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Internet Probably Couldn't Handle a Flu Pandemic
Several readers including mikael and gclef noted a report from the General Accountability Office suggesting that it should be Homeland Security's job to make sure the nation's business can flow during a pandemic. In particular, if H1N1 sends workers and schoolchildren home in large numbers, GAO thinks it might be a good idea for ISPs to prioritize traffic (favoring commerce over games, say), to reduce network speeds, and possibly to shut down high-traffic Web sites. DHS retorts that not only isn't it their job to control the Internet in this way, but the GAO is naive to believe it's even possible: "An expectation of unlimited Internet access during a pandemic is not realistic." "[DHS] does not even have a plan to start work on the issue, the General Accountability Office said. But the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth. Experts have for years pointed to the potential problem of Internet access during a severe pandemic, which would be a unique kind of emergency. It would be global, affecting many areas at once, and would last for weeks or months... Many companies and government offices hope to keep operations going as much as possible with teleworking using the Internet. Among the many problems posed by this idea, however, is the issue of bandwidth..."
In event of contagious diseases, we will quarantine everyone to their houses. Then we will shut off all your ability to play online games.
God spoke to me.
Can't we get rid of the DHS yet? I don't think there's one government organization I like less.
Isn't traffic usually higher during business days than during the weekends? If so, during a pandemic I'd expect lower traffic, not higher. Especially since people, you know, being sick don't really feel like browsing...
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Be yourself no matter what they say
Really, I do. Between flash games, surfing blogs, spamming "random page" on Wikipedia, and actual honest-to-goodness work, I use far more bandwidth at work than I do at home, where I mostly just play WoW and read a few blogs.
Unless the wife isn't home. Then I burn a hole in my wall downloading porn.
I can see the fnords!
Raise your hand if this sounds like something you WANT the department of homeland security to be worrying about.
[crickets]
That's what I thought.
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
In other news, Comcast has effectively convinced the GAO that traffic shaping is now a good thing.
The actual report from the GAO is available here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d108.pdf
.. on the Internet IS commerce. Those telecommuting could very well be employee of game companies. Games is a multi-billion dollar industry that is moving more and more toward the Internet infra-structure.
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That is such an idiotic idea that whoever came up with it at the GAO should be fired. The idea of what should and should not be allowed would be very arbitrary. Take sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. They make money from traffic to their site. If they shut down/slowed access to such sites nationwide it would financially cripple them. Companies will have to have their own contingencies for such incidents, it is not the government's responsibility to ensure they can keep operating the way they prefer, it is the companies responsibility to ensure they can continue to operate however necessary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
I am sure there would be negative implications as well, but I think there is a lot to be said for encouraging an environment where there are more people working from home.
The CB App. What's your 20?
What about companies whose "commerce" is games? I'm sure Blizzard would love to hear that the vast majority of their revenue is specifically targeted for termination should a pandemic occur.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Its a hell of a stretch defining data as "trade".
Are US servers violating a trade embargo if they serve a page to someone in Cuba?
Learn about Photography Basics.
Maybe they should look at how telecommunications companies are connecting people as the problem instead of how people are using the Internet.
Anyway, to my mind, there are a clear set of traffic shaping policies that satisfy net neutrality and make sure the network is still usable by everyone. And that's to shape by physical connection, not application. I have an 8 megabit DSL line, but I think my ISP has about 450-600 mbits of bandwidth to the Internet. The aggregate bandwidth of all of their DSL customers is likely at least 10 times their available bandwidth to the Internet, and that's a perfectly normal and reasonable situation.
If ever any given connection they have to the Internet becomes saturated, they should prioritize traffic in such a way as to make sure everybody trying to use that connection gets their fair share. That means customers that only burst traffic and aren't using their max for hours get priority over the people who are using as much bandwidth as they can for hours. As the bandwidth becomes more constrained, the criteria for what counts as a burst should become shorter and the max burst bandwidth should be lowered.
Trying to kill off all your bittorrent customers, especially since you think they're competing with your more profitable centralized video distribution business sure seems attractive, but it's evil and all the wrong approach. Just allocate bandwidth fairly to your customers and the bittorrent people will be punished for using all their bandwidth by having molasses web surfing compared to everybody else.
If bittorrent customers don't like this, they can agree to start marking the traffic they want to have as low priority and then that traffic will be the first to go when there's a bandwidth crunch.
