Net Traffic Shocks Mimic Earthquakes

belphegor writes "Technology Research News is running an article describing research linking the similarties between Earthquakes and Internet traffic. By pinging hosts across the network, researchers 'were able to measure frequent changes in Internet congestion...results showed that the Internet, like the earth's network of faults, exhibits criticality -- a condition of sudden and drastic change. "Sudden drastic congestion leads to a large value of the round trip time of the ping signal, which is identified with a main shock," said Abe. The researchers referred to these sudden, drastic traffic changes as Internetquakes.' They also saw 'aftershocks' that can be mathematically described in a similar manner to the seismic ones more familiar to many Californians."

Comments

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe we'll get lucky and if we ping the .NET side enough it will fall into the ocean! :)

I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[Clue4All]

Insert tastelass Slashdot-effect joke here.

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[Jonny Ringo]

Ok. I guess that would make /. a fault line of the internet.

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[T-Kir]

Ping of death...

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[tamizhan]

Insert tastelass Slashdot-effect joke here.

taste lass indeed :)

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[b_pretender]

Does this mean that that a DDOS might knock MSN into the Pacific ocean?

Re:I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[scott1853]

No, slashdot would be more like setting off a few nukes right on top of a fault line.

The name for this phenomenon?

[viper21]

The Slashdot Effect.

I'm surprised that it isn't mentioned in the article. They are probably trying to patent it, I'm sure.

-S

Re:The name for this phenomenon?

[unicron]

I think Slashdot should rent out its services to companies that want to test their server's stability. They can make a new topic like:

"unicron writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"

Re:The name for this phenomenon?

[slagdogg]

"unicron writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"

This would be known as the Slashdot effect.

"slagdogg writes in to tell us he's found a site with over 100,000 free, hi-rez pr0n pics of Natalie Portman, and it's all completely free! You can even download them all as one big-assed compressed file!"

THIS would be an Internetquake!

Re:The name for this phenomenon?

[netsharc]

Somehow that sounds just like what I got in my email this morning...

Slashdotting

[spencerogden]

So what does a Slashdotting rank on the Richter Scale?

Re:Slashdotting

[RatBastard]

I give it a Sphinter Factor of 9.5.

Poppy cock!

[Anonymous Coward]

The gas in my bowels emulates earthquakes and volcanoes. That doesn't mean it should be studied.

someone give these scientists something important to study and waste grant money on!

who's fault is it

[kisrael]

Slashdot Effect = San Andreas Fault?

It's interesting, I'm glad to see the article ties it in with other complex systems as well.

Re:who's fault is it

[edrugtrader]

watch out for the syntax
== is comparison.
= is assignment.

Re:who's fault is it

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in C derivatives.

In Ada (and Pascal) = is comparison, := is assignment.

Don't be so C-Centric, dude!

Re:who's fault is it

[Dalroth]

Not in all languages (Pascal and VB come to mind).

Was slashdot asked to help with the research?

[jjohn]

Seems like /. has been responsible for many a 'netquake. Now /. will crash your web servers FOR SCIENCE!

Re:Was slashdot asked to help with the research?

[Bonker]

Slashdot has also been a mitigating factor to some of the most severe 'quakes', especially if you're discussing the information transmitted rather than just network traffic.

Case in point? 9-11-01.

CNN was gone. USA Today was gone. Fox News was gone. Slashdot, however, was providing first-hand accounts of the disaster/attack as well as discussion about them.

CmdrTaco, think before you post

[edrugtrader]

NO front page postings during the world series this year!

Re:CmdrTaco, think before you post

[Anonymous Coward]

what world series?? there isnt going to be one...instead the players want to bitch about making only 1 million when it could be 1.2...yes, im bitter

Re:CmdrTaco, think before you post

[Anonymous Coward]

Right no bitter man. I hope they just don't come back myself. Sorry, we do not pay you enough to play a fucking game for a living? Give me a break.

The /. Effect

[AntiTuX]

Causing plate shift all over the internet :)
sorry, it was just too easy to let go by :P

apparently...

[2MuchC0ffeeMan]

apparently Technology Research News will be the next website to feal this 'internet earthquake'...

maybe with followup stories it can have some 'aftershocks'...

California earthquakes are overrated

[sahrss]

I've lived in So Cali for two years, and have not felt one earthquake. I didn't move here specifically to be in earthquakes, but still I feel cheated :(

Re:California earthquakes are overrated

[Flounder]

If you wait, they will come.

I lived in SoCal from birth to age 25, I felt plenty. I lived in Northridge during the quake there. It's not exactly something I would have complained about if I had missed it.

Consider yourself lucky.

Re:California earthquakes are overrated

[dirvish]

I have lived in California my whole life (22 years) and the only time I felt on was when I was right by the Nevada border.

Re:California earthquakes are overrated

[Darby]

I lived in Northridge during the quake there.

Damn.
I was in Santa Barbara and it knocked our power out.

