Bird Flu Pandemic Could Choke the Net

PetManimal writes "If a pandemic were to occur, many companies and organizations would ask their staffs to work from home. The impact of millions of additional people using the Internet from home might require individuals and companies to voluntarily restrain themselves from surfing to high-bandwidth sites, such as YouTube. If people didn't comply, the government might step in and limit Net usage. The scenario is not far-fetched: last year at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, a group of telecom and government officials conducted a pandemic exercise based on a hypothetical breakout of bird flu in central Europe. The results weren't pretty." From the latter article: "'We assumed total absentees of 30% to 60% trying to work from home, which would have overwhelmed the Internet,' said [one] participant. 'We did not assume that the backbone would be gone, but that the edge of the network... would be overwhelmed... The conclusion [of imminent collapse] was not absolute, and the situation was not digitally simulated, but the idea of everyone working from home appears untenable,' [he] said."

Comments

And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[pifactorial]

Seriously, I think we need a "speculation" tag...

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Instine]

And has this reporter ever heard of WEEKENDS!?... Not Speculation - Just plain silly.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[neaorin]

Or an "everybodypanic" tag.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Karganeth]

Haven't you heard of the the butterfly effect?

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[dreamchaser]

It's worse than speculation. It's just a brazen attempt from the telcos to get people to invest in more telco infrastructure.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[ThePengwin]

Quite a good movie that, Aston Kutcher really played the part well

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[rucs_hack]

Or, and far more sinister, a quiet step towards insisting that the Telcos have complete control of the 'tubes' in case of disaster.

That the net is inherently able to route around problems is obviously ignored here.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Bloke down the pub]

Aren't disaster contingency plans, by definition, speculative? And of course, if anything happens and they aren't prepared, it'll be the same people whining that they didn't consider the possibility in advance.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[MindStalker]

Thing is its not even honest. Very few people work job that could be carried over the net, whatmore those that do wouldn't be pulling large files. Most likely they assumed that everyone would be using some sorts of video conferencing software a large percentage of the time. This honestly is unlikely.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[noz]

Seriously, I think we need a "speculation" tag...

And in other news a meteor struck the earth and people are having trouble using eBay from home...

Troll me, but this article is not news. We need a bullshit or a snore tag.

P.S. And probably an angry moderation option.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[sarathmenon]

And worser, this is extreme shorthandedness of the telcos. They've been false marketing broad band connections for years. Where they have a 1mbps speed, the telcos consistently say that they provide 5mpbs (with the fineprints about bandwidth sharing, actual dedicated availability buried inside). All this is fine when the customer uses the connection for light speed surfing, and for 3 or 4 hours a day - the telcos can absorb the end user expectations without any degradation of performance.

But at some point of time reality has to sink in. If people start using the connections in the ways they were promised, ISPs will feel the heat, and a sudden lack of bandwidth. All this FUD should be directed back at them, they should get to fix the problems caused by them. Asking for more funding is a lame excuse - they should not provide something which they don't have in the first place.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[got2liv4him]

Think Y2K

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Shakrai]

That the net is inherently able to route around problems is obviously ignored here.

If that problem is a flood of unanticipated traffic then where it is it going to route to? And most routing works on a shortest path first basis. If that path is congested then the packets start to go into queues. They don't magically take another route (in most routing configurations).

Anybody remember 9/11? I can't be the only one that found many services to be borderline useless that day. Our backbone wasn't even maxed out and I still issues using VPNs between our offices (which weren't maxed out either). IM, various websites (the news ones), IRC. They were all sluggish and non-responsive at times.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Shakrai]

If people start using the connections in the ways they were promised, ISPs will feel the heat, and a sudden lack of bandwidth

I made this argument in a net neutrality thread and got ripped to pieces. I dared to suggest that ISPs shouldn't be selling unlimited bandwidth if they don't have the infrastructure to actually provide it. And that it's inherently unfair and deceptive to sell something as unlimited and then start kicking off the power users who violate the fine print. I wouldn't be the biggest fan of metered bandwidth since I use quite a bit -- but it's fair to ask why Grandma down the road who uses her DSL to read e-mail/play Bejeweled is paying the same price as I am when I leave bittorrent running 24/7/365.

If you sell it as unlimited then no fine print and you damn well better be able to back it up. Otherwise meter it and use the income from the power users to improve the network. And net neutrality should apply -- it's none of my ISPs business if I use my bandwidth on porn, bittorrent, a VPN to the office or even a web server on my home DSL account. It is their business how much bandwidth I use.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[msobkow]

I think you're underestimating the potential risk. A pandemic is far more likely than a major terrorist attack or any other such nonsense causing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to work from home. Businesses could not just shut down were there a pandemic worse than SARS.

When SARS hit the GTA, there was a significant increase in remote access to corporate resources from telecommuters. But while this article focuses on the impact on the backbones of the internet and the potential need for data- and site-based traffic shaping, it neglects to consider the far greater risk of individual businesses which flat out do not have the connection capacity to have the majority of their employees working from home.

Just because risks are low doesn't mean problems cannot happen, and a good business manager needs to allow for those risks. Consider something so simple as a RAID-5 disk array. Most techies consider them virtually fault-tolerant and bullet-proof, yet I personally know an admin who had a second drive fail while replacing a bad drive, losing the whole array.

That site now uses RAID-6 (two parity stripes instead of one) so that they reduce the chances of losing any of their servers in such a fashion again. Yet even they know it's only a statistical game and that it is theoretically possible to have three drives fail at the same time. There are just limits as to how much you invest in hardware to avoid such problems before one starts looking at full off-site redundancy solutions that cost millions, not thousands of dollars.

If you want a US-based real world example, take a look at what happened to industry on 9/11 and the subsequent week. I worked for a company that lost people, hardware, and services that had been operating out of the towers. The impact was not small, and if we hadn't had disaster recovery plans in place and tested ahead of time, the impact would have been much worse.

You're free to stick your head in the sand and ignore risks, but some industries (such as banking) don't have that option.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Zenaku]

And not only that, but of those who do have jobs that could be carried out over the net, how many people will actually choose to work from home when they've got frickin' bird flu? If I contract a disease with a 60 percent fatality rate, I think I'll be able to part with some accrued PTO and spend my time on something other than my job. Like say, trying not to die.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[petecarlson]

Although, to a point, I am also a little irritated at how shared bandwidth is marketed, you know damned well, without having to read the fine print, that you are buying shared bandwidth, if you are paying less then $100 per Mb/s per month. All this crap about ISPs selling best effort bandwidth drives me batty. If we all refused to sell shared bandwidth and made you pay for that 5/1, You would be paying $600 - $1000 per month for the connection and bitching up a storm about it. If we sold it to ten people and they each payed $60 - $100 per month, you would be bitching that it was oversold. One way or another, someone needs to pay for the connection. The market has come up with multiple ways to buy bandwidth. Chose what you are willing to pay for.

Back to the topic.
Disaster, Bird Flu or whatever, the first thing to go on my network is best effort bandwidth. If needed, I will throttle it back to ISDN speeds before I even think about touching an SLA account.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[dreamchaser]

There is such a thing as disaster planning, and such a thing as over sensationalizing. The dangers of a Pandemic are great for many reasons, but this set of revelations is the latter and not the former.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[denebian devil]

It's not the people with the bird flu they're talking about. It's the healthy workers who decide to work from home to avoid catching the bird flu.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[jridley]

That's not the target. The reason people would be working from home is that in the case of a highly infectious pandemic, one of the most effective methods of controlling spread is social isolation. Part of the proposed pandemic plans includes shutting down schools for up to 3 months, and isolating workers as much as possible. Part of the problem with this is that it disproportionately impacts lower income people who are both more in service jobs that can't be carried out remotely, and are less likely to have the equipment to even if they have jobs that could be done remotely.

There were two towns in the US that experienced ZERO fatality or illness in the 1918 pandemic. They did it by closing down traffic in and out of their town for the duration. Physical isolation is a highly effective tool, but it can be devastating from an economic point of view.

The other problem is that the US has developed a strong social stigma against staying home from work unless you're horribly ill. It only takes one infected bonehead to decide to "tough it out" and come to work, touch a doorknob with a snotty hand and start an outbreak in a whole population.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[msobkow]

You're entitled to your opinion, but the great-grandparent post is not entitled to denigrate those who take such risks seriously. What you determine to be a serious risk worth the investment of defending against depends on the damages of those risks.

It's a straight-forward simple calculation of the probability of an issue multiplied by the direct and incidental costs of the issue occuring, vs. the cost of proposed protections against those risks.

Shutting off access to high-bandwidth sites such as YouTube in the event of a major disaster is a very cheap risk-mitigation solution. Setting up fault-failover mirroring sites across the country is not. Provisioning enough capacity to allow the majority of employees to work from home is not cheap, either.

Yet many companies have already made those high-dollar risk-mitigation investments, and continue to do so.

You might want to give more thought as to the "why" of their decisions.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[OriginalArlen]

possibly we do need a speculation tag, but it wouldn't apply to this story. It sounds like you could do with a bit of background reading. Might I suggest starting with a google for "cytokine storm". (You might also want to check out the special reports in the 'New England Journal of Medicine' and 'Nature' from 2005 - again, google is your friend.) A mutation in the influenza virus causing a worldwide human pandemic is inevitable; it's only the timing which is unknown. It could happen next week, or it might not happen for decades. (I guess the closest analogy OTTOMH would be Californian earthquakes. You may not have had a big one since 1906, but do you want to live in the valley in a non-code house?)

When it does come, it will spread much more quickly than 1918-19 (or even the mini-pandemics of the 50s and 60s) due to the enormous growth in international jet travel. Factor in worldwide mass communications, which also weren't really in place in the 50s/60s (stuff the Internet, if my parents ever wanted to make an international call they had to book it in advance with the operator...) So the thing will be everywhere within a few days, and everyone will know roughly what it is. Even with "low" infection rates of 20% and a "low" mortality rate of, say, 40% (both are conservative) a lot of people are going to witness deaths in their social circle - friends, family, colleagues at work, etc. I have a couple of friends who are involved in UK civil defence and the military, and the official contingency plans are, roughly, to cordon off all large cities and shoot anyone trying to escape. Ditto for looters and other threats to law and order. Believe me, when it kicks off, it is going to get very, very messy. The third world will be a much better place to be, because the economic and social infrastructure doesn't have as far to fall, and because people are used to getting by without much in the way of official help. For us decadent westerners it's going to be horrible.

For true FUD-mongering on this topic, consider what happens to all those nuclear, chemical and biological weapons slowly rusting in bunkers. Not to mention all the wacky millennialist "last days" nutters, and plain ol' large industrial complexes such as oil refineries, chemical factories and the like which have plenty of scope for damage if the people monitoring, controlling and protecting them simply don't turn up for work after a week or two.

One possible ray of hope is that Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" may actually come to pass. Actually, hang on a sec., did I say "hope"? A world populated entirely by fat blokes in curry-stained T shirts with no social skills? ** ph33r!! **

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[twiddlingbits]

The major routers on the Internet are setup to provide many alternative paths based on congestion or other sorts of delays. Yes, they always try shortest path first. But, they don't just try one route and say "I give up, lets queue these packets". Some in fact have very clever algorithms to meet QoS standards via many different alternative routes. Some corporate networks do as well. You also can assume that while most of Europe is relaxing at night (lower-bandwidth) most of North & South America is working, and when the Americas are off-work Asia-Pac is in prime work hours. So there will only be a few times when everyone who is a heavy hitter is online together. Also high bandwidth sites can implement throttling where they don't feed as many users or they feed less packets to users to help bandwidth usage. I'd worry a lot more about the external interfaces to corporate networks choking before I would worry about the entire Internet. Plus the telcos have massive amounts of dark fiber they can turn on within a very few days (left over from the dot bomb build it and they will come days). Worse case the congestion lasts a few weeks, but it won't bring the world to a halt. This article is not well thought out, in fact it may have even been funded by bandwidth providers. Mod post down.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Retric]

Umm, why are you ignoring the problem, it's not that the backbone can't handle the low bandwidth connections the problem is when you change peoples usage patterns most sites / services don't have enough bandwidth to handle the load. So it's not a 'network' problem. The problem is most companies are not willing to buy enough bandwidth to handle massive usage spikes.

It's not AT&T's fault when 20 people are trying to VPN to a small company with a fractional T1. And it's CNN fault when they don't buy enough bandwidth / processing power to handle 10x normal usage loads if they can reasonably expect those types of spikes.

They are a wide verity of solution to handle these issues, but basically each service/site/company needs to deal with it.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[*weasel]

All this is fine when the customer uses the connection for light speed surfing, and for 3 or 4 hours a day - the telcos can absorb the end user expectations without any degradation of performance.

Clearly, you don't have Comcast.

Maybe they do a decent job elsewhere, but in SE Michigan 'Comcastic' was immediately coopted as a network slur.

"Sorry about the disconnects guys, my connection's 'comcastic' today"

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[sulfur_lad]

Agreed. Instead of surfing the net from work, everyone will be surfing the net from home. All the "Net traffic has been shifting to the suburbs" talk is just stating obvious: have you had a look at flickr or youtube or *puke* myspace lately? Plus, anyone on here who claims they've never used bittorrent is lyin' like a politician. All that crap (and other streaming media) gets blocked at work by a lot of companies, so if folks vpn in from home to work, it'll stay blocked.

Speculation tag indeed; I hate journalism when you don't have a story.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[hackstraw]

Anybody remember 9/11?

Sure, its my birthday, happens every year. Best day of the year!

I can't be the only one that found many services to be borderline useless that day. Our backbone wasn't even maxed out and I still issues using VPNs between our offices (which weren't maxed out either). IM, various websites (the news ones), IRC. They were all sluggish and non-responsive at times.

Oh, the terror attack thing in 2001? Now I got you.

OK, what ~3,000 people died that day and your poor IM, VPNs and web access was slowed down.

But screw that, that does not even register on the radar of a pandemic. I would guess a pandemic is what ~20-30% of the population dead? So ~1 to 2 billion people dead?

And we are concerned about how this will hurt the internet?

Fuck you people. I'm worried who is going to pump my gas to fill up my Hummer, and how much a kilo of cocaine will cost when this pandemic happens.

Priorities people. Think.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[MindStalker]

And we are spending how many billion in Iraq. The government simply paying everyone to stay at home wouldn't be a bad idea. Yea sure we might have to drastically increase taxes of the rich to pay for it. But even me a die hard libertarian could see the benefit of such a plan. A ration combined with a temporary suspension of all debt collection and interest could allow the average person to continue living on 10% of their normal take home. Yea it would "hurt" the economy, but not so much as everyone being dead and or starving.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Anonymous Coward]

"A butterfly could cause a hurricane"

And yet we do have hurricanes and wise people in Florida prepare for hurricanes.

There will be a pandemic. I don't know when, and I don't know if it will be H5N1. Robert Webster and other experts don't know either, but they are nervous about H5N1.

Perhaps we should make what preparations we can, even if it just to strengthen the internet so people don't have to go into the office to get infected by co-workers.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[StalinsNotDead]

one of the most effective methods of controlling spread is social isolation

At least the Slashdot community will be safe.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[TheHorse13]

Well all of this is very interesting but it assumes that 60% of workers will have the *ability* to work from home. How many businesses can realistically say they can support 60% of their workforce concurrently via remote connections? For me this would mean that I would have to support 6,000 concurrent connections without latency. If we're going to cross "ts" and dot "is" then this variable should be dumped into the calculation. I highly doubt that all the large enterprises of the world have their act together (i.e. a BCP)and have pandemic support ready to go. I know smaller ones do not have this ability due to sheer cost.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[canajin56]

Yes, it definitely will strike soon. After all, the scientists at the CDC are acting awfully suspicious about the whole thing. Apparently they are genetically engineering the "perfect flu" by crossing the bird flu with various strains of the Spanish flu that the military has kept frozen. Obstinately, they are doing this because without a super-virus, human-human, 100% lethal, short incubation version of the bird flu, how could they come up with an inoculation against the potential bird flu mutation before it actually happens. Ummm, I guess they are bad scientists, because considering how often flu shots don't even work, they aren't terribly good at coming up with a vaccine against a normal flu because in the few months between when it sweeps across Asia and when it sweeps across North America, it mutates too much and the vaccine tends to only work sometimes, if they are lucky. But somehow they are able to predict exactly how this bird flu will mutate? It will mutate by crossbreeding with the 1918 influenza virus? Apparently so. Either that or they forgot all their basics and watched MI2 and thought "Awesome! Apparently if you genetically engineer the ultimate virus, then the vaccine you make for it will cure all ailments in the world!" Either way, a world-annihilating flu is only a dropped vial away. Good thing they and they alone control the vaccine!

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Skreems]

Honestly, though, if we have a pandemic AND the economy shuts down, there are going to be a lot more people dead than just from the flu. And if a lot of our economy is based on net access, and a flu will cause usage patterns to change and damage that access... it's not a case of "oh, I can't see the latest sports scores", it's a case of "oh, I have to work from home but I can't get the important information I need to do so, and neither can 3 billion other people".

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[misleb]

You're free to stick your head in the sand and ignore risks, but some industries (such as banking) don't have that option.

But first you have to identify the risks. The real problem (as far as bandwidth goes) with having lots of telecommuters is the business 'net connection, not the 'net as a whole. So it comes down to individual businesses, not some kind of global public scare that the internet will "choke." Just some people won't have very good access to the office because the office wasn't prepared. But I would be much more worried about how telecommuting will affect business in general. Like a lot of jobs really can't be done effectively from home. I mean, telecommuting is fine if all you normally do is edit documents and stay on the phone. But some people actually have to get around the office and meet with other people, deliver items, do manual labor, etc.

-matthew

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Thuktun]

s/Obstinately/Ostensibly/ ?

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[AK Marc]

I made this argument in a net neutrality thread and got ripped to pieces. I dared to suggest that ISPs shouldn't be selling unlimited bandwidth if they don't have the infrastructure to actually provide it.

And what about roads? They are incapable of moving everyone at once. Does that mean there is a problem with them? If someone declared a state of emergency and told everyone to get 10 miles out of town as soon as possible, there would be traffic jams and only a small percentage could make it out of town in a few hours. The Internet is a lot like that. The feeders overwhelm the edge network, even if the core could handle it. The telephones are like this too. There were large numbers of dropped calls (land line, cell, etc.) on 9/11. I tried to call relatives and was unable to complete the call because of long-distance trunks being full. I was not in Alaska at the time, but I'm here now. The entire state gets busy signals sometimes because there are only two carriers out of the state. Just about everything we do can't take an influx of emergency proportions. It isn't profitable for the very few times when it matters.