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So H1N1 is really a genetically-engineered virus made by Lucent Technologies at the behest of the big telecom/cable cabal to be not quite deadly, but bad enough to send everyone at home for a couple weeks. When everyone fires up their connections for torrents, MMOs, and "internet research" (porn), it gives the bought-and-paid-for congress the perfect excuse to shoot down FCC network neutrality rules and allow telcom/cable to throttle connections and shape traffic, thus ensuring people can order their fleshlights and Sex and the City box sets at the expense of WOW players and pirates looking for movies to watch while they're laying in bed for days at a time. It's so simple it's brilliant!
I fail to see why this is any different from other emergencies that have benefited from the free flow of information concerning problems
The free flow of information in emergencies is a problem if you're a totalitarian government or, say, Iran. As of this moment it's hyperbole to apply that to the U.S., but the effective building of repressive regimes takes away liberties piecewise. H1N1 a national emergency?!
The sun of our liberty won't just fall into the ocean, it'll gradually fade away through a twilight which has already begun.
No, what will end Net Neutrality will be a criminal debate (priotitize traffic to limit piracy or child porn! It's for the children) or national security debate of some kind (those Korean Haxors will kill us all! PANIC!). The H1N1 thing will pass over too quickly (and I believe that Markey prsnts that bill every year... just this time he might finally get it through). But seriously... never waste a good crisis, right? If you do, people might think logically, and that's bad for policy.
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
The people trying to push anti-net-neutrality agendas will use whatever scare tactic is currently in the media. In 2001 it would have been "we need to prioritize traffic to aid rescue workers," during Katrina it would have been "We don't have bandwidth to reliably allow everyone free access while still being able to coordinate aid in Lousiana," now it's this, and tomorrow it will be "we can't reliably fight aliens/robot armies unless people are taxed for visiting sites that we don't approve of."
or else!
...triumphing over the rights of citizens. I don't see any reason why business' commerce should supersede the leisure activities of people who are home sick. Obviously this recommendation is asinine in the extreme and completely impossible to implement, but I don't think its the government's business to implement it anyway. If you want to talk about emergency services then, OK, maybe there is an argument there.
...Besides...everyone already surfs the web all day at work. I don't see where there is any difference.
I also agree with the comment saying...well what about game companies' commerce? It's just another case of big business having the money to bribe politicians into prioritizing their interests over citizens'.
This is propaganda, disinfo, lies and bullshit.
They will take the net down to prevent uncontrolled information sharing and disclosure. They are prepping this under the framework established in The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced by Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), last April. This gives the president the ability to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any "critical" information network "in the interest of national security." The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president, according to a Mother Jones report.
Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, dismissed the entire premise of the Cybersecurity Act when she pointed out the fact that granting centralized power to the government to control networks would in fact make the stability of the Internet less safe, because allowing one person to access all information on a network "makes it more vulnerable to intruders," she said. "You've basically established a path for the bad guys to skip down."
enator John Rockefeller betrayed the true intent behind the legislation when he stated, "Would it have been better if we'd have never invented the Internet," while fearmongering about cyber attacks on the U.S. government and how the country could be shut down.
See him rave:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8PCmLPPVnA&feature=player_embedded
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Multiple times every year, a big percentage of the people get some strain of the flu. The normal flu had way bigger "pandemics" than any H1N1. Nothing happened. It's just the flu. We know it. We can handle it. Done.
What this is really about, is the media, blowing stuff up, creating "contoversies", until any communications medium bursts, shutting themselves off.
Well, there's a simple solution for that one: Stop being such greedy bastards! Which means: Stop creating so much drama, just to get more viewers and make more money. Or in other words: Stop stuffing youself over what the mechanism can hold.
On the other hand, seeing the "traditional" (money4drama) media break completely down, would be a really cool thing to happen.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
BAAAA! BAAAA! My TV says I must get the pig flu shot or I will die. BAAAA!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/21/cbsnews_investigates/main5404829.shtml
So if states have been asked to stop counting individual cases of the pig flu, how the hell do we know we have a pig flu pandemic? This is an experiment to determine if years of public education and pop culture shit have dulled your will and your wits enough to view the government as your supreme authority and savior. I'd say we're just about there, but not quite. The vaccine is mandatory - for now...
http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index.php?lang=eng
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty