Could ATT turn off the internet here in the U.S. ? ? ? - Page 3

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Posted: 1/28/2011 10:38:13 PM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:39:10 PM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The 'internet' isn't DARPA's automobile anymore. Take for example many of the items that came out of the NASA program or even Colossus during WWII. Technically, the first computers were used to crack the Enigma code and calculate artillery solutions. By that logic, every computer today has a 'kill-code' embedded in the BIOS for the government to see what you're doing.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:40:43 PM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:41:06 PM EDT

[#4]

Quoted:

Quoted:

No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.
Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and touchy-feely global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer on a global level (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.
I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:42:57 PM EDT

[#5]

Quoted:
The first rule of modern warfare is to own the skies and secondly to own Communications..

IF you own both..There isn't much way to offer a resistance.

Which is why I have no doubt some sort of HAM Radio will be the communications during the future World Wide Holocaust

It seems a very good idea to destroy communications of your enemy..

Again, HAM freq. can be easily jammed. That said, I have a friend who talks to Florida on *one* watt from his basement using a whip antenna regularly. Sounds almost as good as a cell phone. He's using some outdated British military backpack radio. Doesn't have the bells and whistles of the newer stuff but does it ever work...

The problem then is getting information to and from the right people. I am absolutely convinced that there will be HAMs on the air 30 seconds after the last Iranian nuke detonates on US soil, but if it's a bunch of basement bound octogenarians copying and relaying information it's going to be a slow process.

HAM radio nerds will rule the day though! If you don't want to piss them off to the point they won't help you find your mom in Topeka, they prefer to be called "Elmers".

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:43:52 PM EDT

[#6]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.

I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

It is funny just how ignorant some people are. They think the Internet is like some big AOL service that can be shut off. Like they think they can control a herd of a million cats.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:45:01 PM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:49:23 PM EDT

[#8]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:50:14 PM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The 'internet' isn't DARPA's automobile anymore. Take for example many of the items that came out of the NASA program or even Colossus during WWII. Technically, the first computers were used to crack the Enigma code and calculate artillery solutions. By that logic, every computer today has a 'kill-code' embedded in the BIOS for the government to see what you're doing.

You sound like a guy in the know, what do you think about THIS video?

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:52:21 PM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

So was the GPS constellation, yet here we are with an FAA Aircraft Advisory warning pilots of a localized southeast of the Florida Panhandle while they play with outages.

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:53:55 PM EDT

[#11]

Quoted:

Quoted:

No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

So was the GPS constellation, yet here we are with an FAA Aircraft Advisory warning pilots of a localized southeast of the Florida Panhandle while they play with outages.

And pilots were (and are) able to use VOR. See where I'm going with this?

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:54:36 PM EDT

[#12]

People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:55:00 PM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

So was the GPS constellation, yet here we are with an FAA Aircraft Advisory warning pilots of a localized southeast of the Florida Panhandle while they play with outages.

Really. Do you know anything about the Internet?

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:55:01 PM EDT

[#14]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Yes.

No.

Not entirely, but shut down the overseas cables, satellites, Internet data centers and the nodes and you're not doing much.

Oh, is that all?

And after they somehow manage to do that (BTW, define all "Internet data centers" and "nodes"), all we're left with is the largest network in the world, within our own borders?

Bummer.

Shut down the central offices and nothing is getting out unless you magically bypass it.

ETA: Old map. There's a newer one online that features the public network map.

https://www.msu.edu/~perryma3/cas492/att_backbone_large.gif

get jiggy wid it

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:56:25 PM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

dns is just a shortcut for humans. It's not needed for internet communications.

Edit: You can create a local host file on your PC with your commonly used hostname to IP mappings. Tah Dah!

Posted: 1/28/2011 10:59:04 PM EDT

[#16]

Quoted:
People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

See up there where it says http://www.ar15.com/whatevuh? Copy past this there, click enter, and see what happens: 69.95.2.67

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:02:08 PM EDT

[#17]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and touchy-feely global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer on a global level (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.

I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

Even if I don't understand all the fine points of internet/IT subculture, I am practical enough to know that knocking out the cable and DSL providers by shutting them down or simply threatening the people with prison if they don't cooperate will be effective enough of a tactic to accomplish whatever the .gov wants.

If GWB got on TV on the morning of 9/11 and said "We're sorry America, but the Internet has temporarily been shut down on my orders to prevent it's use by the evil forces of Terror in the world. We will return internet service as soon as my advisors say it is safe to do so." Americans would have cheerfully given up their internet priveledges and probably even felt a little patriotic about it for a while. All they have to do is get on the phone and tell the ISP's and providers and say "This is a national security issue. You will cease operations immediately or you will be arrested. Your service will be shut down either way. Your company will be compensated at a market + 30% for the period you are offline. Thanks for your cooperation.

"

Put 98% of the people in the dark and you will accomplish your mission. The remaining 2% will only be able to talk to themselves, right? It's not like you being able to get on the internet is going to restore service for the people in your neighborhood who just want to play facebook and order shoes off of Ebay....

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:05:45 PM EDT

[#18]

Quoted:

Quoted:

People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

dns is just a shortcut for humans. It's not needed for internet communications.

Edit: You can create a local host file on your PC with your commonly used hostname to IP mappings. Tah Dah!

