these addresses are reachable by someone, just not by everyone.

Content-free article

[fader]

Here, let me sum up for you.

Spammers hide on the 'net by playing with unsecured routers.

What worries me is that it took someone three years to figure this out...

Re:Content-free article

[satch89450]

What worries me is that it took someone three years to figure this out...

I think you may have jumped to a wrong conclusion here. It didn't take three years to figure out that spammers play around with unsecured routers. It took three years to prove via experiment and measurement the extent of the problem, and to quantify the extent of the problem.

When the little boy has cried "Wolf!" often enough, the lone cry is quickly ignored. When the little boy then yells "Wolf, range 600, bearing 219" the cry takes on a bit more significance, don't you think?

If you can't measure it, it's opinion not science. (No, I can't find who said it first -- it's not original with me.)

The article mentions US military sites

[Inthewire]

...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?

Only 5%?

[at_18]

That's funny, when I try to send replies to all my spam, it seems that 100% of the net is unreachable...

slashdotted?

[mrroot]

5% of all internet sites unreachable?
...maybe they were slashdotted

Spammers, may they rest in the damnation of hell

[el'gwato]

My war on spam begins with all Spammers, but it does not end there. It will not end until every spamming group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

These spamists spam not merely to waste bandwidth, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every piece of unsolicited mail, they hope that genuine e-mailers grow fearful, retreating from cyber space and forsaking news groups. They stand against me, because I stand in their way.

I am not deceived by their pretenses to piety. I have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the spamist ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing bandwidth to serve their advertising visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history's unmarked grave of discarded trash cans.

My response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated replies.
I should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic e-mails to ISP's, visible to News groups, and covert operations, secret even in success. I will starve spamists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from ISP to ISP, until there is no refuge or no rest. And I will pursue ISP's that provide aid or safe haven to spammers. Every ISP, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with me, or you are with the spamists.

From this day forward, any ISP that continues to harbor or support spamists will be regarded by me as a hostile regime.

maybe it's because

[mrroot]

at any given time, 5% of all the Windows servers out there are busy rebooting

Re:maybe it's because

[NerdSlayer]

at any given time, 5% of all the Windows servers out there are busy rebooting.

I think it's closer to 3%, actually. Slashdot is linking to the other 2%.

A different theory

[ackthpt]

If 5% is unreachable then it's not part of the net. So, at all times 100% is reachable, the net is just variable in size.

I've run into sites which are up or down and often they're in a small shop and they actually power down their server (or it happens with a power/service outage) Lots of broken links on images. It would be interesting to see a statistic on how many pages which are technically non-functional still exist, i.e. with parts unable to display due to broken links, from sites gone away or pages moved but links not updated (which even M$N does from time to time)

Pardon?

[justinstreufert]

This instantly strikes me as sort of dumb. Unreachable? By whom? In what way? What were the methods? Are you talking about IP addresses or domain names? Did you take into account:

• Unallocated IP blocks
  
• Unused allocated blocks that are being sat on by their owners
  
• Dialup, DSL and Cable-modem users
  
• Sites that are down
  
• Sites that do not accept ICMP (or whatever protocol they used)
  
• Desktop computers that people turn off
  
• Firewalls that pretend they don't exist
  

The problem with lost peering agreements between ISPs causing partial 'net outages is well-understood. So what exactly have they measured here?! Seems like a shaky story to get one's name in the news.

Justin

Public addresses on Private networks

[ethaz]

I can't tell you how often I have had customers demand public IP addresses for a private Frame Relay network with no Internet connection.

More than once, I've said "Here you are, you get an entire Class A because we think you are so great. Your adresses are 10.x.x.x"

This leads to an interesting possibility

[Goldenhawk]

... 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.

repeated article...

[Raleel]

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

If only

[gila_monster]

it happened to be the 5% not worth viewing.

Thats the @home Part of the Internet

[quakeaddict]

Thats the @home Part of the Internet....

enough said.

Priorities

[r_j_prahad]

The only time I worry is when 127.0.0.1 becomes unreachable.

Research paper

[hearingaid]

It's irritating how people don't even read the BBC quick-article, but for those who actually want to know what the researchers figured out: the paper is here; it's in Acrobat format, sigh.

My part of the 5%

[Rasvar]

is an XP box that I refuse to leave powered up when I am not using it. Nothing like a patch a day security.

How unreachable?

[Darth RadaR]

Maybe it's just the 5% of pr0n sites that they don't have passwords to?
:^)

MILNET doesn't rely on DNS

[Animats]

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.

Slashdot on Exodus

[fliplap]

At the momement, Slashdot, as well as many other Exodus hosted sites such as google and ebay are completely unreachable from many parts of the net. I'm typing this via lynx ssh'd into my account at ASU and I am for some reason able to reach them. It appears that anyone currently on the @home network is unable to reach exodus sites, as well as anyone on the axinet network. I can't confirm anyone else's problems but this is what I've seen.
At first I though thats what this story was refering to

Re:ummmm

[billn]

Yes, this is a reprint of an older story, found here.