The only fix is to eliminate the profit motive. That requires laws and regulations. The free market will fail in covering emergency needs because the scarcity (even at profiteering prices) won't cover the costs. So, if you have a problem with it, what would your solution be? We know what you want them to do (meter bandwidth), and they won't do it, so what else can be done?

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[hackstraw]

Honestly, though, if we have a pandemic AND the economy shuts down, there are going to be a lot more people dead than just from the flu.

The 9/11/01 terrorist attack did hurt our economy for a period of time (one could argue that it was ultimately beneficial...). The economy is intrinsically connected to people being alive and stuff.

Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.

So true. +1 insightful :) But it should be -10 wrong.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't RTFA, but the quote says the 'edge of the network' will be overwhelmed.

It's a well known fact that 'broadband' Internet access services are over-subscribed. This is good for the customer, we can get a DSL line that is similar to a T1, most of the as long as everyone's sustained utilization is fairly low (say 10 or 20%). If however for some reason 10x more people work from home in a day, consumer networks may get overwhelmed.

In fact, if these networks weren't engineered to get reach capacity in such a rare scenario, I would be mad as a customer. I want the discount of an over-subscribed DSL line for consumer use most of the time.

Naturally, for data centers and such, dedicated circuits are in used.

One of the reasons a dedicated circuit (like a 1.544 Mbps T1) is a lot more expensive than a consumer broadband connection due to the lack of over-subscription.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[onepoint]

I think that this might be wrong:
"Also high bandwidth sites can implement throttling where they don't feed as many users or they feed less packets to users to help bandwidth usage"
Sites like slashdot, wired have no problem, if I remember correctly, they did a quick fix during 9/11 and it sped up the pages,
I would like to see if you-tube or another one of those sites might try to throttle.

another issue is that most people forget, in a pandemic, you are staying put, indoors, so you wont get that repairman to visit unless he is real hungry for cash ( I know I would not accept Credit Cards ).

if it really happens, then I hope we can control it, like they did in Canada ( only a tiny little bit got hit if I recall ) and services were not really interrupted

Onepoint

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[treat]

, yet I personally know an admin who had a second drive fail while replacing a bad drive, losing the whole array.

Wow. And I personally AM an admin who this has happened to on at least TEN occasions. It is not rare. If you do the math out using the drive manufacturer's own error rates, you will find that it is actually likely to happen.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Hizonner]

You're right. GP knows damned well it's shared bandwidth, you know damned well it's shared, and I know damned well it's shared. GP and I don't know how much it's shared, because many ISPs treat that information as a big secret, and we therefore have very little ability to compare offerings... which is a big problem that needs to be fixed. But, nonetheless, we do know that it's shared, and we have a vague general idea of what we can really expect to get.

You and I and GP are not the issue, though. The issue is the average person to whom this service is marketed, who may or may not understand that there's sharing going on at all, usually isn't in a position to evaluate the real impact of that sharing, and probably doesn't really have a very good idea of what bandwidth is actually being delivered, let alone what might reasonably be expected compared with other ISPs. The only way that average person is even going to know that the service is a best-efforts service is in fact to read the fine print... and even then it's not really reasonable to expect that person to know what "best-efforts" does or should mean. I've been in the Internet industry for 17 years (yes, really), and I'm not sure I know what's a reasonable best effort... it seems to change depending on the policies of one side of the deal.

It's not ethical to advertise a number that you know damned well is going to mislead many customers more than it enlightens them. That systematic deceptive marketing is the real issue. Either the industry needs to come up with a non-bogus number (or scorecard or whatever), or the industry needs to stop advertising link speeds... or, I suppose, the industry could decide to put all the limitations right there in the ad in the same font as the maximum bandwidth number...

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[rtaylor]

Resource sharing is pretty normal.

You know that if every person in a city makes a phone call at the same time, good chance a large number of them won't get through.

If all cell-phone clients make calls at the same time, most won't get through.

If all Pizza-Hut customers went to the same store at the same time, many will go away hungry.

If everyone with a flat-rate flight pass tried to take the same flight, many would be bumped.

I can't think of a single "unlimited" consumer product in the history of mankind that could actually give all purchasers an unlimited amount of the product.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[stile99]

but it's fair to ask why Grandma down the road who uses her DSL to read e-mail/play Bejeweled is paying the same price as I am when I leave bittorrent running 24/7/365 Because Grandma chose to. If you purchase 1000 yards of string when all you needed was a foot-long piece to tie up a package, you really have no business whining that you have to pay the same price as everyone else buying 1000 yards of string.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

WTF difference does it make whether people screw off surfing from work "at home" instead of work? Why would the data rates change?

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[mc6809e]

The major routers on the Internet are setup to provide many alternative paths based on congestion or other sorts of delays.

Are you sure about that? I've been led to believe that most routes are static to avoid oscillations and route flapping.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[susano_otter]

the great-grandparent post is not entitled to denigrate those who take such risks seriously

I'm pretty sure the right to free speech means the great-grandparent post is entitled to denigrate anybody it damn well pleases.

Just like I'm entitled to denigrate your bizarre ideas about free speech.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Lockejaw]

If we sold it to ten people and they each payed $60 - $100 per month, you would be bitching that it was oversold.

You're only seen as overselling it because you tell each of those ten people (for example) that they're getting access to a 5 Mbps line, without telling them that they can only expect a .5 Mbps connection out of it.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[tha_mink]

And has this reporter ever heard of WEEKENDS!?... Not Speculation - Just plain silly. Not to mention the fact that people use the internet at work. So like, what difference does it make? If you're using the internet at work, that's bandwidth. Granted it's not thousands of VPNs but still.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Shakrai]

Because Grandma chose to. If you purchase 1000 yards of string when all you needed was a foot-long piece to tie up a package, you really have no business whining that you have to pay the same price as everyone else buying 1000 yards of string.

A better analogy would be why am I allowed to take as much string as I want while paying the same price as Grandma who took three feet?

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Skreems]

I see what you're saying, but 3000 dead from 9/11 was a lot less significant than several million dead from a disease would be. If we're sustaining major casualties around the world, there's a danger of panic, and of critical infrastructure shutting down. Such was never the case during 9/11... that was much more of an emotional reaction than a physical/logical impediment.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[stile99]

If you both choose the "take as much as you want" plan, then I would think it obvious that you both pay for the "take as much as you want" plan. If Granny discovers that "as much as she wants" is only three feet a month, then she can either get the "ten feet a month" plan, which will more than serve her needs, or continue paying for the "take as much as you want" plan. If she chooses the "take as much as you want plan", then again, there's no point in whining that she's paying the same as everyone else who chose the "take as much as you want" plan.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[LilGuy]

No way. Border routers and gateway routers are all dynamic. They're so dynamic that the engineers who initially set them up and scared as hell to try to mess with anything related to the routes once they're up and running. They typically use OSPF and HSRP and probably a few other protocols to maintain lightning fast route updates between each other. More often than not they will be set to use the least congested (lowest latency) path possible regardless of hops.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[twiddlingbits]

Correct, unless they have to for some reason route a UDP packet. UDP packets cannot be reassembled at the destination if they arrive out of order as they have no internal ordering scheme, so the routing has to be the same for every packet. The Internet is a dynamic place, routers go down for many reasons and the upstream routers have to work around those points of failure by re-routing packets.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Tim C]

you know damned well, without having to read the fine print, that you are buying shared bandwidth, if you are paying less then $100 per Mb/s per month

I know that and you know that and he knows that; we all know that. Aren't we clever?

My parents don't know that, and they're sold exactly the same package in exactly the same way. My non-techy friends don't know either, and nor do their friends, and so on.

Just because we know that doesn't mean it's ok; we're in the business, or nearly so. Most people aren't, and can't be expected to know unless you tell them.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[HungWeiLo]

I don't know too much about this topic. But I know that when Verizon came into our neighborhood with their FIOS, Comcast told me that they doubled my cable speed from 6Mbps to 12Mbps. And the Speakeasy shows that it is indeed 12Mbps. And I live in an area with high broadband usage. So the bandwidth may be there, but it just takes a little competition to shake things up a bit.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[bombom]

Really? I hate to sound like a shill but I have used Comcast when I lived in Ann Arbor and again in Northville (2 yrs ago) and the bandwidth was always plenty.

I'm using Bright House now because my current city has signed a contract with them (HTF is this legal?) and I like them less then Comcast. These days I think BrightHouse must be packet shaping torrent traffic because torrents with 200+ seeds don't saturate my pipe like they used to.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[The_Wilschon]

Although, to a point, I am also a little irritated at how shared bandwidth is marketed, you know damned well, without having to read the fine print, that you are buying shared bandwidth,

False advertising is false advertising is false advertising. Don't make no difference nohow. I don't care that you and I both know that you are buying shared bandwidth; if they advertise "5Mb/s for $60/month" then they had damn well better be selling exactly that, or else they are in actual fact engaging in an illegal practice known as false or deceptive advertising. If they sell 5Mb/s to 100 people, then their connection from those people to the rest of the internet had better be able to support 500Mb/s. No other business is allowed to sell things they don't have without telling up front that that is what they are doing. OTOH, I would have no problem with them selling shared bandwidth iff it were consistently and clearly advertised as such, with an actual maximum average allowed rate also advertised.

One way or another, someone needs to pay for the connection.

I'm curious, since I'm not actually in the telco/ISP business, how much does it actually cost them to run the connection once fiber is laid and such? If they have a line which is capable of carrying 18,000 Mb/s (just to throw a random number out there), does it really cost significantly more to run than if they have a line which is capable of carrying 18Mb/s? It seems that bandwidth carrying capability has upfront costs that perhaps scale up with the bandwidth, but that the ongoing costs are going to be roughly the same no matter how much bandwidth they can carry. Of course I'm just talking out of my ass here, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, then why on earth should it cost $100 / (Mb/s) (month), other than so they can make a larger profit?

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[LilGuy]

Well I'm not sure what you're saying here, but we're both right. UDP however does not get static routes. It may be given higher priority but that's about it.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[twiddlingbits]

I think I read somewhere UDP is by default given lower priority as it (as you said) must use static routes. It's the "oddball" protocol so it gets modded down :) There are also ways to force static routing of TCP packets that are perfectly legal according to the RFCs. That starts to get into QoS management via "Traffic Shaping" and I'm not sure WHAT really goes other than some packets are dropped, some are queued and some are given priority.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[treeves]

er...yeah...look at my User Page: http://slashdot.org/~treeves/

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[nytes]

April first is coming soon.

I'm warming up my omgponies111 tag.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[petecarlson]

First, I agree that it is dishonest to SELL a connection speed that is impossible to ever achieve. To Advertise it, however, may or may not be dishonest. There are areas where I could easily install a 10Mb/s connection and other areas where I would have a hard time pushing 500k. If someone calls from an area where we know the infrastructure will only support a 500Kb/s connection, but we sell them the the 3Mb/s connection that we advertised then it would be dishonest. When you push an ad, you would have to take out pages to describe all the potential pitfalls of the connection.

This internet may cause Nausea or Vomiting. Do not take internet with other forms of comunication or while drinking. Do not attempt to operate internet while operating heavy machinery or while driving. In some studies, addiction to internet has been correlated with prolonged use. Do not use internet for more then four hours per day or for more then one week without breaks. This internet is not suitable for all people or connection needs. If you are using AOL, or believe that your computer came with "The Internet", this internet is not for you. Consult you IT tech before using the internets or beginning any new internet activity.

Lets say that somehow we could create an industry standard for QOS and assign a number to it. Off of the top of my head, it would need to include:
1) Maximum transfer rate
2) Average transfer rate
3) Minimum transfer rate
4) Minimum Latency
5) Average Latency
6) Maximum Latency
7) Minimum Jitter
8) Average Jitter
9) Maximum Jitter
10) Average Uptime

For any point on a network, to any other point on a network there are vast differences in all of the above mentioned "quality indicators". This can change depending on the number of users online, what routes you have and at what times, what part of the internet you are trying to get to... The list goes on and on. I couldn't come up with a quality number for my own connection to the point where my traffic passes to one of my upstream providers let alone a number to put in an advertisement. The only number I might consided reasonable would be a required oversubscription ratio in any ad mentioning speed. Even then it would be next to impossible to be at all accurate. Over subscription for what part of the network? At my gateways to other parts of the internet? Can I add all my connections together even though BGP does not load balance? Can I subtract something because X% of my traffic stays on my network and is just going from one customer on my network to another. Seems like I would just be adding another meaningless number and another piece of crap legislation like CALEA... We know that there is no standard for this, and that the details of how to do it have not yet been worked out yet, but that's no reason why you can't be compliant. Please certify by yesterday that you will be compliant my next month... Yes, of course my quality number is seven... What does all this crap mean? Tubes? My tube ratio?

I don't know if there is an answer, or if there even has to be an answer. If you advertise blatantly false claims, and sell customers something that they are not getting, then existing laws should apply. I have always fought with marketing about making reasonable claims but I just can't take the side of someone who knows that they are buying a residential account, with all the accompanied restrictions, and then complains that they are not getting what they are paying for when they know full well that it is not the product that they were buying.

P.S.
Thats a best effort 7

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Anonymous Coward]

If their simulation went so badly, then they should work on beefing up the system now instead of thinking about knocking people off the net. That's the proper way to handle it. Another way is to cut down on huge pages covered with advertisement. They slow down Slashdot pages already. It just sounds like of bunch of politics anyway.

In one group, there was clear agreement that personal needs would trump business needs, especially in the early stages of a pandemic. But eventually, economic issues would catch up -- for instance, to help meet the need for basic supplies. That might mean someone working in IT at a book publisher could be asked to write or modify applications to help the company use its distribution systems for food and medicine instead of books.

Very noble thought, but it should be clear it won't go down that way. Business and government needs will always come first, like this;
"If the problem persists long term, the carriers may drop some customers in order to service the ones that pay extra, and we will be left with a patchwork of private Internets," Froutan added.

People are looking for a way to censor the net without calling it censorship. They want to clear the way for the big content providers to use up all the bandwidth to stream their drivel and propaganda. It only increases the urgency for those with the finances and ability to devolope a robust wireless mesh.

Oh, wait. I forgot. You put me on the list so you can play "Naner, naner, I can't hear you."

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[petecarlson]

At least for me, the majority of the cost is not getting the bandwidth to me, it is getting the bandwith to the end user. The cost in the rack isn't that much more for 1000Mb/s then for 100Mb/s because, for the most part, the line is there and can cary 1000Mb/s. I already paid to have the fiber pulled and still have spare pairs. If I had a feed in place to your house that could carry 1000Mb/s but you were only buying 100Mb/s then your increase in price would only need to cover my minimal bandwidth increase and a percentage of the price for a couple of new 7600s as my beasts would die under that kind of load X $n subs. (I would also need to pull some more fiber down Pratt Street and we might just be buying all the Bandwidth in Baltimore if we sold them all 1000Mb/s). The issue of course is that the lines to the end user, and all the equipment in between, can't support that kind of load. At every step along the way, someone would have to pay to increase the capacity and that cost is going to be passed on to the end user.

As to advertising.
I have seen ads that I thought were deceptive but for the most part there has been an indication that the bandwidth was "Up To" or print indicating that speeds were not guaranteed. The only providers advertising "unlimited" bandwidth, at least that I have seen in the last 10 years, are the cell phone companies selling 3G. Perhaps here you have a point.

    Its an ad. It tells you the good things about the product. The car can go 0-60 in 3 seconds. The food is good. The beer will make sexy women like you. (Might break if you try to do it all day long) (Might make you fat) (You might only think that there sexy)

The whole internet is shared bandwidth. Advertising should give you an idea of how much of that bandwidth you should expect to get, and perhaps an idea of how much it should cost you. Your contract with your provider should explain what you are getting, what you are paying, and anything the ISP should expect from you such as limitations on types of traffic. If the ad says unlimited and the contract says limited to X GB/Mo then I would argue that it is deceptive because it is never unlimited for anyone. On the other hand, If the ad says 6Mb/s and the contract says that speeds may vary, it could go either way. If none of there 6Mb customers ever get 6Mb, then it is deceptive. If most of their customers can hit 6Mb most of the time, then its not deceptive.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[realkiwi]

No we already have a FUD tag. Mutation to something transmitted from human to human will depend on how many people in really poor countries continue sleeping with their chickens and ducks. For the moment I don't realy care about bird flu: I am not a bird, I am fighting of the last few hours of the flu we already have.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[josath]

Happened to me once...when it was rebuilding the array with the new drive, the extra disk access caused a second drive to fail, and everything exploded (metaphorically).

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[dbrutus]

There's a six month clock (minimum) for a vaccine to come out. By reducing gatherings, telecommuting literally reduces the death toll. But if telecommuting doesn't work, more will die during the key period between disease emergence and vaccine availability. If you'd like a particular person around during a pandemic, either arrange their work to be done in isolation or get them a 6-7 month supply of N95 masks and instructions on use.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[dbrutus]

Here's another fix, try figuring out what your minimum necessary bandwidth is ahead of the pandemic and make sure you'll get that bandwidth (use a load balancing router if you have to). Use small file formats. Move data off the internet (send out DVDs of your slow to change stuff to start off for example) where possible. Synchronize in off hours when you are asleep and don't care about speed.

In short, there are all sorts of things that can be done to improve the problem. It won't make things 100% solved but it should make things much more manageable. That can be the difference between strain and collapse for the Internet.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a hurricane

[Bloke down the pub]

Think what about Y2K? That it was all a hoax, or that the reason shit didn't generally happen was that people prepared for it and fixed bugs?

FIrst post

[killa62]

no wonder i got it, everyone else's net is choked

Re:FIrst post

[Anomolous Cowturd]

Oh no! If the net gets choked, what will we choke our chickens to? We must act now, choke all the chickens, stop the bird flu and protect our porn supply for a happy chicken choking future!

Re:FIrst post

[Bastard of Subhumani]

As any geek should know, it's standard operating procedure to have an offline hardcopy backup. Just make sure it isn't where your mom will find it.

Re:FIrst post

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, the irony is that he didnt get remotely close to first post, yet he is +3 funny

mod him up!

Re:FIrst post

[Kelz]

No fair! This guy's tube is shorter than mine!!

Bah!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I thought it was a serious exercise, but perusing the second article:

...war game, held in January in Davos, Switzerland, by the World Economic Forum and management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

[emp mine] Double bah!

A bunch of telco management consultants, playing a "war game" (yeesh) to drum up business (Oh wow, lets recommend investments in Telco infrastructure!)