Just run BIND on your favorite *nix distro. The root name servers are plenty distributed.

But supposing the shit has really hit the fan, you're right - DNS availability (or lack thereof) is an annoyance (perhaps a major one?). It's just another Layer 7 protocol that doesn't really matter, in the grand scheme of things.

Divorce your stupid "web browser" from "the internet" and shit like this doesn't matter anymore.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:05:57 PM EDT

[#19]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

So was the GPS constellation, yet here we are with an FAA Aircraft Advisory warning pilots of a localized southeast of the Florida Panhandle while they play with outages.

Really. Do you know anything about the Internet?

I know enough that on a practical level any government can come to a providers physical location and destroy equipment or cut off power. Repeat that all over their country and they will cripple the internet to where the free flow of information will end up being diluted due to the unreliable nature of person to person contact from the few who still have the ability to use the internet.

That's enough.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:11:18 PM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and touchy-feely global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer on a global level (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.

I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

Even if I don't understand all the fine points of internet/IT subculture, I am practical enough to know that knocking out the cable and DSL providers by shutting them down or simply threatening the people with prison if they don't cooperate will be effective enough of a tactic to accomplish whatever the .gov wants.

If GWB got on TV on the morning of 9/11 and said "We're sorry America, but the Internet has temporarily been shut down on my orders to prevent it's use by the evil forces of Terror in the world. We will return internet service as soon as my advisors say it is safe to do so." Americans would have cheerfully given up their internepriveledges and probably even felt a little patriotic about it for a while. All they have to do is get on the phone and tell the ISP's and providers and say "This is a national security issue. You will cease operations immediately or you will be arrested. Your service will be shut down either way. Your company will be compensated at a market + 30% for the period you are offline. Thanks for your cooperation.

"

Put 98% of the people in the dark and you will accomplish your mission. The remaining 2% will only be able to talk to themselves, right? It's not like you being able to get on the internet is going to restore service for the people in your neighborhood who just want to play facebook and order shoes off of Ebay....

Actually if I could get on the net some way (and the methods are many), I could have my neighbors connected within minutes. I can run IP traffic over any type of interconnect you can think of. My first internet connection was a dialup for my entire home network using PPP over a dialup line.

This isn't a subculture thing. This is a technology thing. TCP/IP and internet technologies have so vastly improved communications that most people can't imagine what it was like before. Internet traffic can traverse dialup line, HAM radio, wireless, any kind of data line you can think of. A wire strung down the street can be used. If what you are talking about occurred, communications would start up again almost immediately. It might not be as convenient as now, but in the old days things weren't pretty either. You can even browse the web with a text screen. No graphics required.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:13:19 PM EDT

[#21]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and touchy-feely global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer on a global level (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.

I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

Even if I don't understand all the fine points of internet/IT subculture, I am practical enough to know that knocking out the cable and DSL providers by shutting them down or simply threatening the people with prison if they don't cooperate will be effective enough of a tactic to accomplish whatever the .gov wants.

If GWB got on TV on the morning of 9/11 and said "We're sorry America, but the Internet has temporarily been shut down on my orders to prevent it's use by the evil forces of Terror in the world. We will return internet service as soon as my advisors say it is safe to do so." Americans would have cheerfully given up their internepriveledges and probably even felt a little patriotic about it for a while. All they have to do is get on the phone and tell the ISP's and providers and say "This is a national security issue. You will cease operations immediately or you will be arrested. Your service will be shut down either way. Your company will be compensated at a market + 30% for the period you are offline. Thanks for your cooperation.

"

Put 98% of the people in the dark and you will accomplish your mission. The remaining 2% will only be able to talk to themselves, right? It's not like you being able to get on the internet is going to restore service for the people in your neighborhood who just want to play facebook and order shoes off of Ebay....

Actually if I could get on the net some way (and the methods are many), I could have my neighbors connected within minutes. I can run IP traffic over any type of interconnect you can think of. My first internet connection was a dialup for my entire home network using PPP over a dialup line.

This isn't a subculture thing. This is a technology thing. TCP/IP and internet technologies have so vastly improved communications that most people can't imagine what it was like before. Internet traffic can traverse dialup line, HAM radio, wireless, any kind of data line you can think of. A wire strung down the street can be used. If what you are talking about occurred, communications would start up again almost immediately. It might not be as convenient as now, but in the old days things weren't pretty either. You can even browse the web with a text screen. No graphics required.

Geez, maybe I'm not the only person alive that can remember what it was like waiting half an hour to get a photo of a bikini clad woman from some local guy's BBS.

pkshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I'm using the phone for the fucking computer, you can't make a call right now!

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:15:49 PM EDT

[#22]

Quoted:
What I'm getting at, is that in a rule of law country like ours, this just isn't feasible. Suppose the justice department tells AT&T to "shut it down" (they're not the only carrier, but that's besides the point). Well frankly, the answer they're going to give is "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on", and off to court they go. That's the reality. It drags out for years. All the while, industrious minds find workarounds.

In Egypt, they do nifty shit like threaten to shoot an engineer in the back of the head. It's a little different.

It's just not happening here. It would require foreign military action, something the internet is well equipped to handle, anyway.