That explains a lot

[r_j_prahad]

Our company's webmaster has managed to exactly duplicate the San Andreas fault then. That box is shakier than California... oops, here comes another tremor now. Yup, reduced to rubble one more time.

One of these days I'll find some way to get the URL posted to Slashdot and I can see if computers really do burst into flame and shoot out showers of sparks like on the old Star Trek....

Re:That explains a lot

[Photon Ghoul]

Are you, ahem, looking to replace him? :)

Well it has to be said-

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

I wonder what a good Slashdotting would look like? Probably 11 on the Richter scale.

This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[eyefish]

This pattern of behavior (where two completelly different things show the same underlying behavior and/or explanation) is exactly one of the things that Stephen Wolfran is trying to explain in his book A New Kind of Science (see amazon link and reviews here)

Basically, everything in the universe can be explained as a huge network of nodes, where all these node do is computations following very simple rules. From such simple rules we get all the laws of physics, human behavior, chaotic behavior, and in this case the behavior of an earthquake and Internet traffic.

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[edrugtrader]

string theory?

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[WEFUNK]

Another book that is more directly related to this behavior is Per Bak's "How Nature Works". Bak demonstrates how many systems in nature, including earthquakes, highway traffic, and evolution, are governed by very similar power laws and he proposes that these systems naturally evolve to a state of "self organized criticality" as is mentioned in the article.

A simplistic model that he uses to describe this principle is a conical pile of sand that is built up by dropping one particle at a time. The pile will build and build and then experience surface avalanches apparently set off by only a single piece of additional sand. The frequency and size of these also follow the same type of power law. Self organized criticality is really a updated version of catastrophe theory and theories involving constraints. I'm still not sure if Wolfram has really shed any new light on this area, but some of his work might be used to explore the fundamental cause behind this apparently common principle.

I believe that some of these ideas are already used quite practically. For instance, knowledge that traffic jams can be caused without any external cause (accidents etc.) can provide insight into whether changing speed limits or adding additional lanes can ease congestion (or worsen it). Models and simulations can be built and sometimes the answers are found to be contrary to common sense.

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[sys$manager]

This should be -1 Pseudoscience. There is no evidence to back up any of the theories in that book. It's one of those "look at results, form theory to fit" books.

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[jordanda]

I beg to differ. It has been widely believed and shown in simulation that packet networks exibit power law distribution of lag. The theory has always been sound.

What is interesting about this article is that the hypothesis has now been verified empirically that the internet exhibits these qualities. That's not pseudo-science. They came up with a hypothesis: The internet exhibits chaotic behaviour characterized by power-law distribution. They validated this hypothesis with a repeatable experiment.

It's not -1 Pseudoscience.

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[sys$manager]

I was referring to "Cellular Automata," not the original article.

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[susano_otter]

You should be warned that using the strings "Stephen Wolfram" and "A New Kind Of Science" in the same sentence might make you look like a clueless idiot.

These guys can tell you more about the anti-Wolfram position.

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[Anonymous Coward]

>>one of those "look at results, form theory to fit" books.

You mean like the diligent observation of most scientists who then make a series of hypothesises designed around the informal Exploratory Data Analysis that they did prior to the experiment? Like that kind of Pseudoscience? Err I mean, academic science?

Re:This behavior is predicted by Celullar Automata

[betis70]

Read a couple of the reviews. Interesting, because when I picked up the book and looked through it, I was rather underwhelmed with the apparent content. I was reading about complex systems theory 10 years ago in college, and much of the literature we were reading was older than that. How, exactly, is that 'new'? Of course my professor did long stints at the Santa Fe Institute working on the SWARM project, so maybe that is why it did not seem very new to me. The reviews I read said the same thing.

Maybe it is just the marketing hype (or maybe it was the price) but I put the book back on the self.

the net is a non-linear resonant circuit

[cats-paw]

I like to think of the net as a non-linear resonant
circuit. The correct starting conditions give
you very large responses to "small" inputs.

It's resonant so you see "ringing" in the response.

Seems to me that you can definitely look at the
earth's crust in a similar manner.

Who's hip to the real netquake?

[teamhasnoi]

Shut up,
already! Damn!
Don't wait for your neighbor,

Green Eggs and Ham!

Doin' the netquake!!

You know what I'm talkin' about?

Re:Who's hip to the real netquake?

[JazzyJ]

BULLSHIT!

You can't get off...

until you make the NET QUAKE!...

Re:Who's hip to the real netquake?

[kin_korn_karn]

I'm talkin' bout Shaft
I can dig it

Re:Who's hip to the real netquake?

[edrugtrader]

you, my friend, are drunk.

Re:Who's hip to the real netquake?

[Anonymous Coward]

and you are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning.

-Winston Churchill

and I thought I would

[JeanBaptiste]

post a stupid slashdot effect joke, looks like about 20 people beat me to it, dammit! Oh well here is a different stupid joke:

Q: What has 4 legs and smells like fish?
A: Bill Clinton's desk

Re:and I thought I would

[JordoCrouse]

Offtopic? This was just as funny as the 18,000 /. effect jokes. Here's a clue for all future posters - if it is obvious to you, then it is obvious to everybody. You are *not* thinking of something that just happened to slip by 300,000 other nerds. Don't post it.