In fact, the second page of the second article even states the obvious:

"You can see the Internet as a self-regulating supply-and-demand mechanism," Froutan said. "The more people use it, the slower it gets, so the less people use it. If 10,000 people go to a site that normally supports 100 users, 9,000 will give up, while the other thousand will get very slow connectivity but will keep going until they get the job done."

Better to bury it on the second page hey? Might spoil the sensationalist headlines a little.

What the hell is this doing in slashdot's science section?

Re:Bah!

[Hittite Creosote]

"War Games" can be very serious exercises indeed - e.g. the US carried out a number of War Games in 1999 called Desert Crossing to simulate the invasion of Iraq.

Note also that the current US Director of National Intelligence, John McConnell, was previously Senior Vice President with Booz Allen Hamilton. They aren't just telco management consultants, they're government management consultants (this doesn't mean they're not bozos, but it does mean that if they are bozos, they're very dangerous bozos)

Re:Bah!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

"War Games" can be very serious exercises indeed

Indeed. I was calling into question using such a serious term for a simulation / group mental exercise.

As for the management consultants having been govt. management consultants, color me unsurprised. They'd know exactly how to 'lobby' for investment to be made in infrastructure.

Re:Bah!

[guruevi]

Look up ABLE ARCHER 83, a little more serious and we would all be dead now (or mutated).

Re:Bah!

[ryanguill]

War Games" can be very serious exercises indeed - e.g. the US carried out a number of War Games in 1999 called Desert Crossing to simulate the invasion of Iraq.

Right, and we all know how that turned out...

Re:Bah!

[Nurseman]

"Look up ABLE ARCHER 83, a little more serious and we would all be dead now (or mutated)."

Look up the common cold, or flu, a little more serious and we'd all be dead. Thats the point of all this the very big "IF" it mutates. Look at Ebola, one of the most deadly viruses known. Spread by water droplets, similar bird flu, but it has not made it out of Africa in any large numbers. If there is a bird flu pandemic, we would have a lot more to worry about than the 'Net.

Re:Bah!

[elrous0]

the US carried out a number of War Games in 1999 called Desert Crossing to simulate the invasion of Iraq.

Too bad no one wargamed the subsequent occupation.

-Eric

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is this doing in slashdot's science section?

I've always wondered why the hell slashdot even has a science section. Its always full of sensationalist bad science. Slashdot should stick to what its good at, the technology/computery stuff news.

Re:Bah!

[ucblockhead]

Sadly, they played no War Games called "Desert Occupation" to simulate the running of Iraq after the invasion.

Re:Bah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, war games and exercises are very serious indeed. Witness the amount of war games and exercises on 9/11 (some involving hijacked planes - some of which were to be used as weapons), 7/7 (where the exercise was an exact mirror of what actually happened), the h5n1 exercises in the u.k., etc.

In recent history, war games and exercises have been used as cover for real military actions (disguise troop movements etc.) and/or to distract authorities. Then they get turned "live" and all hell breaks loose. Be aware of any exercises/war games in your area. Try to get other people involved and, if you can, stop some of these from going on. You never know when one of them is going to go "live".

Why

[Threni]

Why would people work from home because of bird flu? This is the most ridiculous piece of tabloid style nonsense I've seen on Slashdot for some time.

Re:Why

[Kierthos]

Which fits right in with the general level of herd-like instinct people have been showing lately. "Oh no! Blinking signs in Boston! Panic! Stampede! Litigate!"

It doesn't take much for a gullible segment of humanity to over-react to a news story.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because of likely recommended or enforced government quarantines or other advice for people to avoid unnecessary contact with each other in an attempt to try to stop or slow the spread of the disease, which will be airborne and spread at places where people congregate?

Just a guess.

Re:Why

[timmarhy]

because most epidemics are spread via work places and public area's.

Re:Why

[TempeTerra]

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Working from home is perfectly sensible in case of an epidemic, although I'd be inclined to ditch work altogether ;) . One of the first things to do is close all the schools so kids don't share their germs around. Non-essential businesses are the next to go.

Re:Why

[bersl2]

I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't want to contract a disease with a 60% mortality rate, where a healthy immune system can work against you; any step I can take that would reduce my potential exposure would be well worth it from my point of view. If my life is to be reduced to a crapshoot, I'm going try as hard as I can to improve my odds.

Re:Why

[Bronster]

Indeed, you probably picked up apostrophiti's there.

Re:Why

[Redlazer]

A certain amount of caution is certainly warranted - but you make it sound like we should all stay inside, for fear of catching something. "Obsessive Compulsive" is probably a roughly accurate word.

If the world shuts down because of a pandemic, there will be problems because of upkeep negligence. Obviously, non-essential business and basic cleanliness applies (which, really, is how 90% of sicknesses are prevented. And i theorize that the reason so much crap keeps coming from the east is their general lack of cleanliness - spitting in streets, etc. But, im sure ill catch heat for that.).

As always, this falls under "Don't Be An Idiot, And You'll Be Fine."

-Red

Re:Why

[Fist! Of! Death!]

Because if you have to cram into a tube train twice a day with your face up against some infected person's nose you will probably get the flu and die.

Re:Why

[Nanpa]

As always, this falls under "Don't Be An Idiot, And You'll Be Fine."

Yeah, we're boned

Re:Why

[Professor_UNIX]

Bird flu is the new Y2K. 275 cases of it out of 8 billion people does not a pandemic make. You're far more likely to be struck and killed by frozen turds dropped from a Boeing 747 than contract bird flu.

Re:Why

[Eivind]

They mean in case the bird-flu virus mutates sufficiently to be human-to-human transmittable while remaining dangerous.

It makes perfect sense to limit human interaction in order to brake or halt the spread of infectious disease.

Re:Why

[Eivind]

The mortality-rate is probably a lot lower in reality -- it's a given there'll be an unknown amount of people who get infected with bird-flu, yet never turn seriously ill, so they never enter the statistics at all.

We don't know how many this is. Could be half the people who get bird-flu gets seriously ill (and 60% of those die), but it could also be that 5% of the people infected with bird-flu gets seriously ill (and 60% of *those* 5%, or 3% of the total infected die)

Re:Why

[Bloke down the pub]

... yet. The reason there's been 'only' 275 cases so far is that humans are catching it direct from birds. If (some say it's when) it mutates to the extent that human to human transmission occurs, it's an entirely different matter.

Re:Why

[Hijacked Public]

I don't know about lately, humans have been herd animals for long time. Think of the original War of the Worlds broadcast. Or shopping in the US the day after Thanksgiving. Or wild speculation about a flu epidemic that will likely not happen. Or Y2k.

Re:Why

[FirienFirien]

Same could have been said of BSE/CJD. It was mostly local to , but caused to a few humans. Because it was heavily restricted, culled, burned out of existence, it didn't spread very far.

That didn't stop it from being a fearful thing, to be avoided like the plague; just because you're more likely to die one way than another doesn't make that other condescendingly snubbable as a probability to be ignored. Death is death. Avoiding it is goooood.

Re:Why

[FirienFirien]

Hm, should have used (local to [livestock]) and (caused [serious damage] to) instead of and there...

Re:Why

[ScentCone]

Bird flu is the new Y2K

Ah, here we go. Look, what do you suppose would have happened to the economy if no one had done any Y2K remediation? I was very busy in advance of that roll-over, and a good number of the clients I worked with would have been out of business without substantial system upgrades. Not just BIOS patches, but extensive code reviews and fixes to giant, sprawling, interdependent systems. For companies that operate (as so many do) on a just-in-time basis for goods and materials, even a week's downtime could mean bankruptcy. Multiply that times thousands of businesses, and you've got a major hit. Some of those are companies that supply medical materials, or deal with food processing, or deal with fuel. You surely aren't one of those people who thought it all could have been simply left well enough alone, are you? I directly experienced work that, left undone, would have resulted in financial ruin for organizations employing thousands of people and delivering important products and services to millions of people.

275 cases of it out of 8 billion people does not a pandemic make

And right up until the flu pandemic of 1918 killed millions of people, it wasn't a pandemic either. Do you approach everything in life with a "we'll deal with it after it happens" strategy? Sometimes that's not as effective. Like, when you can't pay your employees after 1/1/2000, or you're dead from a highly contagious virus and whatnot.

Re:Why

[Joebert]

Well in that case, we shouldn't invest in more teleco infrastructure or worry about government regulation, we should just quit going to work.
That's a %50 reduction in the probability of an epidemic right there.

Re:Why

[woolio]

You're far more likely to be struck and killed by frozen turds dropped from a Boeing 747 than contract bird flu.

That's not a pandemic... that's a disease!

Ask your doctor about "aerial fecal syndrome" (AES). Pharm companies are selling cures.

Re:Why

[nothing now]

cheap 3-m carpentry masks stop bird flu. locking yourself up doesn't, kids will trasmit the disease with their cheap,drink sharing ways

Re:Why

[ucblockhead]

No, the poster is exactly right. The bird flu is the new Y2K. That is, lots of people who know what they are doing are working hard at mitigating the risks while the press jabbers on blindly with scare stores.

The thing that people don't seem to realize about "bird flu" is that its really just one part of a larger issue. No one really knows if it will make the jump to human-to-human transmission. The people who know what the hell they are doing are doing their best to reduce that chance. (By preventing bird-to-human infections.) But the larger issue is that an entirely different disease that is currently neither known nor tracked could do the same thing. The chance of some other unknown disease becoming a pandemic is probably more likely than that of "bird flu" becoming a pandemic.

If "bird flu" never comes to anything, it may well be precisely because a lot of doctors and biologists worked very hard to prevent it. And if "bird flu" never comes to anything, the press will probably ignorantly blather on about how maybe the original fears were overblown just like today they are blathering on with panic and scare stories. Just like Y2K.

Re:Why

[ucblockhead]

There are some indications that people over forty are less likely to get infected in the first place. (Not unprecedented...the 1918 influenza epidemic disproportionately infected the young.)

Re:Why

[tsmithnj]

No, Bird flu is the new swine flu.

Re:Why

[ScentCone]

No, the poster is exactly right. The bird flu is the new Y2K. That is, lots of people who know what they are doing are working hard at mitigating the risks while the press jabbers on blindly with scare stores.

If you're right, then the poster was right by accident, or in the wrong way. I read his comment to mean that a flu pandemic risk isn't any worse than the "fake" Y2K risk. Check his tone, and you'll see what I mean. He didn't see any airplanes fall out of the sky on 1/1/00, so he's making it sound like there was no big deal after all. Which is complete BS.

Re:Why

[ucblockhead]

I know. I was pointing out the irony.

Re:Why

[ScentCone]

I know. I was pointing out the irony.

And another thing: I think it's possible you were pointing out the irony.

Sorry, my obviousometer was down for maintenance this morning.

Re:Why

[Maltheus]

Right and that if is the problem here. There are billions of catastrophic things that could go wrong if. But the if has a slim chance of happening here without a little help. The people responsible for the what if's we've been seeing lately are the same people accusing Comedy Central of a Boston bomb hoax. There are plenty of real problems we should be focusing on. The point of terrorism is to spread fear and that's precisely what our government and media do with sensationalist crap like this. The former gains power and the latter gain news stories and profit. It's all about scaring people into submission and who can blame them, it works.

Re:Why

[14erCleaner]

Sorry, my obviousometer was down for maintenance this morning.

Maybe it has a date-rollover problem.

I think the original poster was spot-on; Y2K was over-hyped and used by many in the IT industry as a cash cow. You appear to have been employed by this cash cow, so your judgement on its importance is suspect. There were, in fact, almost no important failures due to Y2K, and you can't claim that your heroic efforts were the only thing keeping society alive. Most business IT systems routinely have bugs and failures due to coding and design flaws, hardware failures, etc. Y2K would have been like a normal day in this respect, except for a slightly higher rate than usual.

The avian flu is likely also being over-hyped for profit (either by health-care or media people), and likely would just be a blip on the usual deaths due to infectious diseases (pneumonia and influenza currently cause tens of thousands of deaths annually in the US).

For better or worse, fix-on-failure is the norm for many systems in today's world, and it actually works out pretty well, since resources aren't wasted on non-problems as much.

Re:Why

[Tim C]

"Coughs and sneezes spread diseases".

Can't spread anything to anyone if you're at home alone, no matter how much you (or they) cough and sneeze. That's the point - by limiting the amount of social mixing, you limit the spread of the pandemic.

It's also why it's utterly stupid to expect employees to come in when they're sick; not only will they be under-performing the whole time, they'll spread it to their colleagues too.

Re:Why

[ScentCone]

Y2K was over-hyped and used by many in the IT industry as a cash cow. You appear to have been employed by this cash cow

Let's look at an example, shall we? A real-time inventory system, written in about 30 different modules, based on VFP. Tons of function-based table indexes, all sorts of low-level date sorting problems, field validations, etc., that would not work post-1.1.2000. Period. It took three people about 600 hours to find and fix this stuff, and then another two weeks to test against data on a sandbox system, and then a long couple of days to re-index several tens of millions of records, deploy patched code to servers, and then audit the live system. Your solution, which would be to just let it fail and see what needed to be fixed, would have run that company out of business. Loss of customers (who rely on timely data and performance), loss of spoilable inventory. Inability to forecast, procure, receive, and pay for goods. In an industry with very tight margins and some competition. Your approach: business failure, loss of jobs. Fixing it in advance: completely successful and nowhere nearly as expensive (assuming that business failure can even be considered an "expense").

You seem to be operating under the delusion that fixing Y2K problems in an enterprise with thousands of users across hundreds of systems, databases, and processes that would have failed is the same as fixing a bug you've just uncovered in a recently deployed system. That's complete crap, and you know it. When you roll out something new, you prepare for the prospect of bugs, and you have people test. Thousands of businesses were operating on systems that had fundamental date-related flaws built into them and used for years passing such tests. I didn't build those flawed systems, I fixed them. If they weren't fixed, the systems would have failed.

Shortly after 1/1/2000, I was approached by several customers that thought they'd handle things the way you're proposing. They had problems like total database corruption, inability to run payroll or deal with state and federal taxes, and bad sorts causing things like medical and personnel records getting completely hosed. The more dramatic ones included businesses that abruptly lost the ability to conduct their online businesses, and lost tens of thousands of dollars in the short run, and customers more permanently. I sure hope you don't give any advice about such matters for a living.

would have been like a normal day in this respect, except for a slightly higher rate than usual.

If, by "slightly higher rate," you mean "which completely shuts down the business" than you'd be right. But you're not. And when it takes people who have the time to calmly plan the fixes for such problems hundreds of hours to wrap up the work, what do you think it will take when you're called in to solve the problem under the gun, while the company is bouncing checks, losing its credit rating, laying off workers? Just because you wouldn't build systems that would require such remediation doesn't mean they weren't out there in droves. And you didn't hear about them because nobody was proud about it. I'm proud of bailing a bunch of those sorry asses out of the situation, though, and I didn't do it in a userous way, though I could have.

There were, in fact, almost no important failures due to Y2K

Exactly. Did you think it was freakin' magic, or something?

Re:Why

[whitis]

Well, I didn't make money off Y2K and I agree with the grandparent. Y2K wasn't a big disaster
partly because a fuss was made about it.

Now, I have to admit that when Y2K was first publicised, I snorted at it. After all, I had been writing
programs for 20 years at that point that were immune to Y2K. Even when space considerations (and I cut my
teeth on a system with 256 bytes of RAM) required the use of 2 digit dates they still took rollover into
account. And, of course, I used Un*x systems. But then I realized that other programmers were not as careful - especially cobol programmers.

Grandparent described an installation that took months to fix; if they had waited until 2000-01-01
to start, they very well could have been out of business. Also, all of those bugs occurring on
the same day would have severely overtaxed the available people to fix the problem. And we simply
wont hear about the severity of critical errors that were fixed because management doesn't want
the public to know how negligent they were before the hype. It might lead them to wonder about
what else is held together with chewing gum and baling wire.

Y2K was at least partly a case of a self-unfulfilling prophecy.

Fortunately, most critical control systems may be time sensitive but usually aren't very date sensitive.

Yes, Y2K was way over-hyped. But would it have gotten through the thick skulls of management, and less competent programmers, if it had not been? I even caught Y2K style bugs introduced into important systems after the hype.

It also turns out that a number of Y2K precautions and disaster plans ended up being used on 2001-09-11.

Fix-on-failure has another name: incompetence.

In the case of the flu, another pandemic is inevitable whether it is avian flu or not.

Re:Why

[background image]

While I can't argue with you that it's common practice for governments of all stripes to employ FUD for their own not-necessarily-very-pure purposes, I think you've rather missed the point.

It really doesn't matter if this virus is the cause of the next pandemic or if it's some other bug. The fact is that being somewhat prepared for a pandemic is a good idea. We've seen these things often enough historically to know that a) not understanding them (e.g. bubonic plague in the middle ages) or b) not being able to do anything about them (e.g. the 1918 flu) can be catastrophic.

Planning for such events could be a big help with (a), and also gives us a good leg up on (b) (especially in the sense of planning the appropriate prophylactic measures).

The pandemic threat is much like the earthquake threat in the Pacific Northwest and in California. Disastrous earthquakes will strike (probability: 1.0), but we don't know when. Being somewhat prepared for a quake (e.g. handy survival kits for individuals, disaster-response drills for emergency services, and seismic upgrades for everyone) is, nevertheless, a good idea.

Re:Why

[Bloke down the pub]

But the if has a slim chance of happening here without a little help.

You're right, viruses never mutate on their own. Or cross from one species to another. One of the people who says it's when rather than if is a microbiologist - I'm not saying he's infallible, but don't be offended if I'd trust his opinion over yours.

Re:Why

[Maltheus]

I'm not saying that viruses don't mutate, I'm saying that the chances of this one specific animal virus mutating to a human transmissible virus is about as likely as any animal virus mutating. And there are probably millions out there. And since we don't have big pandemics often (name the ones you've lived through), then I'm correct in saying there's only a slim chance. You don't need to be a microbiologist to recognize this. You just need to live and have a memory.

Absolute nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs are already well able to throttle usage so as to manage demand in excess of capacity. In the listed scenario all that would be needed would be management to limit the use of p2p, usenet and certain kinds of streaming and the problem.

The real problem in such a scenario is that most workers would simply not be able to work from home - they and their employers wont be ready or equiped to do so.

Re:Absolute nonsense

[tverbeek]

Even if their scenario occurred, I fail to see why government intervention would be needed. If large portions of the internet were swamped, that by itself would be sufficient to limit frivolous use of high-bandwidth services. Imagine if the best throughput you could get was dial-up-equivalent: would you even bother trying to play Lonelyfake15 videos on BoobTube or keep your bitpirate swarms going?