QFT. I don't think a lot of you guys have any clue how many data centers and fiber optic lines are out there to make up the internet. That AT&T map is nothing, even at the time. Today? Just in my AO, which is pretty rural, there is so much connectivity it will make your head spin. Multiple ISP's that can deliver serious access through multiple access agreements with the top level folks, plus microwave lines, plus mobile, which alone is huge. Mobile carriers are buying huge ass million dollar routers from cisco as fast as they can make them. It's not for show, either.... And even then they can't keep up with demand.

Shut off the power? Please, nearly all of these facilities have back up generators, and you would effectively have to bring down the entire grid to shut them all down anyway. There's just too damn many of them.

Short of the zombie apocalypse, the internet isn't gonna just go down.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:15:51 PM EDT

[#23]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

So was the GPS constellation, yet here we are with an FAA Aircraft Advisory warning pilots of a localized southeast of the Florida Panhandle while they play with outages.

Really. Do you know anything about the Internet?

I know enough that on a practical level any government can come to a providers physical location and destroy equipment or cut off power. Repeat that all over their country and they will cripple the internet to where the free flow of information will end up being diluted due to the unreliable nature of person to person contact from the few who still have the ability to use the internet.

That's enough.

COs are bomb proof. You can run a locomotive into the buildings. No one is getting in if they are not allowed.

And if said government tried to do such a thing, they would be destroying their own communications at the same time.

This tinfoil talk is just that. Complete fantasy.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:15:57 PM EDT

[#24]

I understand the concept of dns servers. I am asking is there a program that will log each site I visit and save the ip address.

And, subnet I have no idea what you are talking about. I take it there isn't a way for non IT or computer guys to be prepared.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:18:32 PM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:

Quoted:
What I'm getting at, is that in a rule of law country like ours, this just isn't feasible. Suppose the justice department tells AT&T to "shut it down" (they're not the only carrier, but that's besides the point). Well frankly, the answer they're going to give is "Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on", and off to court they go. That's the reality. It drags out for years. All the while, industrious minds find workarounds.

In Egypt, they do nifty shit like threaten to shoot an engineer in the back of the head. It's a little different.

It's just not happening here. It would require foreign military action, something the internet is well equipped to handle, anyway.

QFT. I don't think a lot of you guys have any clue how many data centers and fiber optic lines are out there to make up the internet. That AT&T map is nothing, even at the time. Today? Just in my AO, which is pretty rural, there is so much connectivity it will make your head spin. Multiple ISP's that can deliver serious access through multiple access agreements with the top level folks, plus microwave lines, plus mobile, which alone is huge. Mobile carriers are buying huge ass million dollar routers from cisco as fast as they can make them. It's not for show, either.... And even then they can't keep up with demand.

Shut off the power? Please, nearly all of these facilities have back up generators, and you would effectively have to bring down the entire grid to shut them all down anyway. There's just too damn many of them.

Short of the zombie apocalypse, the internet isn't gonna just go down.

And think about the rollout of 4G wireless networks. That is even another layer of communications redundancy on top of everything else.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:19:50 PM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:

Quoted:

How many companies own the infrastrucuture here in the U.S. ? ? ?

Between cellular, satellite, and conventional broadband, too many for a 'government kill-switch' to work....

Most of the countries that CAN 'turn it off' are in that position because they have been dictatorships forever, and the government usually OWNS all telecommunications infrastructure.

it only takes an executive order to send a team to each company to turn it off.

By the time the courts get to it the revolution will be won or lost.

Not saying this will happen but I AM saying that if there ever is a fight there will be no internet for the resistance to communicate.

This is simply incorrect.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:20:48 PM EDT

[#27]

Quoted:
I understand the concept of dns servers. I am asking is there a program that will log each site I visit and save the ip address.

And, subnet I have no idea what you are talking about. I take it there isn't a way for non IT or computer guys to be prepared.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc958812.aspx

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:22:08 PM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:

Quoted:

No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and touchy-feely global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer on a global level (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.

I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

Even if I don't understand all the fine points of internet/IT subculture, I am practical enough to know that knocking out the cable and DSL providers by shutting them down or simply threatening the people with prison if they don't cooperate will be effective enough of a tactic to accomplish whatever the .gov wants.

If GWB got on TV on the morning of 9/11 and said "We're sorry America, but the Internet has temporarily been shut down on my orders to prevent it's use by the evil forces of Terror in the world. We will return internet service as soon as my advisors say it is safe to do so." Americans would have cheerfully given up their internet priveledges and probably even felt a little patriotic about it for a while. All they have to do is get on the phone and tell the ISP's and providers and say "This is a national security issue. You will cease operations immediately or you will be arrested. Your service will be shut down either way. Your company will be compensated at a market + 30% for the period you are offline. Thanks for your cooperation.

"

Put 98% of the people in the dark and you will accomplish your mission. The remaining 2% will only be able to talk to themselves, right? It's not like you being able to get on the internet is going to restore service for the people in your neighborhood who just want to play facebook and order shoes off of Ebay....

Those 2% are the ones that matter, and they'll be in contact with others that matter. The Internet (that's the crux of the question, yeah?) will still exist.

And again, in the United States, the government (believe it or not) has NO ability to "shut down the internet", temporarily or otherwise. If you believe they have the power to do that, then you'd have to believe they have the power to effectively cease all radio and wireless traffic by decree. Think about that really hard.