Seriously, give this guy a break for trying to be original.

Not the analogy I'd use...

[Anonvmous Coward]

... I don't think earthquakes are an entirely appropriate metaphor. I'd think of it as more like dropping flaming bombs. Then, like in Populus, a flaming dude goes running back home only to set it on fire. Then people run out of it into neighboring homes and set them on fire. And then..

Well shoot now I wanna go play Populus. I don't feel like fleshing out my point.

I want a government grant...

[jsonmez]

People get money from the government to research this kind of stuff? I want a government grant. I want to compare the internet to the growth of fungus on oranges.

Re:I want a government grant...

[JordoCrouse]

People get money from the government to research this kind of stuff? I want a government grant. I want to compare the internet to the growth of fungus on oranges.

My theory with both the orange fungus and the internet is this:

The more disgusting it is, the more you can charge people to watch it.... :)

Re:I want a government grant...

[DNS-and-BIND]

Better yet, smear the fungus on a canvas, cover it with feces and religious symbols, and get a lifetime fellowship (read: free money) from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts.

New term for earthquakes...

[swordboy]

I've always referred to earthquakes as a "geological slashdotting". I think that this backs up my theory.

yet another group

[geekoid]

discovers something known about the internet, changes the terms to fit there thought models, and claims its a discovery.

Re:yet another group

[echucker]

I think it'd be fairly safe to say the same thing could be said about simple highway traffic or air traffic congestion. You only need one failure to make an effect ripple outward.....

Oh look, there's a cop with a speeder pulled over in the northbound lane. It only takes one rubbernecker to back up 4 lanes of traffic for a 1/2 mile, and that is in the _southbound_ lane!

Let's say a nice fog bank rolls off the Atlantic, and drops visibility in the New York area. In no time at all, flight schedules up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the US are knocked off kilter as Newark, Laguardia, and JFK either delay flights or shut down.


Earthquakes are just one thing you can relate it to, but just like some other folks replied, it still goes back to string theory.

I think I speak for all of us when I say...

[sfled]

...shocking.

Old News

[rbgaynor]

Gamers have known about the Quake(s) and (low) ping time relationship for years...

and so....

[carpe_noctem]

This would, of course, make /. the san andreas fault of the internet world. Causing havoc and destruction to small, unprepared villages up along the faultline.

Re:and so....

[DLWormwood]

/.'s more like the entire "Ring Of Fire" that the San Andreas is part of, even international sites get flattened by the seismic shocks that are the voluntary DDoS by thousands of geeks everywhere.

Maybe that should be "Token Ring Of Fire..."

Also called...

[Dfiant]

...the Slashdot effect.

Re:Also called...

[Dfiant]

Yes, yes, of course it's redundant. The article practically required people to say it. But it wouldn't count as such if referenced other redundant commentary like putting down Microsoft, patent laws, or the RIAA, would it? Hmm, let's see... Oh yes. The RIAA's threat to attack file traders is going to lead Microsoft to patent the Slashdot effect, thus allowing them to make money off Linux advocates from licensing fees.

Re:Also called...

[Anonymous Coward]

and of course the other people to mention the joke before you have nothing to do with it...

No wonder

[boa13]

I'm not surprised about this behavior: after all, the Net has been mostly created in California, so there must have been some subconscious influences on its design so that it mimics the quakes that plague the area. :)

Lights, camera, action!

[longduckdong]

I see a movie coming out of this.

Detection technology

[RobertNotBob]

Cool!

Now all of the money the government has spent on the detection of earthquales can actually help ME. Advance knowledge of net connection would make my life much easier.

Heck, VOIP might even actually be commercially feasable.

Wasted research $s

[Njoyda Sauce]

Is it just me or is this crap really stretching it. I think with 10 years and a good budget, I could write a convincing enough paper describing how cow feces is similar to chocolate.

Fascinating ..(?)

[camelrider]

Boy, this must have really made those guys leap out of bed in the morning, eager to get to work!

Uhm, hello captin....

[mwjlewis]

"Sudden drastic congestion leads to a large value of the round trip time of the ping signal, which is identified with a main shock,"

So what you are saying, is that when there is traffic, things slow down??? and i thought that it was cause someone [insert funny analogy here]

OH NO!!!

[fmaxwell]

I just got a slow ping. I am now typing this while huddled under my keyboard drawer in order to avoid injury from the netquake.

change of nomenclature

[circletimessquare]

does that mean that instead of saying:
"in 1996, kobe, japan had a terrible earthquake"
we should say:
"in 1996, kobe, japan got earth slashdotted" ?

or "for san francisco in 1906, the fire after the earth slashdot effect was more damaging than the orignal earth slashdot itself."

or "accompanying large earth slashdottings, there often follows many smaller earth afterslashdots."

are we to replace the richter scale with cowboy neal poll results as well? ;-P

Re:27aug02 lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear lord, please help this troll heal from his wretched heart burn. Make sure he remains asleep, but not in nightmare and he sleeps off his atrocious indigestion.