Re:Absolute nonsense

[diablomonic]

I dont really get it anyway. are they assuming everyone will be constantly in teleconference mode with everyone else at their work or something? what exactly about working from home is going to be so much of a bandwidth hog? couple of emails, an instant messenger connection, few documents passed back and forth? is this even going to be noticeable against the normal "background" bittorrent noise?

I see this as one (or both) of two things:

1) as suggested, a blatant attempt to get investment in their own industry

2) an attempt to get more internet control for the government from (according to a previous post) a government affiliated company. IE if they get some law passed that lets them throttle users in "times of emergency" and then declare a constant state of emergency, they get control over something they should not have control over (what users use their own bought and paid for bandwidth for). Kind of like america has extreme laws only meant for very extreme one off cases in times of war, and this war should not have been declared except by congress, but after these laws where made, they just slowly turned america into a constant state of "pseudo war" without actually declaring a proper war (therefore getting round the congress thing) and get to constantly abuse these laws (that shouldn't exist in the first place imho but thats another issue).

Re:Absolute nonsense

[fabs64]

About the b/width, most work-from-home solutions that I've seen use some form of server based terminal applications. ie Citrix.
A lot cheaper than giving every employee a license for all your apps and sending tech supp. to their homes to install them.

Re:Absolute nonsense

[the_womble]

Surely most people who have something like that installed, will be those already working from home regularly.

In a crisis a lot of the extra people working form how will either have taken a work laptop home, or be doing the work on their own PCs (not ideal, but we are talking about a crisis situation).

Re:Absolute nonsense

[diablomonic]

IF, and this is a big if in my opinion, there was a bandwidth problem from this, the solution is very simple: stop fricken overselling bandwidth so much. if 100 people are on "unlimited" accounts when there is really only bandwidth for 5 then your problem is not people using the bandwidth they paid for, its you (isp's) being lying tight asses

Re:Absolute nonsense

[Jose]

IF, and this is a big if in my opinion, there was a bandwidth problem from this, the solution is very simple: stop fricken overselling bandwidth so much.

how is that a "very simple" solution? the bandwidth has already been sold. the ISP's upstream connection already purchased.

they could stop selling *new* accounts..but that doesn't help much. what is an ISP supposed to do? drop the newest X customers until bandwidth sold = bandwidth available?

buy extra upstream bandwidth? from who? and in what time frame? this would be a very rapid and short term problem.

(I too think it is a huge "if" there would be a real bandwidth)

Re:Absolute nonsense

[diablomonic]

simple: stop claiming unlimited. charge for bandwidth (but at a reasonable price) those that dont need it wont pay for it, those that do will be funding the infrastructure needed to support them. thats how its supposed to work, not selling what you own(bandwidth) to 20 different people at the same time then whingeing when they actually want to use it at the same time! if you sold a car to 20 people at the same time you'd be in jail for fraud, so why the hell should it be ok with bandwidth?

Only affects windows users

[MSRedfox]

Thankfully Linux is immune to Bird viruses.

Re:Only affects windows users

[statemachine]

Oh crap! Maybe not!

Re:Only affects windows users

[kiltyj]

Tux, however...

Re:Only affects windows users

[ovideon]

The thought of having to put down an entire town of battery-farmed Tuxes frightens me.

Re:Only affects windows users

[Anonymous Coward]

Tux being battery farmed? That's a clear GPL violation!

Re:Only affects windows users

[Alioth]

Bird viruses? Linux is a frickin' PENGUIN!

Re:Only affects windows users

[edgr]

That standard is out of date. IPoAC now has QoS, which would help in prioritizing traffic. Remember, the problem is with bird flu in humans. It's already in birds, so it wouldn't be such a catastrophy and we can implement IPoAC now, to provide peak capacity.

Re:Only affects windows users

[esaloch]

Just all the linux users will be affected since they will be stuck going into work since their company websites won't work from home.

9/11 caused net stoppage

[fruey]

I remember you couldn't get anywhere on news sites during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC; even Google was horrendously slow. Non news sites all started relaying the news so that people could get hold of information.

Working from home in times past relied on dialling direct to a modem pool at the office. The telephone network could probably handle a fair amount of teleworking like that, particularly if the old school model of connecting, uploading and downloading email & files, and then disconnecting was adopted.

If there were a pandemic, I doubt that people would necessarily be surfing YouTube. It'd be no loss to me to not have that kind of site available anyway :-).

Sounds a lot like scaremongering to me. In the event of a pandemic, net habits would change beyond recognition, so mentioning high bandwidth leisuretime sites seems a bit strange. It's not out of the question that certain services could be restricted though... but you can't analyse current surfing habits and apply them to bandwidth use when teleworking. If I'm working from home I'm not on YouTube, and use very little bandwidth.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Yaztromo]

I remember you couldn't get anywhere on news sites during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC; even Google was horrendously slow. Non news sites all started relaying the news so that people could get hold of information.

This sort of experience could have a lot to do with where you are in the world, and your ISP.

I was in at my place of work in Toronto on 9/11, and remember rather vividly how hard it was to get to CNN's website. The CBC's website was fairly slow as well (we have to recall, not only were there attacks on the WTC, the Pentagon, and the plane that crashed, but thousands of inbound US flights were redirected to Canada, and people world-wide were trying to track down loved-ones who had flights re-routed here). Being the smart sort of guy I am, I was one of the few in the office to be able to get reliable, up-to-date information, because I reasoned that the BBC's website probably wouldn't be heavily flooded with North American traffic, and that it would be the middle of the night on that side of the pond. Sure, enough, I was correct -- while it was difficult to get to many news websites inside North America, several very respectable European sites were no problem to bring up in those very early hours after the first jet hit the WTC. It wasn't traffic on the Internet that was a problem -- it was specific websites being very heavily congested. There was still a lot of bandwidth available to go around -- just not for specific popular North American news websites (many of which have hopefully learned a lesson from that day, and have done some upgrading of their services to better handle traffic during serious emergencies).

Yaz.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[David Off]

> If there were a pandemic, I doubt that people would necessarily be surfing YouTube.

course you would, it would be the only way to get non-censored information, you know, cell phone footage of food riots or nuclear plants melting down due to lack of workers, people dying in their beds, zombies at the shopping mall, that kind of thing, the next pandemic will be live on YouTube.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[fruey]

You're right about that. I was in Morocco at the time, and most people went home to watch CNN rather than looking on the net anyway. Traffic to news sites was affected, but like you say, the BBC worked for a lot longer than CNN or MSNBC sites; many leisure sites didn't even look affected at all (aside from a homepage special on relaying news)...

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[ArsenneLupin]

many leisure sites didn't even look affected at all However, Slashdot was slashdotted... Not completely, as I do distinctively remember that I got the news (headline) from here. However, getting inside the articles or to the discussion was impossible.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[fruey]

Euh... Slashdot is still a news site, where people would come to react to the news at least, not somewhere you would go to relax (under those specific circumstances I mean).

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[foobsr]

people dying in their beds

Worse, if like the Spanish flu they will probably be dying in the street - as a friend who has learned it from his father who was an eye-witness told me - and is also mentioned here, quote: "Victims were dying in the street, in stores, in offices, in military barracks, turning blue and struggling for air as they suffocated in bloody froth.".

Reason enough for people to use youtube just for the sensation.

CC.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Telvin_3d]

YouTube IS the next pandemic. I swear, if that site went down, productivity would go up so much the net effect would be positive, flu or no flu :)

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Phil246]

Although the BBC is british, international requests do not go to their servers in london.
According to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4606719.stm , international requests go to their server farm in new york.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Yaztromo]

Thanks for that -- it's an interesting (albeit brief) view of how the BBC serves up pages world-wide. The article is, however, from 2005 -- it doesn't necessarily follow that this was the same setup back in 2001.

I found this bit interesting (emphasis mine):

We have a number of web servers ("server farms") in London and New York. These two cities are both excellent hubs connecting many different networks on the internet, and they are far enough apart so that if there were a major disaster in either city we could continue serving web pages from the other location.

If this layout were in place in 2001, it would be interesting to hear if they indeed needed to use this configuration to redirect traffic.

Yaz.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I reasoned that the BBC's website probably wouldn't be heavily flooded with North American traffic, and that it would be the middle of the night on that side of the pond.

The 9/11 attacks happened in the morning (local time), which is early afternoon in the UK.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Eivind]

I remember it too. The Internet held up remarkably well. And did indeed route-around damage, in the sense that when channels failed, they where made up for by literally thousands and thousands of mirrors and alternative routes.

• Thousands of people spontaneously decided to mirror important sites that experienced problems.
• IRC-channels got hooked up to major news-sources (even those normally only for subscribers)
• Email surged trough the tubes (Hah!), for a few hours the majority of email in the world was *NOT* spam.
• Hell, even MUDs and MMORPGs spontaneously converted into information-exchange centres.

Internet was severly strained in some areas of the USA. So people routed around it. I personally helped getting 3 people living in NY get a decent net-connection, by *modem* to a Norwegian modem-pool. Yes, sure it was 28.8. Yes sure it cost $0.10/minute. There's some situations where youre honestly *happy* to pay $6/hour for surfing the net at modem-speed. (I know, in some areas phone-service was also spotty)

It was impressive. I think, on that day I realized the net had grown up. When disasters strike, and people go turn on their laptops, you realize this thing ain't just a toy anymore.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[dunkelfalke]

i was at my friends on that day, websurfing at the time, everything was fine. then the daughter of that friend came up and said that some airplane crashed into the wtc.

i just shrugged and went on websurfing. nothing was slower than usual at all.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[locofungus]

WTC stuff: because I reasoned that the BBC's website probably wouldn't be heavily flooded with North American traffic, and that it would be the middle of the night on that side of the pond.

We're five hours ahead of you, not behind you. It was early afternoon here when the first plane hit.

Tim.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[edgr]

If there were a pandemic, I doubt that people would necessarily be surfing YouTube.

Of course they would. Think about it - people would be reluctant to leave their homes at all, except when absolutely necessary. So they will seek entertainment to fill in the hours they would otherwise have spent commuting and going out. The internet, especially sites like YouTube, would likely provide a good portion of that.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Yaztromo]

We're five hours ahead of you, not behind you. It was early afternoon here when the first plane hit.

Thanks to everyone for the correction. I feel quite the idiot now, and rightfully so :).

The point, however, stands -- where it was very difficult to get information from the websites of North American-based news services in those crucial first few hours, the BBC's website came through.

Yaz.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't take a major catastrophe for this to happen. Australian news sites had to take special action on the day that Steve Irwin died.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Viol8]

"I remember you couldn't get anywhere on news sites during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC; even Google was horrendously slow. Non news sites all started relaying the news so that people could get hold of information."

Call me old fashioned by I just listened to the radio and watched TV. Worked for me. So much for the internet being useful in a crisis situation.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Anonymous Coward]

I reasoned that the BBC's website probably wouldn't be heavily flooded with North American traffic, and that it would be the middle of the night on that side of the pond. Eh? Did England move West when this happened? I was watching a CNN feed of this (we had no TV available) when this happened at lunchtime whilst at work in the UK!

Also, the BBC site was useless then but we could get a CNN feed? Strange...

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[dunstan]

Since then the BBC for one have prepared a mechanism to simplify their news pages so that the infrastructure can cope with far more visitors, serving essentially static content.

I was working three years ago on behalf of a government agency whose dynamically generated website maxed out because of something happening (questions were asked in the house). We had to design a simplified site with a small set of statically updated pages, automatically updated every 15 minutes, and were back in business in 48 hours. Since then the static site has been deployed on a few occasions.

If there were another "big news day" I would expect the BBC to hold up - dunno about other providers.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever stop to think that the majority of the American users don't know of the BBC or it's web site address and the BBC's site fell under the "not hit becuase no one was going there so therefor it was fast?"

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember you couldn't get anywhere on news sites during the 9/11 attacks on the WTC; even Google was horrendously slow. Non news sites all started relaying the news so that people could get hold of information.

I found that, then realised that the answer was look in timezones where most people were still asleep: The Straits Times (Singapore) and Australian news sites weren't overloaded, as it was still the middle of the night there (but they had staff in uodating the news..)

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[frodo527]

I live near Philadelphia, PA and have family who live on Long Island. On 9/11 I was unable to get through to check on them due to the phone circuits being jammed. I was able to get through using AOL Instant Messenger. The Internet routed around the chaos in NYC and allowed me to use a low-bandwidth means of communication with my cousins during that disaster.

A larger attack could make significant chunks of the Internet inaccessible, though, or make accessibility spotty. E.g., if instead of an OC12 to a network only an OC3 is available. So, while it's likely that in the event of a major disaster we will have Internet usage, we can't count on it 100%. This is why I also have my ham radio license along with a backup power supply -- communication that works even when there is no infrastructure.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Jon Luckey]

...the daughter of that friend came up and said that some airplane crashed into the wtc. i just shrugged and went on websurfing. nothing was slower than usual at all.

Let me guess...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&edition=us&q=my .pet.goat&btnG=Search

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[GiMP]

If there were a pandemic, I doubt that people would necessarily be surfing YouTube. It'd be no loss to me to not have that kind of site available anyway :-).

YouTube is actually a good source of news. While your local news broadcast may be fairly informative, YouTube can be used to find news from various non-local news sources. This is especially important to determine how censored, biased, or even fabricated your local news may be.

Tracking international news sources is especially useful during war or terrorist attacks; however, it can also be useful in the event of a pandemic... I can easily imagine US-based media outlets censoring information to prevent mass panic.

Text-based news is also useful, of course, but there can be a great advantage to video. I tracked international coverage of the Iraq war via webpages, and the Israel/Lebanon conflict via youtube.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[g_attrill]

I first read about 9/11 on Slashdot. I recall trying to visit the BBC News site at lunchtime, found it timing out, did some more browsing and then visited Slashdot and read the first story. It took ten minutes to get a BBC article (they used to switch to a low-bandwidth version during major events, and did so then), and an hour to see a video on Ananova.

The last major event I can remember was the 7/7 London bomings, and I think everything was runnning at pretty much a normal speed. I had an LBC 1152 radio stream running all day with no problem.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[ucblockhead]

YMMV. I have distinct memories of first finding out the 9/11 attacks when the owner of the cafe I got coffee at spun his laptop around to show pictures of jets hitting the WTC.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[powerlord]

On 9/11 I was unable to get through to check on them due to the phone circuits being jammed.

Actually it wasn't just that circuits were jammed. Verizon also had one of their main switching facilities across the street from the WTC. At the very least, the Antenna boom from one of the towers skewered the building (causing damage on the way), and then the collapse of the towers caused more damage (open environmental conditions, cables, etc.

Living in manhattan I could only get local (in city) service from my land-line (Verizon).
In contrast, I could only get long distance (out of city) service from my cell phone (T-Mobile).
Cable modem kept chugging just fine (TWC).

Its always good to have redundant connections in case of "issues". :D

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[dunkelfalke]

exactly why should i have cared? it happened far away and there were much bigger losses of lives before and after that.
the only downside for me was that security checks in airports have begun to suck really much.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Yaztromo]

Ever stop to think that the majority of the American users don't know of the BBC or it's web site address and the BBC's site fell under the "not hit becuase no one was going there so therefor it was fast?"

Yes. I believe I made it clear previously in this thread that this was precisely why I relied on them for information, when other North American news sites were getting hammered with traffic.

Yaz.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage

[Eivind]

You can't count on anything 100%. Your best bet is a mix of independent technologies, but even then there's going to be situations where all comms are down.

The main shared vulnerability tends to be power. When power goes down, it takes a lot of communicaiton-infrastructure with it. Some rigth away (most people aren't equipped to get online, or watch television without power) and some of it later when UPSen run out of juice or generators fail in various ways.

Still, we've improved a LOT. When my father was small their total 2-way communications consisted of a single copper landline. They could also watch TV and hear radio. Only the phone would work without power.

Today, my household (for example) has access to:

• One POTS-landline over copper.
• Two mobile-phones (independent providers)
• One ip-connection over coax (along with cable-tv)
• One ip-connection over optic fibre
• 3 ip-connections over WIFI.

The 3 first of these work without power. (for aslong as the laptop-batteries can take it anyway) I can reroute telephone or ip over any of these in 5 minutes and without any problems. (for example, I can use my old modem and transport IP over POTS. Or the other way around I can fire up Skype and do telephony over any ip-connection.)

computer viruses

[siddesu]

are by far a larger and more present danger than a flood caused
by a human epidemic. just remember the mssql virus from a few
years ago ... it chocked a few networks.

come on, with all the downloads and botnets running from a home PC,
will ANYONE AT ALL notice the few extra clicks from the humans?

Re:computer viruses

[maxume]

I don't track it in any organized fashion, but my impression is that I get more spam on weekends, presumably because more people have their computers on, or on longer.

Restraint?

[pashdown]

What makes these people think that workers don't waste time on YouTube when they're at work?

Re:Restraint?

[mobby_6kl]

>What makes these people think that workers don't waste time on YouTube when they're at work?

The fact that it's blocked by the firewall?

Choke your penguin?

[dotslashdot]

But will the bird flu choke your penguin?

Re:Choke your penguin?

[WS Tu]

I think it is pretty hard for bird flu hit Antarctica (or Australia, probably). For now the bird flu is most likely epidemic in South East Asia and MidEurop.

alright then

[User 956]

Bird Flu Pandemic Could Choke the Net

None of those birds have a deadly flu. They're just pining for the fjords.

But what about Boston?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a few LED lights can bring Boston to a halt, what would a bird flu pandemic do?

Boston Mayor: What just flew over my head? Was that birds? Eek Bird Flu, quick, blow up some turkeys!

Oh Noes!

[DevelopersDevelopers]

Yes, this could really be a pandemic for all those of us currently connected to the internet only by IP over Avian Carriers.

Re:Oh Noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this could really be a pandemic for all those of us currently connected to the internet only by IP over Avian Carriers.

"What is the bandwidth of IP over Avian Carriers?"

"European avians or African avians?"

"Uh, I don't know."

What's more likely...

[tom taylor]

Surely very few companies are actually set up to enable any large % of their workforce to work from home? You're far more likely to be told to go home and wait.

Re:What's more likely...

[tftp]

Yes, very few - because it is far more practical (and cheaper) to just send people home in a highly improbable situation like that. Besides, most people in businesses don't use computers (or use more than computers) and can not work from home anyway. If even all banks will close the store will still accept your cash - provided that someone is still alive in the store to service you (and if not then you don't need to worry about paying.)