There's talk about giving the president a "switch" to cut internet communications off from the rest of the world. The thought of it has me laughing so hard, it becomes difficult to type. The level of idiocy and general retardation required to even suppose that such an idea is technically feasible, boggles the mind. I'm not kidding, it takes a special kind of "I don't have to give a fuck about facts, I was elected and therefore my thoughts are worthy of consideration" to even ponder something like this. This is worthy of lengthy debate on the short bus.

Ever heard a politician opine about high velocity clips? Stop and contemplate what you're thinking right now. Think about how retarded you have to be to adopt a phrase so nonsensical.

These are the same mouth breathers that you insist have the ability to control the Internet by decree - something they can't even define properly , when asked.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:26:03 PM EDT

[#29]

I had a customer call in back in the 90s and she was looking for an online service.

She couldn't remember the name of it but it was the biggest one around.
I asked if she was thinking of the Internet? Nope. Bigger. AOL? Nope. Are you sure it's not the Internet? Nope. Compuserve? That's it!!!!!

I feel old.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:27:30 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

You never answered my question about who ran the drops to wherever your servers were. I know that all three carriers did not come out and personally build out independent plant facilities to serve just your ISP. Oh, it may have said their names on the wires and their guys showed up, but 2 of those three sub-leased the lines from the other one. All your ISP represented was a little island on the internet. If someone cuts your trunk to the CO you are toast. Maybe you were extra fancy and went to two CO's. There is a 99.9% chance both those CO's were owned by the same carrier due to proximity. Every CO has connection facilities from/to other carriers. The one with the most physical plant is, at the end of the day, the big dog. And AT&T, worldwide, is the big dog.

Oh, and I never said they would do a DNS attack on the world. In fact, I said above that I strongly doubted they would. That, however, does not mean they are not capable.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:30:58 PM EDT

[#31]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

The internet was designed to be completely fault tolerant on purpose. You can't just shut it off. That goes completely against why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

So was the GPS constellation, yet here we are with an FAA Aircraft Advisory warning pilots of a localized southeast of the Florida Panhandle while they play with outages.

Really. Do you know anything about the Internet?

I know enough that on a practical level any government can come to a providers physical location and destroy equipment or cut off power. Repeat that all over their country and they will cripple the internet to where the free flow of information will end up being diluted due to the unreliable nature of person to person contact from the few who still have the ability to use the internet.

That's enough.

That would involve millions of locations, and would cause the a complete shutdown of all commercial and government activity. It could not be done simultaneously at all locations, which would mean that most people would know what's up. There would be resistance, and this would likely start an actual shooting war with government agents on both sides. There is not one, or twenty, switches to throw.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:32:14 PM EDT

[#32]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

You never answered my question about who ran the drops to wherever your servers were. I know that all three carriers did not come out and personally build out independent plant facilities to serve just your ISP. Oh, it may have said their names on the wires and their guys showed up, but 2 of those three sub-leased the lines from the other one. All your ISP represented was a little island on the internet. If someone cuts your trunk to the CO you are toast. Maybe you were extra fancy and went to two CO's. There is a 99.9% chance both those CO's were owned by the same carrier due to proximity. Every CO has connection facilities from/to other carriers. The one with the most physical plant is, at the end of the day, the big dog. And AT&T, worldwide, is the big dog.

Oh, and I never said they would do a DNS attack on the world. In fact, I said above that I strongly doubted they would. That, however, does not mean they are not capable.

Fiber from Qwest with SHARPS service. Fiber from a local CLEC. Internet service running multiple direction out of town.

Again, ATT is nothing in this part of the country. They provide zero local services. They are just another long distance carrier, along with dozens of others. But I repeat myself.

Any more questions?

Edit:

This guy took out all our competitors but not us. They were out for days. We picked up a ton of customers over this. I like how the paper called him an electrical engineering student. He was a freshman. This was 16 years ago. This was during a blizzard and the guy used a rescue saw to cut through the back wall of a stereo store. He made his getaway on a snowmobile. He caused a million dollars in damage for good tunes.

"Michael Damron

On Jan. 22, 1995, a lone vandal cut 19 underground telephone cables at five Fargo locations.

The sabotage disrupted service to more than 20,000 U S West customers in Fargo and northwestern Minnesota for several days. Damage was estimated at $1 million.

Fargo police traced the vandalism to Michael Damron, then a 31-year-old North Dakota State University electrical engineering student.

On Jan. 24, Damron fled Fargo after refusing to let police search his apartment.

A search later turned up the gas-powered saw Damron used to cut the lines - and a notebook listing plans for the sabotage, a map marked with the sites of the cut lines and a list of possible getaways, including "motorized hang glider, dirt bike, golf cart, scuba-diving equipment."

Damron remained at large for nearly two years before FBI agents caught him in Iowa. His bail was set at $1 million when he returned to Fargo.