We pray to you, in jesus' name.
Amen.

Fault lines

[eclectus]

and the obligitory Windows Joke(tm)....

I guess that means all the WinNT servers represent the fault lines?

Quake on the internet?

[flicken]

Quake is responsible for all the slow-down on the Internet?!? For some reason, i thought that Counter Strike was more popular...

For instance

[Com2Kid]

When ever a new pentium 4 CPU is released Germany experiences sudden lag.

When ever new office toys are sent out for review Australia takes a hit

and when ever some idiot with a backhoe digs up a backbone line, well hell, the entire USA goes ploink.

Re:For instance

[Com2Kid]

*COUGH* fixs HTML *COUGH*

When ever a new pentium 4 CPU is released Germany experiences sudden lag.

When ever new office toys are sent out for review Australia takes a hit

and when ever some idiot with a backhoe digs up a backbone line, well hell, the entire USA goes ploink.

Re:For instance

[unicron]

Would it have killed you to find a story about a guy actually digging up a backbone? It's had to of happened somewhere.

I'd appreciate it if you could find a few dozen of them, because I'm trying to convince myself that my Cable-Modem couldn't possibly be this spotty with it's service, so it's gotta be something like the backbone breaking somewhere.

Re:For instance

[mwjlewis]

OMG... Didn't you read the article???? It is cause of the intenetquakes, of people browsing the web on your node. Gosh... the kids get home start with the p0rn, the traffic get's started and DONE. You get all shaken up...

Re:For instance

[Quietust]

Here's a few I found after doing a Google search for backhoe "internet backbone":

• Backhoe Event Cuts East Coast Internet Artery
• Unscheduled Outages Monday March 27

Given a bit more searching (and better search terms), I could probably come up with a bunch, including the one that hit Internic a while ago (resulting in a massive 4 hour net-wide outage).

/. effect

[asteinberg]

Needless to say, 90% of all these Internet quakes are the result of a link on Slashdot. (And 95% of all statistics are made up.)

I Wonder...

[RumGunner]

How much of that criticality is due to the Slashdot Effect?

.

Old News

[GrouchoMarx]

The researchers referred to these sudden, drastic traffic changes as Internetquakes.

Why? We've been calling it the Slashdot Effect for years. :-)

Please make it stop...

[SkyLeach]

"linking the similarties between Earthquakes and Internet traffic..."

I thought that there was nothing else they could call "like a <insert something to do with technology>", but there they go one-upping me again. So our brains are like computers, our genes are like source code, and our networks are like geology. Perhaps we really are in a matrix? Or perhaps all those similies in school are finally showing their ugly far-reaching effects on society.

We should commission a study, but then, somebody probably already has and I'll read about it on slashdot next week.

Re:Please make it stop...

[DLWormwood]

our networks are like geology

We've been calling ring, star, and tree arrangements of networks "topology" for years...

Nothing to see here, move along, move along...

Re:Please make it stop...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Those clouds look like a bunch of grapes."

"No, they look like a graphical representation of the internet."

"Close, more like a 3d graphical representation of an equation describing a hyperspatial matrix."

"Wait, it's not entirely disimilar to that porn picture I showed you, remember, the one of the pyramid of women's bums."

"But inverted!"

"Yes, clearly there is a profound connection between bums and hyperspatial geometry!"

"If we stand on our heads it will be even more apparent!"

Re:Please make it stop...

[wompser]

"We should commission a study, but then, somebody probably already has and I'll read about it on slashdot next week."

....and then 3 days later, and then the next week, and then 2 months later and.....



Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week...

Slashado

[Kristoffor]

I see the /. effect more like a tornado than an earthquake. An impenetrable wall of traffic is created around the site which sit in the calm "eye" of total disconnection.

Holy cow!

[jukal]

it's amazing how these scientists still have the balls to go and feed press with research results like this. You know, in certain situations you could find empirical proof to link for example your toilet visit to network congestion.

Re:change of nomenclature OT

[mwjlewis]

"C:\>tracert life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness "

windows ehh...

Error - Host not found.
C:\

In other news - traffic jams cause earthquakes

[delcielo]

Seemingly irrelevant car fires occurringly safely off the side of the highway back up traffic for miles as traffic around the incident slows to a crawl. This behavior mimics that of seismic activity and internet traffic slowdowns.

Internet experts now warn you in the event of a car fire, to stand in a doorway or underneath another heavy structure.

Seems...

[Hayzeus]

...like a lot of work to do to come up with what basically appears to be not much more than a metaphor.

One word...

[Daveamadid]

DUH!

Stuff breaks and because it's a network other stuff breaks too.

wow.