Another reason may be that many businesses are insured against natural disasters and other unforeseen circumstances; if they close for a week or two they may have a claim. However there would be no insurance pay for your preparations and training to work from home; that money is right out of your pocket. To be prepared just doesn't make business sense, unless your trade is of life-or-death type, like a hospital. But hospitals have their own, very specific plans in case of epidemics, and nobody there would be "working from home". The rest of businesses, like stock exchanges and publishing and construction and education and engineering will be better off closed, until they are specifically needed to combat the virus or whatever.

And yet another reason why businesses do not embrace working from home is accountability. If your productivity can't be objectively measured (by counting the widgets that you made during the shift) then the work at home becomes a paid family time for 90% of employees (the remaining 10% enjoy the work and honestly work their hours and more; but they are in serious minority here.) Besides, what is the chance that workers will be merrily clicking on Excel tables at home during an epidemic? They'd be buying supplies, ammo and heading for the hills, or at least sealing the premises if there are no hills nearby. Working - at home or anywhere else - will not be even considered.

Re:What's more likely...

[jimbob666]

Yeah, our network of 300 PC's would cripple if 60% of employeers had to VPN in over our 2Mb internet connection. Plus the fact that we don't have 180 laptops configured for VPN and just laying around ready "just in case". I think corporations/businesses infrastructure would cripple before the internet does.

Re:What's more likely...

[ScentCone]

think corporations/businesses infrastructure would cripple before the internet does.

Yes. Not to mention, if there really were a pandemic, the odds are that at least some of the people managing the company would be personally impacted, or would have family that was. People would be Freaking Out, and not doing nearly so good a job managing newly-hatched tele-workers. I think this is much more about organizations that are already good at this stuff functioning while others simply won't. But in a real mess of a pandemic, the local cable providers and other ISPs are simply going to fall flat anyway. 'Net access is going to die early and hard, I think.

In other news...

[halsver]

. . .sales of tissue and personal lubricant skyrocket! . . .Blizzard adds hundreds of new WoW servers to cope with increased server load during "off peak" times. . . .Oil prices plummet on Wall Street. . . .teen pregnacy, drug use, and crime statistics experience double digit decreases. . . .INWP becomes the new internet chatch phrase. (I'm not wearing pants)

Re:In other news...

[MichaelSmith]

You forgot cats and dogs living together

How?

[Meneth]

It's not like we run all our IP over Avian Carriers.

Simple solution: Ban Windows

[jkrise]

Botnets and malware hog more than 50% upstream bandwidth, the rest is taken by Windows Updates and Adobe updates. From the release of XP to date, more than 1GB of service packs and critical updates are needed to keep it going in home PCs. Why not simply ban Windows then?

I suggest we go the whole way and return to VT-100 terminals... they only need 9.6K baud rate to work. No Youtube. Problem solved.

Re:Simple solution: Ban Windows

[timmarhy]

figures from your rectum. p2p/torrents are by far the biggest upstream hogs.

Re:Simple solution: Ban Windows

[jkrise]

Reference here for upstream bandwidth:
http://www.honeynet.org/papers/bots/

and here for the amount of bugfixes since XP rollout:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/09/23/AR2006092300510.html/

EVERY Home PC that runs Windows XP needs updates, to remain stable and sane. How many home users run P2P? Very tiny fraction, IMO.

Amazing... my rectum's got more wisdom than your brain, perhaps.

Re:Simple solution: Ban Windows

[MichaelSmith]

I suggest we go the whole way and return to VT-100 terminals

The keyboard on the VT-100 was horrid. I am sure I am still paying for it with my RSI. OTH the 320 was a nice little terminal. I installed a couple of dozen of them at one stage in the 80's and I can still remember that new terminal right out of the box smell. Mmmm polystyrene.

But massive epidemics are natural for all species

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

So shouldn't gaia or other "environmentalists" be protecting the viruses ? That 50% or so of humans die every 10 years is "natural" for humans.

Besides, sooner or later it's going to happen anyway. (oh and btw people would work from home to avoid getting infected)

Annoying

[bitchell]

It really annoys me that we see so many stories claiming that the internet can't cope with this or that, and it will all fall down suddenly without warning. Yet strangely it continues to function as normal.

The problem is I think, people (and by that I mean non-technical people) think of internet traffic as cars on a street. When there are too many cars there is a traffic jam. With the internet though we can build many many new faster "streets" to cope with the traffic.

Re:Annoying

[Hanners1979]

The problem is I think, people (and by that I mean non-technical people) think of internet traffic as cars on a street. When there are too many cars there is a traffic jam.

You'd think they'd have realised by now that the Internet is actually a series of tubes...

Re:Annoying

[DerWulf]

After reading the ethernet specification "street + cars" seems to be a suitable methaphore.
Nonetheless, although this though-experiment sounds like something a 5 year old would wonder ("gee, what happens if everyone in the WHOLE world turns on thar intarnet?") it shows that the public perception of the internet has shifted form "toy for nerds & criminals" to "serious infrastructure". Which to me seems to be a good thing.

Re:Annoying

[David Off]

>The problem is I think, people (and by that I mean non-technical people)

C'mon we know you are talking about Bob Metcalfe

Re:Annoying

[bitchell]

LOL. Thats exactly what I am talking about :-)

...So!

[kitsunewarlock]

If you don't want to clog the tubes, take the truck to work. Got it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah

[Reikk]

If "ifs" and "buts" were candies and nuts everyday would be Christmas. Pointless.

Re:Yeah, yeah, yeah

[aussie_a]

Wow, I'm sorry to hear all you get is candies and nuts for Christmas.

Tubes

[jlebrech]

Build some more tubes, what are they waiting for!!

Re:Tubes

[Tacylm]

how do birds spell "Get A Life"?

Linux Users are immune

[Anonymous Coward]

Could it have something to do with not ever seeing daylight from their parents basement?

I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[WIAKywbfatw]

If the H5N1 strain of avian flu was to jump species and become highly contagious in humans to the point where a pandemic was reached, then internet traffic will be the least of our worries.

I think we'd collectively be more concerned with, you know, people dropping like flies in huge numbers than we would about telecommuting or browsing YouTube, or at least I like to think that we would.

Seriously, the health and safety of my loved ones and society as a whole would be paramount in my mind, and everything else would be a distant second. This story reminds me of those Starbucks managers selling water to injured and shocked people and the idiots quoting SLAs while the World Trade Center's twin towers were falling.

What next? People posting articles about how a human H5N1 pandemic would mean more server queues for WOW players as the servers would be swamped by people skipping work for the safety of home and looking to get a few more quests done while they were off?

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[goaty_the_flying_sho]

You are the first breath of fresh air I've seen in these ridiculous comments.

All you other nerds can have my share of the bandwidth, I'll be too busy burying bodies in order to discourage vermin to check out the newest music videos on youtube.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[jonoton]

Believe it.....

The institute I work for will be sequestered by the government in the event of a pandemic.

We've ring fenced large quantities of diskspace, and other resources to cope with the demands that are likely to be put on us in this event. However the one resource that's going to be vital we have no control over - the ability for our staff to work from home. The last few months I've been asked repeatedly if our remote access solutions will cope with 90% of the staff working from home, the answer has been 'if the internet copes'.

It doesn't take much contention on a DSL circuit to make video conferencing or IP telephony unusable, theses are the sorts of collaboration tool that will be required in this event.

It's only sensible for people to be planning for this scenario, it's something that can only be controlled by the telcos, and they won't do anything unless it is mandated by government.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[yogurtforthesoul]

Just think of all the tubes that would get filled up with mucus and pus. The Internet would come to a dead stop!

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[edgr]

I think we'd collectively be more concerned with, you know, people dropping like flies in huge numbers than we would about telecommuting or browsing YouTube, or at least I like to think that we would.
Seriously, the health and safety of my loved ones and society as a whole would be paramount in my mind, and everything else would be a distant second.

And what are you personally going to do about people dying in huge numbers? Run down the street and madly try CPR on them? What would significantly reduce the death toll would be having people relatively quarantined, and maintaining the supply chain of essential goods.

How could these two goals be achieved concurrently? By having as many workers as possible working from their own home. Which means telecommuting. Now, if the entire population is keeping inside their homes, they will seek something to occupy themselves. Part of this will be checking on their families, friends etc.. Which will likely be done either over the phone or internet. Part of this will be entertainment to assuage the boredom. Part of this will come from the internet. When people are on the internet looking for entertainment, where do they go? Often, to YouTube. Hence massively increased traffic to sites like YouTube, although I think these sites will crash long before the internet as a whole does.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[Cthefuture]

Uh, and where better to get information on how to prevent the disease, where it's spreading, etc. than the Internet?

The Internet is information. People would be looking for information on what is happening, the latest techniques to prevent infection, and all sorts of stuff.

You seem to have some sort of apocalyptic vision from a movie where everyone would be huddled in bomb shelters or something. This would likely last for years and people would try to carry on with their lives as best they could. The world wouldn't just shut down because millions of people died.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[pla]

The institute I work for will be sequestered by the government in the event of a pandemic.

Sounds like a good place to avoid in an emergency, then.


It doesn't take much contention on a DSL circuit to make video conferencing or IP telephony unusable, theses are the sorts of collaboration tool that will be required in this event.

What???

Perhaps, in the event of an emergency, you could get by with, y'know, plain ol' fashioned voice-over-analog-line telephony? God forbid you can't see a stuttery low-quality image of the person on the other end of the line, right?


Amazing. This whole topic simply blows me away. Work from home? Government restriction of YouTube? Gimme a frickin' break. I love computers, spend all of my workdays and a sizeable chunk of my free time on them, and you can bet your ass that in a real pandemic, I won't waste time on YouTube OR working remotely.

Step 0, keep a suitable supply of antivirals (and other drugs) on hand for everyone you intend to keep alive.
Step 1, secure a large supply of food and ammo at the first warning signs (some people, myself included, will already have this covered to some extent, making it step 0b).
Step 2, get the hell out of Dodge (flee cities and even suburbs).
Step 3, fortify your location against inevitable attack by starving idiots.
Step 4, catch up on my backlog of reading material.


Notice that nowhere in there do I intend to "work". If I can still surf the net from wherever I hole-up, I may well do so, but even that falls pretty low on the list of priorities.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[tgd]

I disagree, strongly. In the past, epidemics did NOT cause the shutdown of business and commerce. People still need to produce, people still need to make a living. The rise of technology means its EASIER to do so. During a pandemic, its easy to keep from dropping dead like flies -- use appropriate masks when you must be out in public, wash frequently and avoid interacting with people until it passes. The internet is ideal for facilitating that without massive global economic collapse.

This article is important! While some people seem to think its a propaganda piece to convince people to invest in greater telco resources, I can guarantee you that billions of dollars are being spent by companies around the world who have a responsibility to their shareholders to take this substantial risk into account. Keeping the world moving during a potentially months long pandemic takes a lot of work and this is one tiny piece of it. Just because the average Slashdotter may not understand the importance of business continuity doesn't mean its not of critical importance.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[pla]

In the past, epidemics did NOT cause the shutdown of business and commerce.

The last real pandemic, in 1918, occurred at a time when we didn't have anywhere near the population density common today. Dense urban areas more closely resembled modern rural suburbs. And it killed 35 million people.

Compare that to the more recent pandemic of 1968. It had a MUCH lower body count (less than seven million dead), but with the more dense cities of the time, spread considerably faster - A matter of three months rather than nearly a year for 1918. And computer models in today's world suggest a pandemic could saturate the population within three weeks. Given the same mortality rate as the 1918 flu, that would mean 140 million dead in the span of a month.

If that doesn't shut down most commerce...

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[ScentCone]

You do understand, right, that such a pandemic would last for many weeks at least, and probably many months? It's great that you have the savings (in cash, at hand) and the supplies to not have to worry about interacting with the outside world for months on end ... but most people would still be seriously hoping to preserve their career and make sure that the company or organization they work for is still intact and able to cut them a paycheck when the dust settles.

This sort of thing isn't like a hurricane or a 9/11. Just read up on the 1918 pandemic. "Heading for the hills" sounds great... which hills are you going to head to? What food, potable water, and shelter will you and a few tens of millions of other people (who will be bringing the virus with them) be using once you get there? If it gets into human-to-human pandemic mode, you're right that YouTube won't mean much of anything (especially because Google will probably just shut the damn thing down) - but I think that the normal keeping-the-family-alive stuff is also going to be a lot more challenging than most people are prepared to even consider. Of course, any preparation that includes stopping people from congregating in public or that regulates where and how you line up for food will just be seen by the shrill idiots as more of Teh Evil Fashionists taking power. No-win. Can't prepare most people, and can't save 'em, either. Oh well.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[jonoton]

Exactly who do you think will be making the anti-virals that you're going to stock up on?

Who is going to do the research to work out what particular strain of virus we're looking at?

If everyone takes the attitude that someone else will sort it out for them then we're doomed.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[pla]

It's great that you have the savings (in cash, at hand)

I keep enough for a last-minute luxury-food shopping trip, but seriously... Bunnies and edible wild plants don't take AmEx or cash.


You do understand, right, that such a pandemic would last for many weeks at least, and probably many months

Weeks, yes. Months, no.

The 1918 pandemic lasted just under a year.

The 1957 and 1968 pandemics lasted roughly three months (despite much lower mortality rate) because they spread MUCH faster through a more densely packed population.

Most computer models of a pandemic in today's world have it spreading in basically three weeks. Within a month, people will have either died or survived it, and the world can resume as normal.


What food, potable water, and shelter will you and a few tens of millions of other people

Who said anything about tens of millions of other people? Most people would rather die at home than spend a month away from their TVs (whether it shows nothing but static or not) - I say, "let them". I have no intention of trying to save everyone. And I did mention ammo to deal with the few that get a hunger-inspired clue at the last minute.


(who will be bringing the virus with them)

I also mentioned antiviral drugs. Not talkin' bout "Captain Trips" here, just a plain ol' flu. Direct deaths will amount to 3% tops, mostly of the weak, very young, and elderly. Indirect deaths will depend entirely on how much society panics at having our thin veil of dominance over nature ripped to shreds for the first time in 30 years. I suspect, though, that deaths from secondary causes (starvation, rioting, the military response thereto, etc) could easily top actual deaths from the flu. Thus my preferred response, stay the hell out of the way until it all blows over.


but I think that the normal keeping-the-family-alive stuff is also going to be a lot more challenging than most people are prepared to even consider.

Agreed, and most will fail. Some of us have already considered the task at length, however, and can survive, for a month or more, without electricity or a convenient supermarket.

Survival of the fittest, my friend. I say, "bring it on!"

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[pla]

Exactly who do you think will be making the anti-virals that you're going to stock up on?

Well, the three in my collection come from Roche and GSK...


Who is going to do the research to work out what particular strain of virus we're looking at?

I didn't say "vaccine", I said "antiviral". We already have several families of these available. Unfortunately the goddamned Chinese have made amantidine useless by feeding it directly to their poultry, but neuraminase and viral DNA polymerase inhibitors still work fairly well.


If everyone takes the attitude that someone else will sort it out for them then we're doomed.

A lot of people seem to have confused a flu pandemic for an end-of-the-world scenario. It just means a month or two of serious inconvenience with a higher-than-normal chance of death. The biggest risk, by far, would come from panicked humans. Thus, you don't need to worry about the long-term survival of the species; only surviving three threats: The virus, most humans, and starvation. Anyone who weathers those past the peak of the pandemic, can look forward to dying of Big Mac induced heart failure 40 years down the road.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[kabocox]

I think we'd collectively be more concerned with, you know, people dropping like flies in huge numbers than we would about telecommuting or browsing YouTube, or at least I like to think that we would.

Seriously, the health and safety of my loved ones and society as a whole would be paramount in my mind, and everything else would be a distant second. This story reminds me of those Starbucks managers selling water to injured and shocked people and the idiots quoting SLAs while the World Trade Center's twin towers were falling.

You kinda of are missing the point. I could keep my wife and kids at home, but my job would require me to "go to work." I'm the general computer guy at a police department. I could be the point source of potential infection for my family. Kids can be homeschooled. My wife could try googling businesses that delivery in my area. What if there isn't? Well, we'd end up making one big trip to Sams a month or two rather than lots of smaller trips to Walmart. We'd stock up for as long as possible to ride this through. I don't have broadband at home, but I'd get it if I thought that my family really needed it. What would people be doing while they are couped up together? My family only has one PC. I have myself, my wife, and two kids. How are we two share that resource? During school hours one of the kids gets to use the computer? I'll admit that it could be workable for those that have a PC/laptop for most family members or that already have broadband or work from home. For everyone else though, it'd be very difficult.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[Saraphale]

The biggest risk, by far, would come from panicked humans.

And I did mention ammo to deal with the few that get a hunger-inspired clue at the last minute.

Direct deaths will amount to 3% tops [...]

Does this mean that in your local area, you will be more of a threat than the flu? You seem very eager to shoot people, while others work to keep society going in your absence.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[pla]

Does this mean that in your local area, you will be more of a threat than the flu?

It means I won't contribute to the problem or the solution.


You seem very eager to shoot people

I have no intention of going around hunting people for sport, if you thought I meant to imply that. I also have no intention, however, of sharing my supplies with masses of people lacking similar foresight.


while others work to keep society going in your absence.

Meh. Take it or leave it, all the same to me. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd buy my own island (with at least a few acres of arable land and a reliable source of fresh water) and voluntarily drop out of society. If a worst-case-scenario pandemic removed the "buy" part of that, you wouldn't see me crying over my Cheerios.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[AK Marc]

keep a suitable supply of antivirals (and other drugs) on hand for everyone you intend to keep alive.

What effective antivirals are available OTC? The effective ones, like Tamiflu, are prescription only. What's the shelf life of the antivirals?

Also, your actions seem quite extreme. I can't see this taking out 10% of the population at the absolute worst. It's the flu. Wash your hands often, wear a face mask, don't shake hands or use public restrooms, take a hankey to use for opening doors, and it doesn't matter how virulent it is, you'll survive. Abandoning your life for 6 months is lunacy when a few precautions will work wonders.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[AK Marc]

Direct deaths will amount to 3% tops, mostly of the weak, very young, and elderly.

You seem very knowledgable about the bird flu, yet this point is the opposite of the findings in the places with infections. This flu triggers an overly aggressive response of the immune system. The result is that those with compromised immune systems will get flu symptoms and live (the young, weak and elderly you mention) and those that are healthy with strong immune systems will drown in their own fluids as their lungs fill up.

Also, you seem to be thinking of this as an adventure, an excuse to try out living off the land and such. It won't affect much. A healthy person can live for about a month with no food. It may not be pretty, but it's doable. So, as long as the water supply works, hunger may be high, but not starvation. I don't purposefully hoard food, and I could live for about 2 weeks off what is in my kitchen. If power stays on, add another 2 weeks for the contents of the freezer. Water will be the most important thing.