Damron was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1997 after he pleaded guilty to cutting the phone lines and to possessing stolen electronic equipment. "

From: http://legacy.inforum.com/specials/century/jan3/week45.html

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:37:36 PM EDT

[#33]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

You never answered my question about who ran the drops to wherever your servers were. I know that all three carriers did not come out and personally build out independent plant facilities to serve just your ISP. Oh, it may have said their names on the wires and their guys showed up, but 2 of those three sub-leased the lines from the other one. All your ISP represented was a little island on the internet. If someone cuts your trunk to the CO you are toast. Maybe you were extra fancy and went to two CO's. There is a 99.9% chance both those CO's were owned by the same carrier due to proximity. Every CO has connection facilities from/to other carriers. The one with the most physical plant is, at the end of the day, the big dog. And AT&T, worldwide, is the big dog.

Oh, and I never said they would do a DNS attack on the world. In fact, I said above that I strongly doubted they would. That, however, does not mean they are not capable.

I'm not an ISP, and I have two different fiber connections, and a microwave link to the outside world. Plus some older connections that would give us at least one, and probably two additional links. Plus mobile. Nearly all of these hook into the tier one carriers in different ways. Like I said, you have no idea how much fiber is in the ground. 10 years ago, you were right, but today, it's a different story.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:40:17 PM EDT

[#34]

Quoted:

Quoted:
People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

dns is just a shortcut for humans. It's not needed for internet communications.

Edit: You can create a local host file on your PC with your commonly used hostname to IP mappings. Tah Dah!

So we have to go back to copying around /etc/hosts files like we used to before DNS became common? Talk about the bad old days.

No one has mentioned the biggest chokepoints. I'll give you a hint, they usually go over water.z

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:42:04 PM EDT

[#35]

Quoted:

I had a customer call in back in the 90s and she was looking for an online service.

She couldn't remember the name of it but it was the biggest one around.

I asked if she was thinking of the Internet? Nope. Bigger. AOL? Nope. Are you sure it's not the Internet? Nope. Compuserve? That's it!!!!!

I feel old.

I ran a WWIV board back in the day (for two years), and even had a working WWIVnet-FidoNet gateway. This was at a time when most politicians could hardly turn a computer on. I ran this between the ages of 14 and 16. While I might think highly of myself for doing some neat shit back in the day at a young age, I was FAR from an expert - even among people my age, if you can imagine that. Think about that. And think about this:

I laugh at these discussions. I really do. I'm not unique AT ALL - the knowledge I posses pales in comparison to tens of thousands of others. And (this is important), all of these people WILL re-establish communications (probably via IP, if I had to guess), without regard to government influence. You can't, by decree, make people "forget" what they know. The cat is out of the bag. The genie is out of the bottle.

The internet cannot be controlled by a government, corporation, or individual. It's impossible, much to the chagrin of power hungry jaggoffs who manage to get elected.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:42:58 PM EDT

[#36]

Quoted:

Quoted:
No, they can't

I don't believe that. If the Internet were designed by America to be a military asset, I have to think that we would not have allowed it to be freely and openly used by other nations-enemy nations at that-without having the ability to use and exploit it in a manner consistent with our policy objectives and national security needs.

Witness the Facebook/DARPA connection and the Google CEO with an office in the white house.

You don't understand. What you know as "The Internet" is technically nothing more than mutual cooperation and some agreed upon protocol standards, for the sake of expediency and touchy-feely global harmony. Absent coercive control of the physical layer on a global level (good luck) though violent force, a new global network can emerge out of (again) expediency.

I laugh my ass off, every time a politician attempts to assert some "control" over that which they can ill-define.

Even if I don't understand all the fine points of internet/IT subculture, I am practical enough to know that knocking out the cable and DSL providers by shutting them down or simply threatening the people with prison if they don't cooperate will be effective enough of a tactic to accomplish whatever the .gov wants.

If GWB got on TV on the morning of 9/11 and said "We're sorry America, but the Internet has temporarily been shut down on my orders to prevent it's use by the evil forces of Terror in the world. We will return internet service as soon as my advisors say it is safe to do so." Americans would have cheerfully given up their internet priveledges and probably even felt a little patriotic about it for a while. All they have to do is get on the phone and tell the ISP's and providers and say "This is a national security issue. You will cease operations immediately or you will be arrested. Your service will be shut down either way. Your company will be compensated at a market + 30% for the period you are offline. Thanks for your cooperation.

"

Put 98% of the people in the dark and you will accomplish your mission. The remaining 2% will only be able to talk to themselves, right? It's not like you being able to get on the internet is going to restore service for the people in your neighborhood who just want to play facebook and order shoes off of Ebay....

Those 2% are the ones that matter, and they'll be in contact with others that matter. The Internet (that's the crux of the question, yeah?) will still exist.

And again, in the United States, the government (believe it or not) has NO ability to "shut down the internet", temporarily or otherwise. If you believe they have the power to do that, then you'd have to believe they have the power to effectively cease all radio and wireless traffic by decree. Think about that really hard.

There's talk about giving the president a "switch" to cut internet communications off from the rest of the world. The thought of it has me laughing so hard, it becomes difficult to type. The level of idiocy and general retardation required to even suppose that such an idea is technically feasible, boggles the mind. I'm not kidding, it takes a special kind of "I don't have to give a fuck about facts, I was elected and therefore my thoughts are worthy of consideration" to even ponder something like this. This is worthy of lengthy debate on the short bus.