Let me tell you about the old days.. sonny

[ackthpt]

Why back in the late 20th century, we had a series of netquakes we all blamed on SprintNet. It was a horrible time and the suffering was great, many a word was uttered in disgust, and a few out-loud. Why, the earth practically stood still as if we was all trapped in a limbo. When a traceroute succeeded, through Northern Michigan University, to Canada, to Rochester NY, then on through New York City and Maryland, then down to New Orleans, back up to St Louie and off to Kansas, we all knew there was a serious catastrophe around Chicago and the moanin' of lost souls was great. Eventually they recovered, but we loathed them old Cisco routers that SprintNet used, they was just itchin' for a major disaster. We'd pick up the peices, o' course, as what misfortune befell us didn't matter to they'uns. Them was tough old times. Your DoS attacks ain't never come close. 'Course we then got saddled with CIESIN and was sharing a T1 with another school, by gum, it could make a feller cry.

You think you has it good, but all we needs is a few WorldComs to twitch the switch and ya'll be right back there in '93. Yep.

NEWSFLASH...

[thrillbert]

Internet, Aug. 27, 2002 - The Technology Research News (www.trnmag.com), which recently wrote an article on how Net Traffic mimics earthquakes, experienced an earthquake that shattered their networks, and brought down their servers. The earthquake measure 8.4 on the CmdrTaco TEBCF scale (time elapsed before complete failure).

News Correspondent Kimberly Patch had this to say via her cell phone connection: "one minute we're up and working, next thing you know everything just went crazy. People were screaming and running out of the building. I tried to keep calm, but at one point, knowing the magnitude of things, I paniced and ran out of the building screaming bloody murder!"

A representative from OSDN was quoted as saying: "heh.. heh.. umm.. heh heh.. nice huh?".

Calls to slashdot.org were not immediately returned.

---
(Score: +1 Funny, +1 Interesting, +1 Too Much Time on Hands)

QuakePing?

[budalite]

I wonder what percentage of the traffic in the networks they were "monitoring" was the actual pings? "Dang. Seems to happen every time we do this experiment!" Just curious...

Re:QuakePing?

[Anonymous Coward]

QuakePing, just like PS Doom, but with someone elses server....

Hey it's true.

[halftrack]

After pinging (naughty me) www.trnmag.com I have found a strong resilience to strong seismic activity such as the slashdot effect. Though there seems to have been a quake near the end. And some gaps may have appeared since there was a 5% packet loss.

PING www.trnmag.com (209.238.138.241): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=0 ttl=231 time=268.2 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=1 ttl=231 time=266.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=2 ttl=231 time=267.6 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=3 ttl=231 time=266.0 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=4 ttl=231 time=267.2 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=5 ttl=231 time=262.1 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=6 ttl=231 time=263.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=7 ttl=231 time=264.7 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=8 ttl=231 time=265.9 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=9 ttl=231 time=266.7 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=10 ttl=231 time=268.0 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=11 ttl=231 time=267.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=12 ttl=231 time=265.7 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=13 ttl=231 time=265.7 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=14 ttl=231 time=267.5 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=15 ttl=231 time=265.0 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=16 ttl=231 time=263.3 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=17 ttl=231 time=268.2 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=18 ttl=231 time=265.7 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=19 ttl=231 time=267.0 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=20 ttl=231 time=265.1 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=21 ttl=231 time=262.2 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=22 ttl=231 time=530.4 ms // small leading quake
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=23 ttl=231 time=1168.9 ms // main quake
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=24 ttl=231 time=266.6 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=25 ttl=231 time=267.8 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=26 ttl=231 time=266.7 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=27 ttl=231 time=264.4 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=28 ttl=231 time=265.8 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=29 ttl=231 time=709.7 ms // after shakings
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=30 ttl=231 time=450.5 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=31 ttl=231 time=462.5 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=32 ttl=231 time=542.6 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=33 ttl=231 time=888.5 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=34 ttl=231 time=263.9 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=35 ttl=231 time=268.2 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=37 ttl=231 time=267.1 ms
64 bytes from 209.238.138.241: icmp_seq=38 ttl=231 time=262.4 ms

--- www.trnmag.com ping statistics ---
40 packets transmitted, 38 packets received, 5% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 262.1/341.9/1168.9 ms

Internetquakes.

[grumpygrodyguy]

They're trying to take The SlashDot Effect(tm) out of our vernacular!

On the flip side, once that happens we can start talking frankly about P2P.

Let's say, for SnGs...

[E-Rock-23]

Let's say that the Internet IS like Terra's fault network. Then this means the "Ring of Fire" would look something like this:

Washington, USA: Duh. Though I know it's overstated, it has to be Microsoft. If you equate them to Mount St. Helens, though, it's not really that bad. Occasional hiccups, not too terrible.

Japan: Either Mt. Fuji is the tons of crazy pr0n, both human and Anime, or the congestion that the Sony PS2 and Nintendo GameCube will cause when MMO gaming hits consoles full force.