Re:I really can't believe I'm reading this...

[Mostly Monkey]

The speed and breadth of communications (warnings) along with the knowledge we have today of how viruses propagate would go a long ways in reducing the spread. Sure it'll spread over a larger area more quickly due to increased density and speedy carrier travel, but it is much more likely to fizzle out quicker then in the past due to the previously mentioned things. The days of thinking smoking or eating porridge to prevent colds is long gone.

Ban Quicktime

[mrshowtime]

Another user suggested banning Windows, due to the immense amount of updates that clog up the net. I say also ban Quicktime, as that S.O.B. program "updates" more frequently than any other program, yet the differences are generally only in bug fixes and release number. Oh you just bought Quicktime 7.0189 PRO, too bad, you now have to pay another $29.99 to get Quicktime 8.0. Ha, Ha (nelson voice)

Not if

[pembo13]

Not if all the spammers die first.

Re:Not if

[tekrat]

Nah, the spammers would sell "Bird Flu Cure" via spam.

Or you'd find out via thousands of spam messages that the Prime Minister of Nigeria has declared that enlarging the size of your penis protects you from Bird Flu. And if you just send him the number to your bank account, so he can use it transfer his monies, you'll recieve a FREE SAMPLE plus a 10% gratuitiy from all samples sold.

I can see it now...

Subject: Re:
Hey Dude;
Be a batter bird flu lover by incresing the sise of your one eyed monster....

I don't think I'd mind spam as much if their grammer and spelling was better....

TTYL
Brian C.

Meh - i need my WoW

[atari2600]

As long as the pipes (and tubes *snicker* ) to the Blizzard servers aren't clogged, i am good. Wait! what? oh you were serious about me working from home...like real work? Oh. Oh.

Riiight.

[MythMoth]

"the situation was not digitally simulated" = "we guessed"

And at that I think I'm being generous about their motives.

Based on what usage?

[misleb]

Wait, so they are assuming that people won't actually work from home and instead watch YouTube all day long? How exactly would it be different than 6pm when everyone really watch YouTube and download Bittorrent virtually all at once? Why does working from home suddenly equal unsustainable 'net where other peak usage times work out just fine?

If we assume that they will, for the most part, actually be, WORKING at home, how much bandwidth do people need? Copy a couple Word documents over the VPN? POP their email ever 2 minutes? These things are are NOTHING compared to things like Bittorrent during peak hours.

Worst case scenero is that ISPs are forced to throttle certain types of traffic that is labeled superfluous so as to provide accceptable service for other things. I know it isn't an ideal situation, but geez, the 'net'll survive! What is this talk about governments stepping in?

-matthew

Re:Based on what usage?

[shird]

The world consists of more than just the USA.

Peak time in Australia would co-incide with "work time" in parts of the USA etc. If "work time" becomes as bandwidth intensive as peak time, then at Australian peak time, bandwidth would double (or at least greatly increase) on a global scale.

Re:Based on what usage?

[misleb]

So assuming that people do, for the most part, actually working from home, in what way does accessing the corporate VPN in Portland, OR (20 miles from home) to do work affect anyone in Australia? What is this huge bandwidth hog? What do telecommuters do that is such a strain on global bandwidth?

What makes you think that people just stop using the internet at work? I watch YouTube every now and then from work and I do have any Australians calling me up and complaining that they can't get their lonelygirl15 fix. Come on. The Internet is much more resilient than that.

The only problem I can think of is people all trying to get flu news all at once. Might be a big strain on news sites similar to what we saw on 9/11/01.

-matthew

Re:Based on what usage?

[misleb]

I do have any Australians calling me up

Err, 'do not have'

Re:Based on what usage?

[TubeSteak]

If we assume that they will, for the most part, actually be, WORKING at home, how much bandwidth do people need? Copy a couple Word documents over the VPN? POP their email ever 2 minutes? These things are are NOTHING compared to things like Bittorrent during peak hours.

I keep seeing comments like this getting modded up and the question I want to ask is: How do you know?

We're talking about the gobs of data that normally flies around corporate LANs and never sees the outside world. Do you have hard numbers (or even vague estimates) on how many people will be working from home? On how much data will be involved? Because if you do, please share it with us.

As for the Government stepping in... the health of the internet is considered a National Security issue. If there's a nation wide pandemic, I have no doubts that the Feds will be telling the telcos (and everyone else) what to do & the telcos won't have much choice in listening.

Re:Based on what usage?

[misleb]

If we assume that they will, for the most part, actually be, WORKING at home, how much bandwidth do people need? Copy a couple Word documents over the VPN? POP their email ever 2 minutes? These things are are NOTHING compared to things like Bittorrent during peak hours.

I keep seeing comments like this getting modded up and the question I want to ask is: How do you know?

How do I know what? That telcommuters don't use much bandwidth? Maybe because I support them? Because I know what they do over the VPN. Even Terminal Services/Citrix doesn't use that much. At least compared to bittorrent. Also, it is local traffic. So none of it goes very far outside local ISPs who often have peering agreement and/or are hosted in teh same facilities anyway.

We're talking about the gobs of data that normally flies around corporate LANs and never sees the outside world.

Usage pattern change when your connection is limited to broadband. In many cases people would just use Terminal Services or Citrix or the like. While not ideal as far as bandwidth usage goes, it also isn't a 'net killer. Again, not as bad as bittorrent. If the 'net can handle current peak usage, I'm confident that it coudl handle whatever telecommuters could throw at it.

Do you have hard numbers (or even vague estimates) on how many people will be working from home? On how much data will be involved? Because if you do, please share it with us.

Give me one good reason to care. Seriously, i have not heard a single realistic reason why I should even care about lots of telecommuters besides what it would take for me to support them all on our organization's dual T1s. Because THAT is going to be your bottleneck.

As for the Government stepping in... the health of the internet is considered a National Security issue. If there's a nation wide pandemic, I have no doubts that the Feds will be telling the telcos (and everyone else) what to do & the telcos won't have much choice in listening.

Having worked for an ISP, I can tell you that they are not shy about taking measure of their own without the need for the government to step in. But again, I don't think we're talking about anything realistic. So...

I'd be much more worried about things like news sites from people trying to get updates on a pandemic. There are a lot of more important things to worry about in the case of a pandemic than the speed of your porn access.

-matthew

Oh well

[Cochonou]

If a pandemic flu were really to occur, I think we would have to worry about other things than the net slowing down.

Re:Oh well

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, this is slashdot, remember?! What could be more important than (high) bandwidth and (low) latency?

Please Mod Up

[Evil Pete]

First, sensible post I've seen on the topic here.

If a large percentage of the population came down with the virus and it was even 10% fatal, instead of the 60% of bird flu, no one would give a shit about youtube ... if it was still up it would be closed if it presented a problem.

In pandemic internet,

[Anonymous Coward]

bird flu you!

bird flu...

[Cryptnotic]

Bird flu could choke your chicken.

Re:bird flu...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am disappointed.

idotipf@11

[Salsaman]

Imminent Death of the Internet Predicted, Film at 11.

Stands to reason?

[DeeVeeAnt]

I work from home quite a bit, and spend my entire time shunting enormous files to and from the office. Actually, no I don't. In fact I occasionally pop up a chat window for a quick conference with the boss. Sometimes I check in/out my projects to the subversion server. I don't really waste much more time on the web at home than I do at work. So, I don't believe that this would put a significant extra strain on the web even if everybody was doing it.

There's a bird flu pandemic...

[L4m3rthanyou]

...And we're worried about the state of the Internet. Welcome to Slashdot.

Re:There's a bird flu pandemic...

[TubeSteak]

The state of the internet is a National Security issue.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=internet+%22n ational+security%22
You betcha that the Feds and the DoD care about it.
Not to mention the numerous 'other' governmental agencies like the CDC.

Don't you recall the "we're prepared to bomb the shit out of anyone attacking our internets" story from a few days ago?

Ironic...

[evilviper]

Wow... How's that for ironic?

A chicken is going to choke the internet...

Must... not... make... "In Soviet Russia..." joke...

Re:Ironic...

[RyoShin]

Okay, I'll do it: "In Soviet Russia, the internet chokes you!"

...I don't get it.

Re:Ironic...

[the_wishbone]

In Soviet Russia, the internet chokes YOUR chicken?

Re:Ironic...

[whitehatlurker]

Oh, you mean like ...

In Soviet Internet, the sick chicken chokes the internet pr0n?

Descramble as you wish ...

Isn't it already choking the net?

[gd23ka]

Terrorism. Terrorism. Chemical Attack. Suitcase Nukes, weirdass fox news spooks.

This is getting boring.

Re:Isn't it already choking the net?

[yogurtforthesoul]

Terrorism. Terrorism. Chemical Attack. Suitcase Nukes, Mooninites weirdass fox news spooks. This is getting boring. There fixed that for ya.

Re:Isn't it already choking the net?

[gd23ka]

--"Terrorism. Terrorism. Chemical Attack. Suitcase Nukes, Mooninites weirdass fox news spooks. This is getting boring."

Thanks, that has much better rhythm and meter.

Sort of ironic

[pgfuller]

Wait a minute - the network designed to be distributed in order to survive a massive nuclear attack couldn't survive a pandemic flu virus - because it is distributed?

Of course the whole thing is a fantasy in the minds of telco executives. There would be much more important things to worry about such as the direct deaths, illness and 'secondary' effects like the failure of electricity generation, water supplies, food distribution, trade etc. In fact you could pretty much see the failure of human civilisation as we know it today.

See, anybody can dream up a doomsday scenario and not being able to 'work' from home is the least of it.

I had this idea!

[yogurtforthesoul]

Tom Smykowski: It was a "Jump to Conclusions" mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor... and would have different CONCLUSIONS written on it that you could JUMP TO. Michael Bolton: That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, Tom. Samir: Yes, this is horrible, this idea.

Umm - are you representative? :-)

[cheros]

I'm glad you consider yourself as a representative user :-).

I'd agree with you for those who grew up on a command line (hell, I can even remember rubber cup 300 baud modems), but I've seen enough people mass-mail multi-MB powerpoints to staff to know that it's not a universal given that bandwidth won't be affected.

For instance, those who presently download their once-a-minute MS and anti-virus updates from a central corporate server will now do this all online. Securityfocus has already observed that users withj modems no longer stand a chance to keep up with it all so even without doing anything useful you're hitting the Net with a lot of extra usage.

Nope, won't be the same at all IMHO..

Re:Umm - are you representative? :-)

[DeeVeeAnt]

Probably not representative in what I do, but I probably am in terms of the load I generate. Sure you get the odd PHB mailing out crap to everyone, but it's not a continuous stream. My guess is that the vast majority of workers would actually represent very little increased load. I think the doom and gloom prediction is based on imagining that everyone working from home will be maxing out their connection full time.

+23 Staff of Paranoia

[dangitman]

If a pandemic were to occur, many companies and organizations would ask their staffs to work from home.

"Staff" is already plural. Why would they ask their "staffs" to work from home, unless they were wizards who employed an especially large number of magical sticks?

Re:+23 Staff of Paranoia

[takev]

Although in this case it would be gramatically incorrect. It may be possible to use the plural of staff in the same way as the plural of people.

Peoples are people of multiple nations.
Staffs are staff of multiple companies?

Re:+23 Staff of Paranoia

[Geordon]

Actually, the plural of staff (a la "magical sticks") would be "staves".
Just sayin'

Re:+23 Staff of Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

Staves.

Re:+23 Staff of Paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Staff" is already plural.

Hang on. Isn't "staff" - in this context - singular? In much the same way that group is a singular collective noun for - er - a group of something.

Staffs is still incorrect though because the original context is "organizations would ask their staffs..." referring to each organisations staff as a single element. It's the same as saying "many people wash their car" (not cars).

An ounce of prevention

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I think we'd collectively be more concerned with, you know, people dropping like flies in huge numbers than we would about telecommuting

What if the measures such as quarantine and travel restrictions were put in place to prevent, or at least contain, an outbreak?

What "the government" can do to "the Internet"

[Helldesk Hound]

> If people didn't comply, the government might step
> in and limit Net usage.

Why do so many news articles published on websites with an international domain, such as .com or .org or .net (etc) assume people will know, for example, which version of dollar when quoting a price in dollars, or which time of year when saying "spring", or which government when saying "the government"?

I am throughly sick of articles on tech news sites that appear to be totally clueless as to who reads their articles!

Meanwhile, addressing a point in this article, how can the government in your country "limit" the internet connectivity available in my country?

It could kill everybody on Earth too.

[HuguesT]

There's no telling what this damn bird flu could do. Big deal if it chokes the net for a few weeks even and annoys a few slashdotters.

What about VOIP or IPTV?

[Anonymous Coward]

So working from home and surfing YouTube uses more bandwidth than VOIP or IPTV?!?

To all those who think this is fud.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Just consider stuff like hosepipe-bans, rolling black-outs and travelleing advisories.

Is internet access/trafic just another resource with an ultimately finite supply that may at times to be to limited so its distribution would have to be regulated?

We know this is true for other resources. In areas with droughts and insufficient reserves the goverment will regulate what you can and cannot do with the available water. Sure, sometimes the lack of water is because off extremely poor management often by that same goverment BUT that doesn't change the fact that when the reservoirs are low and there is no sign of rain the goverment first ASKS people not to waste water and finally orders them too.

You would have to be a liberal to an extremely silly degree to object to that.

Same with say electricity. Thanks to the believe that private companies run things better we in holland now get problems as well as private companies don't invest enough to cope with extreme situations and foila, nature always throws up extreme situations, often with a general helping of unfortunate coincedences. Who would have thought that in a hot summer, the temperature would be hot, water supplies would be reduced and demand for electricity would go up.

The goverment then first asks people to reduce their electricity consumption and finally just plain orders the consumption to stop, although over here by shutting down industrial users. In the US rolling blackouts seem to be favored.

Bad weather? Well, over he we get advice not to travel because of 5 centimeter snowfall. But that is because nothing ever happens here and we need an excuse to have a nice crisis now and then. "And NOW we go LIVE to our reporter on the street, what is happening Dave?" "Well Alan I can honestly report that right now, LIVE from an average street in Holland, absolutly NOTHING is happening BUT it might and I will here to report it, the MOMENT it happens, LIVE!"

So why is it so silly to presume that internet access through a combination of mismanagement and high demand could also find itself either having to deal with the results of extreme use (blackouts) or restrictions.

In fact, we have already seen this. Ever been in an office were the main pipe has gone down and now 1000 people are on a ISDN link? You bet your ass there is going to be some restrictions on the kind of sites visited.

For that matter have you seen the effects on the net during high profile events like the various terrorist attacks of the last decade? I do know that during the london bombings the dutch 3G (mobile phone) network had troubles dealing with all the demands for live video. So did newswebsites.

BUT is FLU likely to do this?

Ah, well that is the question. You see, the during the 9/11 attack at least the world I was in grinded to a halt. I worked at an ISP at the time (we hosted several of the newswebsites that saw their demand soar) and we didn't get any regular work done that day. We watched the news. So while one demand on the network increased it also lowered and in any case was of to short a duration.

But now imagine a prolonged sudden increase in the demand on traffic. Could it be delivered or would you find that working from home has become impossible. Well, I have my doubts but then, so did those people who thought our various other infra structures would be able to deal with extreme situations.

Is working from home really such a gigantic demand on the work? Especially if you consider that a person like me would for instance first shutdown his constantly running P2P program if the network was to slow. I already do so now.

I suppose it also greatly depends on the type of work. Say a creator like a programmer/writer could just literally work at home and only need the net to send his finished work to the office and get new instructions. A bit of code up and loads of gibberish emails down. More important, no immidiate demand. So an email takes an hour to get through. *sorry email junkies, t

Re:To all those who think this is fud.

[David Off]

> You see, the during the 9/11 attack at least the world I was in grinded to a halt.

possibly down to too much groundzeroitude ?

Question

[Rogerborg]

If I can work from home during an HN51 epidemic, why can't I work from home today?

Anyone?

Re:Question

[TubeSteak]

Telecommuting isn't the most efficient way for work to be done.

But in a pandemic, the only other option is to setup dormitories in the office building & stockpile food/water/toiletpaper... all at the company's expense. Or shutdown, possibly for months.

Re:Question

[Rogerborg]

> Telecommuting isn't the most efficient way for work to be done.

I'm in the office right now, and all I've done today is troll blogs and re-arrange my music collection. Sorry, that was very rude of me: you were in the middle of saying something funny.

I'm Immune To Bird 'Flu

[The Grassy Knoll]

I'm a bloke.

.

Re:Bah! [Offtopic]

[Anonymous Coward]

>What the hell is this doing in slashdot's science section?

So that we can debunk it, or see if it stands? If it was not there, we wouldn't have the chance to hear others opinion on the matter.

Interesting...

[mdboyd]

Here I thought it was porn and poker chips clogging the tubes. Now it's birds too? Damn you Ted Stevens! Damn you!

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here I thought it was porn and poker chips clogging the tubes. Now it's birds too?

I guess it's time to put up a scarecrow.

Re:Bah! [Offtopic]

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

So that we can debunk it, or see if it stands? If it was not there, we wouldn't have the chance to hear others opinion on the matter.

I do see your point (although you could make the same statement about Cobyneal posting a vision he had of pink ponies and their relationship to Global Warming to the science section).

I dunno, I'd just like to see stuff that's a little more.... sciency (sp?) in the science section.

(whinge over, back to your scheduled broadcast)

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's scarier than bird flu? The fact that so many intelligent people actually think it's anything to be even remotely concerned about.

Is this the same critical thinking that informs your opinions about global warming?

Oh well, it doesn't matter. Obama will raise taxes to stop bird flu and save us all. I love that guy, he's so wonderful! There's no problem he can't solve with government.

No birds in my office!

[EmagGeek]

Boy, am I glad we don't keep birds in my office!

Difficult to believe

[Chemisor]

I find it difficult to believe that people working from home would generate all that much traffic. All they would do is download what they need to work on, work on it, and then upload it back. Developers would checkout source from svn. All of these activities require very little time on the net. Things might change a bit if you have people using terminal services to their Windows machines at work, but even that doesn't use so much bandwidth. In fact I doubt that all the people in the world working from home could exceed the traffic of a single bittorrent site.

Want a good precursor?

[Dom2]

How many conferences have you been to where the wi-fi worked great? Now multiply the effect.

The bad news is....