Ever heard a politician opine about high velocity clips? Stop and contemplate what you're thinking right now. Think about how retarded you have to be to adopt a phrase so nonsensical.

These are the same mouth breathers that you insist have the ability to control the Internet by decree - something they can't even define properly , when asked.

This just needs to be called out again, because that's the truth of 90% of big government plans. I've _personally_ seen what these big government plans actually end up being when it comes to technology, and it it wasn't my tax dollars paying for it, I'd laugh my ass off.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:43:16 PM EDT

[#37]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

You never answered my question about who ran the drops to wherever your servers were. I know that all three carriers did not come out and personally build out independent plant facilities to serve just your ISP. Oh, it may have said their names on the wires and their guys showed up, but 2 of those three sub-leased the lines from the other one. All your ISP represented was a little island on the internet. If someone cuts your trunk to the CO you are toast. Maybe you were extra fancy and went to two CO's. There is a 99.9% chance both those CO's were owned by the same carrier due to proximity. Every CO has connection facilities from/to other carriers. The one with the most physical plant is, at the end of the day, the big dog. And AT&T, worldwide, is the big dog.

Oh, and I never said they would do a DNS attack on the world. In fact, I said above that I strongly doubted they would. That, however, does not mean they are not capable.

Fiber from Qwest with SHARPS service. Fiber from a local CLEC. Internet service running multiple direction out of town.

Again, ATT is nothing in this part of the country. They provide zero local services. They are just another long distance carrier, along with dozens of others. But I repeat myself.

Any more questions?

AT&T has 26,378,000 consumer switch lines.

http://localization.att.com/loc/controller?cdvn=landinglocalization&pid=1080<ype=res&prod-snip=res_homephone_services

ETA: They may not be something there, but they are in large percentages of the US.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:44:42 PM EDT

[#38]

Quoted:

Quoted:
People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

dns is just a shortcut for humans. It's not needed for internet communications.

Edit: You can create a local host file on your PC with your commonly used hostname to IP mappings. Tah Dah!

So we have to go back to copying around /etc/hosts files like we used to before DNS became common? Talk about the bad old days.

No one has mentioned the biggest chokepoints. I'll give you a hint, they usually go over water.z

If someone took out all the dns servers (very very hard to do), yup. But getting root servers up again would be pretty easy. There are dozens of root dns servers spread across the world. And local dns servers cache the entries for sites people have recently visited. It just takes a parameter change to allow those entries to live in the local dns server for a longer period of time.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:47:34 PM EDT

[#39]

Quoted:

Quoted:
I had a customer call in back in the 90s and she was looking for an online service.

She couldn't remember the name of it but it was the biggest one around.
I asked if she was thinking of the Internet? Nope. Bigger. AOL? Nope. Are you sure it's not the Internet? Nope. Compuserve? That's it!!!!!

I feel old.

I ran a WWIV board back in the day (for two years), and even had a working WWIVnet-FidoNet gateway. This was at a time when most politicians could hardly turn a computer on. I ran this between the ages of 14 and 16. While I might think highly of myself for doing some neat shit back in the day at a young age, I was FAR from an expert - even among people my age, if you can imagine that. Think about that. And think about this:

I laugh at these discussions. I really do. I'm not unique AT ALL - the knowledge I posses pales in comparison to tens of thousands of others. And (this is important), all of these people WILL re-establish communications (probably via IP, if I had to guess), without regard to government influence. You can't, by decree, make people "forget" what they know. The cat is out of the bag. The genie is out of the bottle.

The internet cannot be controlled by a government, corporation, or individual. It's impossible, much to the chagrin of power hungry jaggoffs who manage to get elected.

I was big into BBSing in the mid to late 80s. Ran a little RBBS system too, but spent most of my time dialed up to my friends. He had 16 phone lines. Holy Crap did he have a big setup for the time...

With UUCP and a dialup you can do some amazing things.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:50:21 PM EDT

[#40]

Quoted:

Quoted:
People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

dns is just a shortcut for humans. It's not needed for internet communications.

Edit: You can create a local host file on your PC with your commonly used hostname to IP mappings. Tah Dah!

So we have to go back to copying around /etc/hosts files like we used to before DNS became common? Talk about the bad old days.

No one has mentioned the biggest chokepoints. I'll give you a hint, they usually go over water.z

Fine, we'll send it via non-US sat.

Jam or destroy those? Fine, bitches, I'll dig out a 56k modem and make a telephone call to a dial up server in Nigeria. It'd suck, but communication is communication.

Cut off international telephone lines too? Well, what in the name of Master Cheif is going on? I might have more pressing matters than the internet to deal with. Sounds like fo time.

TR85.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:50:59 PM EDT

[#41]

Quoted:

Quoted:

People here are bragging about how they will still be able to be connected and communicate if the public internet/dns servers were shut down. Can anyone of you more knowledgeable guys help us prepare? Is there a program I can get that will save the IP of dns servers I visit? Is there anything you can tell us to help us be able to still communicate if things were shut down like in egypt?

dns is just a shortcut for humans. It's not needed for internet communications.

Edit: You can create a local host file on your PC with your commonly used hostname to IP mappings. Tah Dah!

So we have to go back to copying around /etc/hosts files like we used to before DNS became common? Talk about the bad old days.