The Philipines: Don't even get me started. If I had a nickle for every time I say the words "pinoy" and "pinay" on IRC, I'd be rolling in cash like /. is in AC posts.

Hawaii, USA: We consider it something of an expensive paradise, right? Compare that, and the archipilego's many volcanic spots, to the P2P MP3 revolution. While it gurgles, it never really erupts (RIAA and MPAA). The sons of Napster are living it up while they can.

California, USA: One word, three times: Pr0n, pr0n, pr0n! Where is most of your congestion? Why, in the state that's doomed to fall off the continent and into the vast warm waters of the Pacific, of course! How much of it is made there? It's Hollywood, after all. That place gives a whole new meaning to the word "fault," eh?

Booby Prize Winner - Russia: While not really a big part of the "Ring of Fire," Russia has it's own explosive history, that being the Tunguska Blast in the early 20th Century. Open Source anyone? It's not so much congestion (though this is where "/.ings" come in) as it is the explosion that OSS has enjoyed as of late.

And they got government money to do this sort of crap? No study...

Re:Let's say, for SnGs...

[letchhausen]

I think someone will find that the quakes are in sync with the days that vidsvidsvids post new movies and Ronbo gets a newbie......

and was the slowdown caused by...

[dousette]

perhaps a large upswing in the volume of people sending out useless ICMP traffic to measure this "phenomenon"? ;^)

So...

[Spazholio]

Does that make AOL the equivalent of the San Andreas fault?

Re:change of nomenclature OT

[circletimessquare]

it's an allegorical thing ;-)

Groan...

[Strange Ranger]

So now when we hit a roadblock on the Information Superhighway and have to sit through buffer to buffer traffic, it's due to an Internetquake?

Re:Groan...

[djupedal]

No, that's whats known as a 'router storm'.

Actually, these 'quakes' are easy to predict...

[Spazholio]

Just get a site on the front page of /. and wait 20 mins. Using the same analogy, that'd be what? 8-9 on the Richter scale?

Ok, So I actually read the article....

[mwjlewis]

" In the case of the Internet, each site is connected to the whole through servers, which host web pages, and routers, which coordinate traffic. The servers and routers themselves also form a hierarchical clustering structure, said Abe.

So these server items Host only web pages, and all the traffic on the internet is web traffic, which moves from link to link by a "router". This is very upsetting that college educations and many many years of research show something that could be acomplished in 20 mintues with a SDSL line, a p0rn site on a connection faster then the SDSL line, and finally root@box'#ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

I wounder if they have their MCSE?

Re:Ok, So I actually read the article....

[Anonymous Coward]

> I wounder if they have their MCSE?
Doing finnaly year theases now...

Richter scale

[MaxVlast]

Where is the Slashdot effect?

Bells vs. Marshmallows

[ArcSecond]

Hmmm... I like the idea of an Internet that "rings". But isn't it the "ringing" that we would like to get rid of from the net, in the same way we might wish the earth didn't "ring" so well during earthquakes?

What is the opposite of this model? Something like a marshmallow or ball of silly putty, that deforms to store energy and allows that energy to be released over time? I know that might affect the individual round-trip times, but it might improve efficiency on a larger scale.

I'm not sure what the rules for the nodes would be, but obviously there would have to be a way to balance "slack" and "stress" at different scales simultaneously, in order to avoid criticality. Anyone know about any models that have this kind of behaviour?

Re:Bells vs. Marshmallows

[Anonymous Coward]

Google for "route flapping"

Re:Bells vs. Marshmallows

[ArcSecond]

Thanks! I never heard that term before, so I wouldn't have known to look for it. You are the most helpful AC I've encountered so far. :)

Predicting Congestion?

[Anonym1ty]

Well what about the problem in this self organizing system, that you probably change the inherent nature of the system by observing it?

"...The simple ping signals were emitted every second and traveled through 10 different routers before the signals eventually reached the destination computer. The researchers were able to measure frequent changes in Internet congestion by measuring the time it took a series of signals to complete a round trip..."

How much bandwidth will these test pings take up inorder to have enough data to construct a model of current conditions that's good enough to predict bandwidth changes far enough ahead to make smart routers that can work around the congestion prior to it's existance? It would be kinda neat to have an internet that routes around inorder to prevent predicted congestion.

Re:Predicting Congestion?

[GigsVT]

Yeah, what would be even neater is some sort of Congestion Notification. It could be Explicitely sent when there was a congested area.

I have a feeling that it might prevent access to sites running some older, buggy versions of firewalls though.

Oh well, one could always dream.

Re:Predicting Congestion?

[kris_lang]

I don't know how accurately you can correlate simple congestion estimates with ping times alone. Obviously, the small size of ping packets vs. the larger mltipacket nature of other messages creates a difference. And the ping times alone show large variablity even on a closed network with just two machines.