[budgenator]

The bad news is that his is a virus, and sooner or later it's going to jump into the human population and be able to transmit from person to person. When that happens, very likely birds will still be able to be infected and will provide a reservoir for the virus, so eventualy you'l either catch the flu and die, catch the flu and live, contact subinfective doses and aquire natural immunity, or get a flu shot.
  it's unlikely we'll just wait it out

Re:The bad news is....

[Freexe]

Once it spreads to humans, it will mutate at an even faster rate and will mutate into more deadly and less deadly strains. More deadly strains tend to kill themselfs off and less deadly strains are, well less deadly.

Unlike the 1918 virus, we have a lot of weapons and defences against the flu which given enough time will increase survival rates as well.

Choking the Net

[Anonymous Coward]

They caught him in the mens room, Choking the Net (tm).

Hype as hype can

[Opportunist]

First of all, in a bird flu pandemic, my LAST concern, right after whether I have enough hairspray, is whether I can work from home! What does a country come to if its first concern is not whether its citicens survive but whether they can work 'til they croak?

Second, what bird flu? Who has been affected? People who have very close contact with infected birds. People living and working with them, having contact with the blood and droppings from infected birds. There has been no single confirmed transfer from human to human, and the only infections affected people who have almost intimate contact with those birds.

The biggest threat we're actually facing is the hype around it. Sure, a few pharmacy corps are making big bucks out of it 'cause every government on this planet is trying to rake together as much antidote as possible, generally, though, the biggest problem we could face is people going bonkers over the alleged 'danger' of the bird flu. I don't plan to kiss my parrot good night and I don't spend my weekends with the girls in the hen den, so I guess I should be fairly safe.

And so is about 99% of the population. Unless we let that hype catch up.

Re:Hype as hype can

[geekoid]

The 'Bird Flu' has jumped from bird to person.
It is very real, and will mutate. When that happens, it may get very ugly, depending on where it will 'sit' in the lungs.

yes, I used the word may because we don't know 100%. Is the WHO and CDC supposed to wait until after it happens to inform people of what to do? It's a little late then, isn't it?

Yes, it would have been very nice if the media was a little more educational about this matter, and a little less "AHHHhhhhh The sky is falling!". Do not let the media's over reaction make you think it's all smoke and mirrors.

Re:Hype as hype can

[hywel_ap_ieuan]

First of all, in a bird flu pandemic, my LAST concern, right after whether I have enough hairspray, is whether I can work from home!
Really? You're going to quit your job as soon as the news of a pandemic hits? If your local/state/national government issues orders that people only leave their homes when absolutely necessary, you're immediately going to stop worrying about whether you can pay your bills?

What does a country come to if its first concern is not whether its citicens survive but whether they can work 'til they croak?
Citizens aren't going to survive very well if the economy and infrastructure fall apart. Keeping up the infrastructure that allows you to survive will require that lots of people continue to work. Having people who are personally unaffected stay home will slow the spread of infection, which will help citizens survive.

Second, what bird flu? Who has been affected? People who have very close contact with infected birds.
And it will stay that way forever? You are assuming that the virus does not or will not mutate to allow human-human transmission. Such a change isn't inevitable, but it can damn well happen. If not H5N1, then possibly another strain. H5N1 is the best candidate because there's gigantic reservoir of virus in close association with humans - domestic birds.

The biggest threat we're actually facing is the hype around it.
Nope. We assess he size of a threat by a combination of likelihood and impact. The impact of the "hype" is mainly some fear and some money and effort spent on planning. The likelihood of a pandemic of some kind - bird flu or another infectious disease - within the next say, ten years, is pretty damn high, and the impact can be huge. That investment in planning can pay off in lives saved.

Re:Hype as hype can

[Opportunist]

When the question is whether I'll survive to see the next 2 weeks then yes, I don't give a fuck about bills due in a month. If I can't fulfill the first requirement, the second doesn't mean a thing.

I'll give you that much that there will be some kind of pandemic within the next few decades. That's a given. The question is whether preparations against it work out, or whether it is possible to prepare against it altogether. Whether preparations work out.

The world has had its pandemics in the past. International trade isn't an invention of the last century, and while delivery wasn't overnight, it certainly was world spanning even back in the 13th century. Without the "new world", granted, but still from Spain to China, which was pretty much the known world. And that international commerce meant a transport of various diseases as well. Europe had its waves of the plague due to it.

What's the way out? "Preparing", today, now that we know where it comes from and hoarding truckloads of antidotes in case disaster strikes? And dumping it regularely when it doesn't? If so, gimme a head warning and I'll invest in pharma stocks.

Life is deadly. By its very definition. We want 100% safety, and this is something you can't get. There is no such thing. Whether H5N1 or another virus will sweep across the planet will at best be a minor setback in the world's population, which is, given its number, maybe not the worst thing that could happen. One thing's a given, there will not be enough antidote if a pandemic sprawls. No chance.

Do you want to die from the flu or in the fight for the antidote?

It reminds me a lot of the fight against terror. There is that insignificantly small chance that 'something bad' happens, and everyone's creaming their pants and tries to prepare against it, no matter what the cost. We have the technology, we have the science, we can prepare for everything. that's right, but what's the price? If this was an insurance, I wouldn't buy it and instead live "dangerous".

Re:Hype as hype can

[TempeTerra]

Second, what bird flu? Who has been affected? People who have very close contact with infected birds.

I understand your skepticism. Scaremongers (i.e. most media) won't bother going in to detail about exactly why bird flu is a threat, which leads to your reaction above. Bird flu as it stands isn't really scary unless you spend all your time with birds, as you say. The scary bit is the nature of influenza.

Imagine that a strain of influenza is made up from a dozen or so assorted lego blocks. H5N1 has the 'kills humans real good' block in it. More common influenzas have the 'spreads from human to human' block (side note: there are a bunch more strains of influenza that can't spread to humans at all, they're purely avian). When a host gets infected by more than one strain of influenza, the two strains can swap blocks with each other (called reassortment, iirc). Imagine that all the lego blocks get broken down and put in a bag, then a new influenza is made out of some of the pieces. If the new strain has 'kills humans real good' and 'spreads from human to human' we're really fucked.

I was working in the health sector when H5N1 was just starting up, and I sat in on some discussions between honest-to-god local doctors who were trying to figure out what to do if an H5N1 variant takes off. It's a really bad position, because local doctors need a way to sort H5N1 cases from the common cold, without any more equipment than is in an average doctor's surgery. These guys have no infectious disease protection, and most have families they want to go home to. Would you want to swab someone's mouth to find out if they had bird flu?

Re:Hype as hype can

[Opportunist]

Go by your sig.

Being prepared is a good thing. Running around screaming in panic is not. And we're doing the latter.

But how do you "prepare" for something like that? In a sensible way, please. When I look at the plans of our government (like face masks), at best I can laugh. I feel more like crying, though. In general, I haven't seen a sensible approach to the problem yet, only very blatant "We have no friggin' clue what to do, but we gotta do SOMETHING" attempts.

What's the difference??

[brunes69]

I, like I imagine most people on here (and anyone who has the ability to "work from home"), am connected to the Internet all day at work as well.

Why would people using the web at home cause it to go down faster than people using it at work?

If anything, some people's crappy ISPs that over-allocate their bandwidth would be clogged - not "the Internet", whatever that is supposed to mean.

The main pipes would not be seeing much more traffic than usual. Sure, people's VPN would use a bit more, but do you really think most VPN traffic uses more bandwidth than bittorrent/WOW/etc, all of which would have to be turned off since the traffic would be booted off of their VPN?

Re:What's the difference??

[geekoid]

"If anything, some people's crappy ISPs that over-allocate their bandwidth would be clogged - not "the Internet","

That's what they mean by 'The Edge'.

So if the ISP volume goes up 60%, they(the ISP) may need to block high bandwidth sites.

Re:What's the difference??

[wonkavader]

If anything, some people's crappy ISPs that over-allocate their bandwidth would be clogged...

That's called "oversubscription" and every single DSL connection and Cable Modem in the country is oversubscribed. EVERY SINGLE ONE. It's what telcos do. The phone network could not possibly handle the load if we all picked up our phones right now.

Classic oversubscription is about 8 to 1.

So TPC (The Phone Company) expects you to use about 1/8 of your bandwidth, on average. Really, they figure that you won't use it at all most of the time. Servers at home make them pee their pants. They HATE them. How do you oversubscribe with things like that going on? Oversubscription is what makes telecom so profitable. You sell something to eight customers. They all pay a "fair" price. You make 700% more than a "fair" price. Then you burn through that cash by being incredibly innefficient.

And yes, ISPs do the same thing.

Even when a company says that they don't over-subscribe, they only buy bandwidth when usage hits 80% or so. And since oversubscription WORKS, that usage amount will be roughly 1/8th of real capactity.

Mind you, I'm just responding to your "crappy ISPs" comment. I think this whole thing is silly, for reasons I'll post elsewhere.

So we should wait until it becomes a pandemic...

[jotaeleemeese]

.... to do something about it.

I would refer you to the early XXth century virus pandemic, but if you want to educate yourself at least make an effor googling for it.

Just lose the spam.

[zaydana]

If we were to combine the recent US stance on cyber attacks with spam laws, the problem would disappear overnight. Bomb the spammers :-)

Re:Bah! [Offtopic]

[danbeck]

If I say that, after careful observation and research, the sky is a wonderful puce, not blue, would my article belong in the science section of slashdot? Of course not... I didn't mention the internet, did I?

Science involves more than dressing up in a white lab coat...

What garbage

[nurb432]

what more needs o be said?

Rubish.

[jotaeleemeese]

People would not fall like flies.

It is not the medieval times you know, we have a bit more knowledge about these things.

It would be nasty, but the economy will keep moving, and there will be people making sure it happens, even if loved ones are sick when one keeps performing his job.

Minor Detail

[Gerocrack]

What they forgot to mention is that for 30% to 60% of central europeans, working from home means having sex on a webcam.

Lets play the numbers game.

[jotaeleemeese]

That is 2% of the population (give or take).

In the UK that would mean 1 200 000 dead. Out of 60 000 000

Terrible? Yes.

Will the economy collapse? Unlikely, the other 58000000 would keep trying to do whatever they do, which would be greatly facilitated by satying at home earning a living (for as many people as possible).

If anything, the number you are giving above would be lower in developped countries. As always the poor countries would take the worst part of such a disaster, and this, as sad as it is, would create eocnomic incentives elsewhere.

SO as amatter of fact some industries and countries would even benefit. That is economic fact.

Instead of piling the irony and cynicism typical of the /. crowd, we should be listening and doing positive contributions, since in as much as we would like to believe this is scaremongering, the reality is that if we want to be relatively unnafected by such a massive problem we need to do planning.

As the Economist said in relation to Steve Jobs recent position about DRM, he may be self serving, but he is correct. Ditto for Telcos warning that we may need better resources if we want the Internet to be a useful tool during emergencies.

Right...

[dlhm]

Most Companies don't have the capabilities to allow thier employees to work from home... are all the companies going to boost thier internet connection speeds? If they tried it would probably take 60 days to do it, by which time everything should be getting back to normal. Are phone companies going to install demarc's ontime. Wouldn't they charge more for the demand on bandwidth, limiting most customers. Why does the goverment need to interfere, is this a socialist economy? This article has bases that seem to be designed by high-school students having no real world knowledge?

Just what we need

[waif69]

To have the government tell us how and when to surf. Just another step towards big brother and thought police.

So...

[mdm-adph]

...apparently chickens power the intarwebs?

(Didn't RTFA, don't care to.)

Oh, Puh-leeze...

[Steve B]

If there's a problem with the net being choked by excess traffic in a "bird flu" emergency, it would do more good to grab the top 100 spammers and send them to Gitmo. Heck, they could send them to Fort Dietrick instead and use them as human subjects for experimental treatments, thus killing two flu-ridden birds with one stone.

Shinning example of a misinformed person.

[jotaeleemeese]

That is part of the problem, people thinking they know what they are talking about, but that know squat about the topic.

1.-A responsible government does multitasking. It will have to worry about the citizens' health, but also about the economy keep moving. The amount of people dying would not justify a complete shutdown of all productive activities.

2.- Bird flu is dangerous because it has proben to infect humans, generally with high index of mortality. This by itself is not a problem. The problem is that virus mutate (don't believe idiotic creationists and the like), and eventually one will find a mutation that will allow infection from human to human. I hope you have not forgotten that this virus is highly lethal.

3.- Your cavalier attitude parades your ignorance. You will not need your parrot to get infected, any person infected could infect you in case a pandemic takes place.

4.- If you think all is hype you clearly need to broaden your education, it is sorely lacking.

Re:Shinning example of a misinformed person.

[Opportunist]

1. The danger to an economy shutdown stems mostly from the fear of being infected, not from infections themselves.

2. Whether it is highly lethal or not is hard to discern. I do not want to be a statistician in south east asia, and ponder whether the high mortality rates are due to a virus being highly lethal or a general lack of hygene and poor health. The "deadly" areas have been mostly rural areas with rather poor hygene and living standards, I don't remember a single case from, say, downtown Singapore.

3. We're still debating whether the virus spreads from human to human. And whether, even if such a mutation eventually surfaces, whether a person with an intact immune system is as susceptible to it as someone who has less luck.

4. Whether it's hype or not is to be determined. I, for one, won't go head over heels into a full hype frezy until there is at least a small chance that some part of that spin turns out to be a real threat. So far, all I can see is a lot of hype and a few people dying in rural areas in south east asia.

Re:Shinning example of a misinformed person.

[Maltheus]

The problem is that virus mutate

And how is this different from all the other gazillion viruses out there? Why all the focus on this one? And why did it take the focus off of, say, the monkey pox? Why aren't we making preparations for the eventual mutation of AIDS into an airborne virus? That's what makes the whole bird flu thing ridiculous. We're picking a single "what if" out of an unlimited pool of "what ifs" and rearranging our lives around it. Do you know what you have to worry about if the bird flu ever mutates? You have to worry about washing your hands more. That's about it. I don't consider myself a tough or brave guy by any means, so why does each day manage to convince me a little more that I live among a nation of pussies? How did people ever manage to live their lives before antibiotics, when people died regularly from real viruses?

..even peak usage times affect outsourced work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to think what a choked network in the US will do with the connections they have with outsourced work in other countries.

Working for a bpo in one of the 3rd world countries with underdeveloped net infrastructure, I can literally feel the effect of peak times. We connect to US-based servers via Citrix to do our work and we get disconnection/interruption issues almost everyday. Even more when there are major issues (taiwan earthquake etc.). Quite a loss in productivity, even discounting the peeps obsessively watching Naruto on youtube.

When the 'net goes down, yippee! no work!

Least of our worries

[cinnander]

You know, I just can't see it being that much of an issue...? "The headlines tonight: Millions of internet users are having to make do without tonight after increased internet usage from home users is overloading many of the systems involved in routing traffic around the internet... ... and in other news, Bird Flu pandemic claims another 6,500,000,000 lives across most of ... the world actually."

Re:Least of our worries

[cinnander]

Further, as my BBI provider is capable of limiting me to 10mbps, they could just drop it down to 1mb or 512k for everyone who is running a faster connection and that would help.

Aren't they all already surfing YouTube @work?

[jpellino]

It's not like they're not on the net while at work, and this certainly won't affect any manual laborers.
And evenings are pretty much the sandbox for this, with little effect.

Who the hell CARES...

[Anonymous Coward]

A bird flu pandemic could also kill a lot of people. The net can choke to death and be gone forever, it's only a fucking tool. Keep your fucking priorities, geeky idiots!

what's the catch??

[mycroft822]

Why is will the amount of traffic be any different? Doesn't everyone just surf the internets at work anyway?

Number may be too small

[Hoi Polloi]

What about all those people like myself who'd be staying at home pretending to be sick with the flu? Make sure you add those in. "*cough* *cough* I can't come into work today. I, ahhh, have a fever and just laid an egg."

I'm sure it would be as big a disaster as the Y2K catastrophe.

One requirement that could help is ...

[Skapare]

One requirement that could help is mandatory local area peering between all tier 1 internet providers in each of the largest 100 or so cities in the US, and the equivalent in other countries. Since we're talking about telecommuters that would be local to their employer, most of that traffic could stay local and away from the backbones by going over that peering exchange.

If this outbreak happens in the summer, I would worry about increased electrical usage from so many home air conditioners having to run in the occupied comfort zone, especially in southern regions of the US.

Choke the chicken

[scotbot]

I guess slashdotters worrying about bird flu choking the Net is better than slashdotters choking the chicken over birds on the Net.

OMG! The sky is falling!

[Thomas Charron]

OMFG, and then we may run out of IP addresses and the entire internet will crumbl.........

    Oh, wait...

    The sky ISN'T falling.

    A) Service providers have excess dark fiber they can light up fairly easily.
    B) Edge networks such as Cable, DSL, fiber, etc, can move the head closer to the users.

You should have looked up ABLE ARCHER 83

[Ernesto Alvarez]

ABLE ARCHER 83 was a war game in europe. Due to certain reasons, the soviets though it could be a cover to start an invasion on eastern europe. The analysts realized just in time that the soviets felt really nervous and scaled down the war game.

What the GP poster was talking about was world war 3, not the flu.

Remember "Swine Flu"?

[WheelDweller]

Like a lot of the media-based panics coming from the left, swine flu was a scare tactic that went nowhere, too.

And killer bees from Africa.

And the ozone hole.

And man-made climate change.

But what else would we do if we weren't scared into voting for these people? :)

vi all the way

[rastos1]

Yeah! That is the scenario where you'll be saved by vi and CLI, that works great with low bandwidth.

The only thing that could be in danger is the protocol described in RFC 1149

This story is terribly old

[SportyGeek]

I knew I read about this last year. In fact, there was a similar article written in May 2006: Avian flu could cripple telecom services, Internet.

I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

Why would people use more bandwidth just because they were at home?

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

Ever connected your Windows desktop to your corporate VPN over the Internet? The connections are dial-up slow over a cable modem - and: Yes, that is the arrangement most corps have in place right now. Don't worry about the net not being able to handle the load, the load will cause all those employee windows machines to lock up and drop connection, and probably overwhelm the windows [M$] servers - no work will get done, everyone will blame "the Internet", and the govt will use that as an exuse to start requiring bandwidth rationing - ciritical uses for national security [e.g. Dick Cheney's IMs with Osama bin Ladi, Dubya's kiddie pr0n downloads, and Condi's eharmony.com sessions] will of course be given special dispensations - think gasoline ratining during WW II.

This pandemic idea is interesting - I've been wondering what excuse they were going to use to shut down the interenet right before the congress is dismissed by executive order, and the 2008 elections are [indefinitely] postponed due the the "national state of emergency"....

Re:I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

Well, hysteria aside, that's an entirely different issue.

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

that's an entirely different issue.

Actually it's not -

Ineptitude aside, you don't know what you're talking about well enough to even state your alleged point. You're argument is so lame you have to openly resort to bullshite just to come up with a response. Hysteria aside. Hah. You wouldn't know hysteria if it slavered on your face. And you apparenty can't smell your own bullshit, either. Salty dog? What's you, 13? 14?

Re:I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

0x0000 said: "And furthermore, blah blah blah blah blah. I'm going to assault you with misspelled nonsense to appease my overwhelming sense of inadequacy."

Feh. Troll.

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

heh - okay - well, since you admit it...

Re:I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

Don't you have better things to do?

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

Don't you have better things to do?

Don't you?

Re:I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

You see, what baffles me here is that all your responses are some variation on "oh yeah, well so are you." I just can't figure how you derive satisfaction from that. It's so lame.

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

Sorry, didn't mean to baffle you - sometimes I just forget how easy it is with folks like you - If I'm so lame, what compells you to continue to reply? I mean, honestly - wtf makes you so interested in *me*? I am, quite literally, no one - nothing - and yet you just can't let my remarks go by - if you can't think of anything else to say, you fall back on generic personal stuff like "lame"... is your mind really that blank, or is someone paying you to continue to delve this, or ....?

Re:I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

You see? You're doing it again.

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

Sorry, you can't claim that one - please cite.

Re:I call bullshit

[saltydogdesign]

No. Go fucking read it yourself. I'll talk to your lonely ass up to a point (probably no further than here), but I'm not going to do your goddamn thinking for you too.

Re:I call bullshit

[0x0000]

No. Go fucking read it yourself. I'll talk to your lonely ass up to a point (probably no further than here), but I'm not going to do your goddamn thinking for you too.

LoL - you couldn't think for me, buttfukker - you can't even think for yourself. Go get yerself a life.

Sungard Frozen Turd Disaster Service

[1sockchuck]

I can picture the release from Sungard: "A recent discussion at a major web destination shows that Americans are concerned about being struck by frozen turds plummenting from the skies. Our research confirms that flying frozen turds could cause serious disruption to corporate IT operations (assuming they strike the support staff walking back from lunch at Taco Bell). Don't be caught unprepared! Sungard is pleased to announce a new Flying Frozen Turd Business Continuity Service, which can safeguard your mission-critical operations in scenarios up to and including a Category Five major shitstorm."

No Net Change in Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

"If a pandemic were to occur, many companies and organizations would ask their staffs to work from home. The impact of millions of additional people using the Internet from home might require individuals and companies to voluntarily restrain themselves from surfing to high-bandwidth sites, such as YouTube.

Re:9/11 caused net stoppage: If there were a pandemic, I doubt that people would necessarily be surfing YouTube.

Why not?

That's probably what they do when they're in the office anyway.

re: on selling "unlimited" bandwidth

[King_TJ]

IMHO, you make a very valid point (grandma playing pop-cap games and checking her email once a week pays the same as a 24/7 bittorrent user).

BUT - the sale of pseudo-unlimited bandwidth is a practice that began because the public, essentially, demanded it. Home and small business users made it quite clear that they didn't want to feel like they were "on the clock", being metered as they upload and download anything. At the same time, what they want for their $20-50 a month or so is the ability to *usually* achieve good net speeds whenever they use it.

The most popular compromise was selling plans that don't monitor your personal usage at all, but come with the "catch" that the network may get congested and slow down without warning.

Will this screw things up for people who suddenly expect to do all of their work from home via VPN tunnel in the case of a big disaster? Well, YES! But all things considered, that's just as it should be. If the ability to work from home was important enough to you, you could always pay for dedicated bandwidth with a guaranteed min. level of service. 99% of people didn't ever opt to do so, so they're left with net connections that aren't designed to handle huge surges in usage due to natural disasters.

And as a side note, the "power users" you refer to do already help subsidize the network for everyone else - because they're the only ones willing to pay more for higher-tier plans from the cable companies or telcos. The general public says "Huh? Pay $79.95 a month for 10mbit cable broadband? What the hell would I need something THAT fast for? I like that 3mbit plan for $29.95 a month, thanks."

what bird-flu

[Locutus]

I'm not a biologist but from what I've seen on the news, mostly people killing birds, more people have died in the USA last year from the regular flu then the total worldwide who've died from this bird-flu. Last I'd seen, the count was 9 dead from bird-flu worldwide.

I guess I'm missing something if the regular olde flu season in the USA kills on average 36,000 people ANNUALLY, and so far 9 have died from this bird-flu... WTF?

FYI, a link on the 36,000 dead number:
"Why should you get your flu vaccination?" http://www.slate.com/id/2091774/

LoB

Re:what bird-flu

[maxume]

There is a good chance that bird flu will eventually mutate into a form that spreads from human to human, and it is fairly likely that humans will have little baseline immunity to the virus in that form. The explanation is more or less that that's the way the flu has behaved since we starting thinking of it as a virus, so that's probably how it will continue to behave in the future.

The concern that it will cause millions of deaths, combined with the benefits of catching it before it spreads to many people are more than enough to balance the difficulties in preventing the yearly deaths caused by normal flu, a big chunk of which occur in people with highly weakened immune systems that did not get vaccinated. There are well in excess of 30 million people over the age of 65 in the US, leaking a few hundred thousand, or even a few million, that don't want to get vaccinated or otherwise don't get vaccinated isn't that big a surprise.

Re:what bird-flu

[Locutus]

Thanks for that description but it still seems strange that the press brings up the number of deaths and from what I've seen, they've never really explained the big deal about it all. Your explaination is acceptable and makes sense, though I hope those working on this might also be working on forcing it to mutate such that they can possibly get a version we can deal with before the natural mutation occurs. But they'd better not get a version which goes undetected by the scientist with epilepsy, eats rubber gaskets, and then starts killing the population atlarge. ;-)

And hey, it's got everyone forgetting about the Beef Industries problems with Mad Cow. I've heard some say that the bird flu issue has been cooked up by the beef industry. A Fox Mulder kinda storyline don't you think?

LoB

wear face masks ..

[rs232]

'There is some anecdotal evidence from prior pandemic outbreaks that masks may have helped, but no firm data'

This is offensive

[wonkavader]

This whole thign bugs me. Mostly because the telcos selling edge want to use it to extort money out of people. Do you think, if they got that money, they'd improve bandwidth to the edge? Heck no. These guys are some of the worst lying sacks of shit you will ever have the good fortune not to meet.

This "war game" was pure navel gazing. It's not necessarily wrong, but the methods they used to come up with this are crap. 250kbs for a VPN connection? Who is gonna set all those VPN connections up? How many companies would actually be able to use that? How far off the mark could these guys be? Of COURSE they're gonna use youtube. 90% of the 30% to 60% of workers at home will just be on phone and a little file shuffling at worst. But don't believe the numbers I pull out of MY ass, they're not gonna be better than the ones smelling of these Telco guys poop shoot.

We should have a REAL test. Make a wednesday next month stay home and work day. Let's see what really happens.

Re: on selling "unlimited" bandwidth

[Shakrai]

The most popular compromise was selling plans that don't monitor your personal usage at all, but come with the "catch" that the network may get congested and slow down without warning.

That catch doesn't bother me as much as the providers that have fine print that says they can basically terminate you for doing anything they don't like.

If you buy into the concept of network neutrality (disclaimer: I do) then it follows that it's really none of your ISPs business what kind of traffic you are using it. Be it bittorrent, VoIP, http, ssh, irc, etc, etc. It may be their business how much bandwidth you use (because that impacts them) but not the manner in which you use that bandwidth.

IMHO, anyway.

Bandwidth

[ucblockhead]

Given that most businesses have higher bandwidth connections than most homes, I'd think everyone working at home would reduce traffic.

How about

[wheelsof industry]

wireless mesh networks.

Internet vs Intrantet

[jotaeleemeese]

That is the difference. If you are in the office most traffic remains there.

The silly part is

[wwphx]

that 30-60% of a company CAN'T work from home. Secretaries have to have papers to push and type, tech support has to be on-site to fix computers, mechanics need tools and vehicles to work on, electronics techs need soldering irons and things to fix, managers have to attend meetings and wander around to make sure we're not playing WoW, etc. I missed one day of work a couple of weeks ago because the campus closed early on a snow day, otherwise I'm there five days a week.

A lot of the work force cannot work from home.

Though I have a fairly minimal tech support job, my preferred job is doing SQL Server administration and development. The development I could do from home; I'd have no problem doing admin part-time from home, but I'd prefer to be on-site a lot of the time.

What are they smoking...

[hilltx]

hell my place of employement would either ask me to choose, life or work or would ask us all to stay at work and not leave the building...

Seriously, Dude...

[catdevnull]

Seriously, dude. If I am home suffering with some avian flu strain, the last thing I'm gonna be doing is WORKING. Most likely, I'll be driving/riding the porcelain bus if I'm not heavily sedated from a double-dose of Nyquil.

Unless you're one of those over-achieving cubicle heroes like my boss. He could be dying and still manage to e-mail me assignements with that f**king crackberry.

Re: Speculation

[Orig_Club_Soda]

I agree. I think its subjective to the community involved. Here in the US everybody is on the net at work. Displacing them to their homes may not have any impact at all.

Re: on selling "unlimited" bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

You should price out a dedicated line like a T1 in your area. I bet you would decide that and over-subscribed $80 DSL is what you do really want. I don't think you want to pay $500 for a dedicated line. To think you should get that for less and shouldn't have to 'share' is truly naive. You should start up your own ISP and see how long you stay in business.

Patch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Web 2.1 should have a patch addressing this issue.

Don't Most Workers Use the Internet

[queenb**ch]

Seriously, aren't most workers using the internet anyway? Bandwidth is bandwidth. It doesn't matter if you're at work and going out to the internet or if you're at home and traversing the internet to get to work. Most home users connections are far more throttled than work connections, so I see no real difference.

Unless you happen to be Korean....

2 cents,

Queen B.

You need to wake up and smell the chicken soup.

[mregit]

Every influenza virus that has ever infected man started out as a "bird flu". H5N1 is the next one coming down the pike. It already has the title of the most devastating pandemic animal illness in recorded history, and with a >60% case fatality rate, it promises to keep that title when it goes pandemic in the human population.

H5N1 has gone human to human numerous times. There have been several family clusters where one family member became ill from contact with an infected bird and spread it to other family members who in turn spread it to even more people. The incidence of caregivers becoming infected by patients is also growing. When relatives come to care for sick family members or accompany them to the hospital, they have become ill themselves. To date there has been documented direct human to human transmissions in Turkey, Egypt, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand.

The most common source of infection is infected birds. But birds are not the only carriers. In China H5N1 is known as the "birds and beasts flu". The virus infects wild and domestic birds, a huge list of mammals (including humans), and it has been found in fish. Research is showing it can be carried and transmitted by insects such as flies and mosquitoes. This virus is very hardy - much stronger than our garden variety yearly flu strains that can live up to 72 hours on hard surfaces. H5N1 lives for 37 days at 98 degrees F and indefinitely when frozen. News reports from affected countries are blaming human infections on cats, dogs, rabbits, pigs, flies, dust, drinking water, swimming in lakes, fertilizing house plants, visiting a zoo, having surgery, walking past a healthy chicken, a neighbor's pet caged bird, cracking an egg in the palm of the hand and numerous cases of making dinner with fresh or frozen chicken.

When you look at how few people have been infected so far, understand that this flu is just getting started. These incidents are like bubbles coming to the surface in a pot of water that has just been set down on a flame. One bubble, then another, and another, until the whole pot is a rolling boil - and the most devastating pandemic mankind has ever seen. Take the time to learn WHY the experts are so frightened of H5N1. NO ONE has immunity to this disease. It can be transmitted by just about every living thing. It lives in water and on surfaces and in the air much longer than the common cold. More than 60% of the people who get it die. If you are between the ages 14 and 35 and healthy, that rate goes up to 89%. Most of the people who have survived to date did so because they received intensive health care to keep them from drowning from the cytokine storm that floods their lungs with fluid - and we do not have a small fraction of 1% of the ventilators and respiratory therapists we will need during a pandemic.

The pot is on the stove and its bubbling away.

It just makes sense to prepare.

Re: on selling "unlimited" bandwidth

[Shakrai]

You should price out a dedicated line like a T1 in your area. I bet you would decide that and over-subscribed $80 DSL

And this is what pisses me off. People leaping to a conclusion that I didn't make.

I'm not bitching about DSL being over-subscribed. I'm bitching about the fact that everybody is paying the same amount of money for it while certain people are using more resources -- and a few people are using the majority of the resources.

Re: on selling "unlimited" bandwidth

[kasin]

Not every part of the world has "unlimited" plans. In Australia plans are explicitly capped to a download limit, with shaping (read: 64kb) beyond that point (some plans charge, such as business plans). OTOH it is considered a fault if you do not receive full download speed at all times (when you aren't shaped). If you are a heavy user then you simply pay for a plan with more included download. I sync at 16 Mbps, and fully expect to receive that speed for the first 20 GB, with a predictable 64kbps after that.

Disclaimer: I work for an Australian ISP

Damn...

[rHBa]

As someone who works from home most of the time, I use less bandwidth while I'm working than when I'm out.

The reason? Whenever I go out I leave the bittorrent going full blast (might as well get my monies worth) and when I get home, if I have to do some more work, I will have to free up some banwidth.

So in my case I use LESS bandwidth the more I work from home.

Re:And a butterfly could cause a (Telco wank)

[ColbyNotez]

If this article is an effort to encourage more infrastructure,
they may have just shot themselves in the foot, by graphically showing
the need for collaborative solutions that bypass the weak Telco infrastructure.
Five years from now, there will be far less need for ISP's.

For $50 you'd just get a directional WiFi antenna and connect
to your employer's building directly, 20 miles away.
No internet is required.

The internet should only be for last resort. Individuals setting up their
own WiFi networks (ie. every car containing a long-range, narrow-beam repeater)
will gradually replace the Telco's, cable companies, and ISP's.

ISP's only exist for the short term - until the technology is
available to individuals, cheaper than a video game.

free market economy ?

[Archfeld]

it should not matter if this comes to pass or not...WTF right does JohnDoe company employee have to bandwidth so he can WORK from home over me so I can play games from home, we both pay the same. I'd say JohnDoe employee's company is a FREELOADING piece of shit and if they want bandwidth, let them provision it and pay for it.

Antibiotics ... viruses

[Anomalyst]

You realize, of course, that anti-biotics have no effect on viruses. Viruses require either an immunization by a "flu-shot" by an outside agency or a, by chance, natural immunity which (hopefully) primes the body's defenses against the virus by allowing to recognise the H5N1 (or other distictive) protein configuration as foreign. They may have a beneficial effect against secondary infections, such as those that HIV leave a victim susceptible, the "Immune Deficiency" part of the syndrome.

sex on a webcam

[Anomalyst]

working from home means having sex on a webcam.

Hmmm, doesn't that

1) make prone positions uncomfortable?
2) make it diffcult to retain balance for standing positions?
3) put the interesting action outside the field of view?

Sex in front of the webcam would resolve the above issues and probably enhance the revenue potential of the images. Taking off your watch, socks and taped glasses might also help.

I am eternally indebted to Xaveria Hollander, "The Happy Hooker" for pointing out how ridiculous a man wearing nothing but socks and a watch looks, and make it a point to remove said items FIRST.

This isn't FUD

[Shadowruni]

In Seattle last year we had a few snowstorms that brought EVERYTHING to a halt. We had about 75% of our workforce VPNing in and this killed a DS3. I'd worry about this. We ended up explaining how to dial back remote desktop (colors, sounds, etc.) but it was a really big deal. I wouldn't want to have to dal with this long term.

Dumbest statistic ever

[Chmcginn]

People in the U.S. have the same chance of being killed by a meteorite as they do of being killed by a terrorist but that sure doesn't stop the fear machine. I wish people wake up, take a look around, start asking some serious questions and then demand answers.

So, wait, you're saying that in the last five years, 3000 some people have been killed by meteorites? That's not right.

Hell, I'm pretty sure if you average deaths from terrorism vs. death from space rocks over the life of the United States, terrorism still wins. I'm not big on the whole paranoia thing, but some times you just have to think before you come up with a comparison.

Oh, are you saying that the chance of an individual person being killed by a meterorite in the US is the same? Well, even assuming that every 50 million years, a big enough asteroid/comet hits to kill everything, that still only averages to 6 deaths a year. So you're still looking at 530 years, just from 9/11 and Oklahoma City. So it's still a bogus statistic.

When did this happen?

[L0rdJedi]

When did Slashdot go from a calm, see things from another perspective to a "EVERYBODY PANIC!!!" site? Everyone here seems to have forgotten a few things.

First, we're not "due" for a pandemic anymore than certain places are "due" for a big earthquake (they've been telling Californian's about "the big one" for years and it still hasn't hit).

Second, H5N1 isn't likely to mutate into a human to human virus (or whatever the hell the term is).

Third, the one country that was thought to be the worst prepared, Vietnam, beat H5N1.

Fourth, the flu kills far more people every year than H5N1 or even SARS has ever killed.

Fifth, no one in the US has died from SARS or avian flu.

Geez people. Get your collective heads out of your asses and stop and think for just a moment.

Flu pandemics are not all alike

[Anonymous Coward]

The bird flu is certainly cause for concern. If it mutates to be easily spread human-to-human, and stays as virulent as it appears to be now, it could be very bad. But it seems worth pointing out that there were three flu pandemics in the 20th century. the 1918 pandemic, the 1957 "Asian flu" pandemic and the 1968 "Hong Kong" flu pandemic. One of these, the 1918 pandemic, was really nasty, because it was an unusually virulent strain of flu. It caused rapid death, even in young healthy people with strong immune systems. The other two pandemics were not that bad. A lot more people got the flu than in normal years, but, for the most part, they didn't die. As is typically the case with flu, it was fatal primarily to very old, very young, and those with compromised immune systems. For the vast majority of people who caught the Asian or Hong Kong flu, it meant that they got pretty damn sick for a few days, and then they got better. It certainly makes sense to be prepared for a 1918 type pandemic. It happened before, and it will probably happen again, but most likely, the sky is not falling. OTOH, not being prepared for a predictable disaster is inexcusable. Just ask the folks in New Orleans.

Re: on selling "unlimited" bandwidth

[dbrutus]

We used to have utterly miniscule bandwidth. We can shrink down to that again and make do for 6 months without collapse. What's needed is a telecommuter's pandemic kit to instruct them on how to do that.