No one has mentioned the biggest chokepoints. I'll give you a hint, they usually go over water.z

If someone took out all the dns servers (very very hard to do), yup. But getting root servers up again would be pretty easy. There are dozens of root dns servers spread across the world. And local dns servers cache the entries for sites people have recently visited. It just takes a parameter change to allow those entries to live in the local dns server for a longer period of time.

Exactly. Think a massive international takeover of name servers is imminent? Awesome. The TTL on an A record is now 68 years, bitch.

Try again.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:52:38 PM EDT

[#42]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

You never answered my question about who ran the drops to wherever your servers were. I know that all three carriers did not come out and personally build out independent plant facilities to serve just your ISP. Oh, it may have said their names on the wires and their guys showed up, but 2 of those three sub-leased the lines from the other one. All your ISP represented was a little island on the internet. If someone cuts your trunk to the CO you are toast. Maybe you were extra fancy and went to two CO's. There is a 99.9% chance both those CO's were owned by the same carrier due to proximity. Every CO has connection facilities from/to other carriers. The one with the most physical plant is, at the end of the day, the big dog. And AT&T, worldwide, is the big dog.

Oh, and I never said they would do a DNS attack on the world. In fact, I said above that I strongly doubted they would. That, however, does not mean they are not capable.

Fiber from Qwest with SHARPS service. Fiber from a local CLEC. Internet service running multiple direction out of town.

Again, ATT is nothing in this part of the country. They provide zero local services. They are just another long distance carrier, along with dozens of others. But I repeat myself.

Any more questions?

Edit:

This guy took out all our competitors but not us. They were out for days. We picked up a ton of customers over this. I like how the paper called him an electrical engineering student. He was a freshman. This was 16 years ago. This was during a blizzard and the guy used a rescue saw to cut through the back wall of a stereo store. He made his getaway on a snowmobile. He caused a million dollars in damage for good tunes.

"Michael Damron

On Jan. 22, 1995, a lone vandal cut 19 underground telephone cables at five Fargo locations.

The sabotage disrupted service to more than 20,000 U S West customers in Fargo and northwestern Minnesota for several days. Damage was estimated at $1 million.

Fargo police traced the vandalism to Michael Damron, then a 31-year-old North Dakota State University electrical engineering student.

On Jan. 24, Damron fled Fargo after refusing to let police search his apartment.

A search later turned up the gas-powered saw Damron used to cut the lines - and a notebook listing plans for the sabotage, a map marked with the sites of the cut lines and a list of possible getaways, including "motorized hang glider, dirt bike, golf cart, scuba-diving equipment."

Damron remained at large for nearly two years before FBI agents caught him in Iowa. His bail was set at $1 million when he returned to Fargo.

Damron was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1997 after he pleaded guilty to cutting the phone lines and to possessing stolen electronic equipment. "

From: http://legacy.inforum.com/specials/century/jan3/week45.html

I agree AT&T does not have much local service in North Dakota. Of course, most the rest of the country doesn't probably doesn't ride the internet to Fargo get their news from around the world. Those are the places (New York, LA, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Beijing, Mexico City, St. Louis, Tokyo, etc but not Fargo) that AT&T does have a huge presence (since they can make a lot more money there).

I would also be impressed if your CLEC actually owned the plant that went to your facility since the only reason they existed at all was because the FCC forced the big carriers to sub-lease out their facilities for chump change and then the CLEC would use the big carriers wires and undercut their prices (that were regulated and could not be lowered). I imagine you just got lucky when the guy cut those cables.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:54:24 PM EDT

[#43]

Oh, and while we're at it, we're developing a protocol replacement for DNS to thwart you. It's not like it's the first time.

These politicians don't understand. The genie is out of the bottle. Global data communication is, and will always be available.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:56:31 PM EDT

[#44]

BGP table poisoning.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:58:32 PM EDT

[#45]

Quoted:

BGP table poisoning.

Only works temporarily.

Posted: 1/28/2011 11:58:39 PM EDT

[#46]

Quoted:

Quoted:
You guys are all assuming that AT&T would have to physically turn stuff off. They could probably route through the traffic they want and send the rest of it to /dev/null. The internet is a gigantic collection of interconnected smaller networks. The key would be to isolate as many of those networks as possible. It would effectively make the thing people call the internet pretty useless in a hurry. Oh, a few out there that actually knows something about layers 3-6 of the OSI model might be creative, but who are you going to talk to? You would probably need to download some software to help with the routing and transmission protocols, but that might not be accessible. Everyone needs to download those protocols and put them in their BOB in case they have to hack the network. Would AT&T do this? I doubt it. If someone held a gun to the CEO's head he might order it, but I doubt it would happen in a huge way. Could the military do it? It would take them a long time and they would have to destroy key infrastructure because they just don't have enough people to finesse it.

So the short answer(s) would be - could AT&T really bend the internet over - yes. Would they - no.

I shut down the link to my ATT interconnect and let my traffic run over the 2 or 3 other tier 1 carriers I am connected to.

ATT who?

You do understand that the big carries all use each others networks and it would still cause disruptions, right? Who is your primary carrier coming out of your facility? AT&T? If so, you've just been owned. If not, you can get to your carrier's net and everything on that net that is completely and wholly served by it. My guess is that wouldn't be as impressive as you might hope.