Do you remember the article about estimating the speed of light by measuring the ping return times over varying lengths of CAT-5 cable on a simple loopback line? I replicated that sort of thing on my own two machine disconnected-from-the-net network and also saw the same sorts of 1/f distribution of ping times when I ran ping with a time delay of 0.1 seconds. If you run ping with a 0.0 second delay, flooding the system, you see a sort of weibull distribution (a skewed gaussian). If you run ping with a default of 1 sec and 10k iterations, you see an almost gaussian distribution (more accurately, a very slightly skewed weibull).

But if you look a the power spectra of these distributions, the delay factors in the ethernet switch or card or PCI bus or software or the kernel delays from the interrupts continuously occuring in the background all get together to create delays that could be mischaracterized as congestion, if only I didn't already know that this network consisted of two machines and that the only traffic on this network was composed of pings and responses.

btw, I was getting averages of 1.4 - 1.7 msec, with stds of 0.026 msec using cables of 5 m, 10 m, and 300 m (meters) length.

Pr0n quakes, anyone?

[dmuth]

I can't help but wonder about how many of these events were due to employees in a NOC somewhere downloading all the pr0n they could eat over an OC-48? :-)

There is great article about him in WIred

[iamr00t]

Right here

Although it's pretty vague like many Wired non-technical articles.

But i find it amusing to see a person spend 10 years on such idea while running a company.
Also talks about his life, pretty interesting :)

Predicting Lag

[tarsi210]

I always wondered how long it would be before someone tried to give a "weather report" for the Internet. I imagined that some day the daily Internet traffic report would appear right alongside Reporter Bob up in TrafficCopter 7 reporting on the condition of Highway 69 at 8am.

"Well, Joan, it looks like Slashdot it at it again. You'll want to keep clear of Alter.net this morning as it appears to be having congestion problems around the Midwest. Communications to anything near a corn field is likely to be slow to smack-me-dead stupid through the 9 o'clock hour. Queue up those emails, folks."

One has to wonder if it's even possible to predict and gauge incoming traffic problems. I guess you would have to know the effective capacity of the Internet, and sub-portions of it, at all times. I can see how a router's effective capacity could be measured by its effective throughput and cache. Your "sentinal level" would occur when the cache is full and bandwidth is maxed and the packets start to get a one-way trip to /dev/null. However, I would think it'd be tough to always keep up on what everyone has for capacity unless the backbone providers regularly publish these stats, as well as the stats on current traffic.

I don't know if it would be helpful or not. One one hand, it'd be handy to know that the reason I'm getting 1900ms ping time to SF this morning is because some dumbass tripped on a power cord, but on the other hand, if I really care that much, I can probably figure it out using traceroute et al.

Maybe it's a solution to keep everyone and their dog from flooding the 'net each time a router bites the big one and makes a suburb blink out of existence for a few hours. Other than that, it just sounds like a good excuse to draw pretty graphs.

Re:Predicting Lag

[LePrince]

a href="http://www.internettrafficreport.com/">http: //www.internettrafficreport.com/.

That's what you're looking for. :-)

Re:Predicting Lag

[LePrince]

Errr. I should've hit the preview button, has said... I hitted the wrong one. Damn :-) Anyway, I don't think anyone here has trouble copy/pasting ... :)

Re:Predicting Lag

[brre]

> I always wondered how long it would be before
> someone tried to give a "weather report" for
> the Internet.

It's been around since 1993:

http://www.internetweather.com/

Re:Predicting Lag

[suss]

I always wondered how long it would be before someone tried to give a "weather report" for the Internet

You mean like this?

Re:Predicting Lag

[tarsi210]

All well and good, but:

• Most online "weather" reports kinda suck. One shows all routers in the world down right now, and the one you linked to is difficult at best to understand. I'd like a little better graph if you're going to give it to me visually.
• I was talking more of a regular, syndicated, CNN News Today Internet weather report or something. Something that, because so many people are affected by the Internet, would regularly tune into and watch...like the weather channel or something.

Re:Predicting Lag

[Coppit]

You mean like this?

Actually Net Traffic Shocks Mimic

[ReidMaynard]

The End Of Life As We Know It !!

look for yourself

Ping Fault.San.Andreas.com !

[billstewart]

Silicon Valley business needs shaking up a bit...

(please don't bother the folks at san-andreas.com, who for some reason are in New Jersey :-)

Better name:

[the way, what're you]

Surfquakes.

The Matrix

[Jetson]

Now we all know the truth-- earthquakes are simply a manifestation of a net-quake in the matrix.

Sorry, Larry Niven described it in 1973

[Salgak1]

. . . .the Slashdot Effect is just a virtual Flash Crowd. . .

Re:Sorry, Larry Niven described it in 1973

[SpaceJunkie]

You know- I am so glad we dont have that technology- Imagine how many people get telefragged in a flash crowd.... Argggghhhh....

Re:Sorry, Larry Niven described it in 1973

[Salgak1]

We don't have the technology. . . yet.

IIS

[davilan]

I guess that would make all those 'Secure' Microsoft IIS servers out there the Internet equivalent of - El - Nino...