The other thing to consider is that if AT&T or one of the other carriers actively participated they could easily launch a denial of service attack on the world. It would probably be easier than shutting everything down.

When I owned an ISP I had three tier 1 carrier interconnects. This was back in the 90s. ATT, Sprint and MCI. We could run on just one interconnect.

DDOS attacks are easy to block from an ISP standpoint. Done it many times.

ATT is just one player of dozens. Nothing special about them at all.

Edit: If ATT actively participated, they would be sued into bankruptcy and would lose every customer. That is just idiotic.

You never answered my question about who ran the drops to wherever your servers were. I know that all three carriers did not come out and personally build out independent plant facilities to serve just your ISP. Oh, it may have said their names on the wires and their guys showed up, but 2 of those three sub-leased the lines from the other one. All your ISP represented was a little island on the internet. If someone cuts your trunk to the CO you are toast. Maybe you were extra fancy and went to two CO's. There is a 99.9% chance both those CO's were owned by the same carrier due to proximity. Every CO has connection facilities from/to other carriers. The one with the most physical plant is, at the end of the day, the big dog. And AT&T, worldwide, is the big dog.

Oh, and I never said they would do a DNS attack on the world. In fact, I said above that I strongly doubted they would. That, however, does not mean they are not capable.

Fiber from Qwest with SHARPS service. Fiber from a local CLEC. Internet service running multiple direction out of town.

Again, ATT is nothing in this part of the country. They provide zero local services. They are just another long distance carrier, along with dozens of others. But I repeat myself.

Any more questions?

Edit:

This guy took out all our competitors but not us. They were out for days. We picked up a ton of customers over this. I like how the paper called him an electrical engineering student. He was a freshman. This was 16 years ago. This was during a blizzard and the guy used a rescue saw to cut through the back wall of a stereo store. He made his getaway on a snowmobile. He caused a million dollars in damage for good tunes.

"Michael Damron

On Jan. 22, 1995, a lone vandal cut 19 underground telephone cables at five Fargo locations.

The sabotage disrupted service to more than 20,000 U S West customers in Fargo and northwestern Minnesota for several days. Damage was estimated at $1 million.

Fargo police traced the vandalism to Michael Damron, then a 31-year-old North Dakota State University electrical engineering student.

On Jan. 24, Damron fled Fargo after refusing to let police search his apartment.

A search later turned up the gas-powered saw Damron used to cut the lines - and a notebook listing plans for the sabotage, a map marked with the sites of the cut lines and a list of possible getaways, including "motorized hang glider, dirt bike, golf cart, scuba-diving equipment."

Damron remained at large for nearly two years before FBI agents caught him in Iowa. His bail was set at $1 million when he returned to Fargo.

Damron was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1997 after he pleaded guilty to cutting the phone lines and to possessing stolen electronic equipment. "

From: http://legacy.inforum.com/specials/century/jan3/week45.html

I agree AT&T does not have much local service in North Dakota. Of course, most the rest of the country doesn't probably doesn't ride the internet to Fargo get their news from around the world. Those are the places (New York, LA, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, London, Beijing, Mexico City, St. Louis, Tokyo, etc but not Fargo) that AT&T does have a huge presence (since they can make a lot more money there).

I would also be impressed if your CLEC actually owned the plant that went to your facility since the only reason they existed at all was because the FCC forced the big carriers to sub-lease out their facilities for chump change and then the CLEC would use the big carriers wires and undercut their prices (that were regulated and could not be lowered). I imagine you just got lucky when the guy cut those cables.

The CLEC had it's own fiber in the ground. And the reason we stayed up was not due to luck. It was due to a redundant overbuilt infrastructure I designed to withstand just such a disaster. Verizon is larger than ATT is now. And for every city you listed, there are a dozen competitors for ATT.

Posted: 1/29/2011 12:00:21 AM EDT

[#47]

Quoted:
BGP table poisoning.

I filter you. You are then isolated. And then I call your upstreams and get your interconnects permanently removed.

Posted: 1/29/2011 12:03:59 AM EDT

[#48]

Quoted:

Quoted:
BGP table poisoning.

I filter you. You are then isolated. And then I call your upstreams and get your interconnects permanently removed.

So you're going to filter the government when it does this?

Posted: 1/29/2011 12:06:05 AM EDT

[#49]

Quoted:

Quoted:
BGP table poisoning.

I filter you. You are then isolated. And then I call your upstreams and get your interconnects permanently removed.

So you're going to filter the government when it does this?

Sure will. The government is not the internet, and has no part in the ownership or operation of it. Then there is that whole 1st amendment thingy.

Posted: 1/29/2011 12:07:52 AM EDT

[#50]

Quoted:

Quoted:
BGP table poisoning.

Only works temporarily.

But can be kept up indefinitely by those adequately prepared and properly equipped.

Manage to kill more than a few backbone nodes and the resulting traffic snarl will make what little of the internet nigh unusable anyway. I would see this as the immediate kill-switch used if the us.gov was crazy enough to try to implement a takedown. Would it be perfect? No. Would it fuck things up long enough to for them to send people to physically disconnect stuff? Yes.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Could ATT turn off the internet here in the U.S. ? ? ? (Page 3 of 6)

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