/. effect

[nutbar]

Does this mean we can start measuring the slashdot effect on the richter scale?

So let me see if I get this straight..

[Anonymous Coward]

taxpayer money, probably in the millions, has been spent learning that when you ping or run a traceroute to another computer, you can tell how fast or slow the connection's running? Maybe I can get a government grant too..I have a new mathematical model demonstrating that 2+2=4, but it needs further development.

Aftershocks

[unsinged int]

They also saw 'aftershocks' that can be mathematically described in a similar manner to the seismic ones more familiar to many Californians."

Or, more simply described as Slashbacks.

The big one

[nightsweat]

The "big one" will be caused by a site called -
"Nude Brittney Spears advocates Linux, Star Trek, over Windows, Star Wars."

MOD PARENT DOWN

[mike3411]

Holy fuck what a piece of shit post. I mean really. What the fuck is your point? That people shouldn't explore similarities between different scientific problems? Yeah, sure, if it was some random "gee, i never really thought about it bob, but ya know, internet traffic and earthquakes are related!" bumfuck musings, i'd agree with its uselessness. But the fact is, you fucking retard, that seeing connections like this can have real, and meaningful influences on both fields, possibly leading to better seismological prediction, or internet load-handling techniques, or seismological load handling, or internet traffic prediction. So the next time your iota of a brain is feeling frustrated that you can't reach some spiffy site /. linked to because of bandwidth issues, or you're being crushed by the building that just collapsed from an unforseen 7.3 quake, you'll think "gee, maybe i shouldn't have been such a dimwitted, ignorant luggite who spat in the face of scientific discovery". And then hopefully you'll go fuck yourself.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[mike3411]

luggite being a typo of luddite, in case anyone's wondering

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[SkyLeach]

It was intended to be funny.

Take a note:
1) get a girlfriend
2) get laid
3) come back and try again

Faulty Analogy?

[obnoximoron]

In both the internet and the network of earth faults, there are interactions between elements on multiple scales in time and space. That analogy is not hard to guess, but these physicists seems to have contributed a systematic measurement and modeling study. Fine.

So far, just from the reading the press article, my doubts about their work are twofold:

1. their ping frequency is one ping per second. This is a poor sampling of the time series of packet delays. Specifically poor sampling could lead to a false alarm or a miss. False alarm meaning that the sudden drastic 'congestion' could very well be an isolated event suffered by the ping packet or its adjoining ones; the rest of the packet delays in the one-second interval may be small. 'Miss' meaning you didnt catch the congestion due to the poor sampling. The ping packet got through quickly but there were congestion delays suffered by the rest of the packets in its one-second interval.
In short, ping times are a poor indication of the true traffic status of an IP network. One ping per second is especially pathetic if one of the bottleneck links in your route is a high-speed OC-3 or higher link. For example, at 155 Mbps (OC-3), there can be upto 13,000 typical IP data packets through the router in one second. Only one of these is the ping packet!

2. Their flawed analogy between fault energy and congestion level. Fault energy builds up slowly over years and is then released suddenly in an earthquake. They compare to this user sessions running over hours and then suddenly contributing to short periods of drastic congestion. So are they saying that congestion builds up slowly over hours at a router or server as more and more packets are processed? Ha! I am still ROFLing on this one!

There research will vastly improve if they collaborate with internet researchers and engineers who have a working knowledge of the internet's routing and flow control protocols, instead of approaching it from a purely black-box modelling point of view.

Slashdot-Principle

[awarlaw]

Slashdot-Principle: As one attempts to measure the effect of a ping or multiple pings on a network, they inturn effect the measurement being taken. Vicious Cycle of Pings.

Haven't I read this before?

[Colz Grigor]

So basically what they're saying is that the Earth is one giant computer?

::Colz Grigor

Internet is Dead ?

[geddard]

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/ Strange.

patterns patterns patterns

[blair1q]

"exhibits criticality"

Is as much a mimickry of earthquakes as it is of farts, naps, and almost running into that hot chick in the hall.

--Blair

Yes, and...

[djupedal]

Remember 'Helicopter? Now that was a good method of interpreting internet activity.

I'm wondering...

[CoderByBirth]

...who's actually paying these people to come up with this kind of useless crap.
Not that I'm blaming them for it - hell, if someone would pay me to drink coffee all day and come up with useless analogies I'd be as happy as a goldfish in a keg.

This kind of reminds me of a quote from Ghostbusters... "I've been in the real world Peter. They actually want RESULTS."

Internet == Earthquakes

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean that if we fix the Internet, we will stop earthquakes?

scientists state the obvious part 12

[shren]

...Earthquakes and the Internet are apparently very different...

These people should be in rocketry.

Quake

[tedgyz]

So THAT'S where Quake got it's name!

:-b

wintermute?

[seriousness]

ok. this is probably an incredibly old article at the time i'm posting here, but has anyone thought that the internet really could gain conciousness like wintermute/neuromancer? you know, like william gibson fortold in his books?