Which had more impact on the net?

George William Herbert gherbert at retro.com
Thu Sep 27 23:05:25 UTC 2001



Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> committed:
>Which had more impact on the the net?
>   1. Destruction in New York City Sept 11 and following days
>   2. Nimda virus/worm on Sept Sept 18 and following days
>   3. Multiple fiber cuts on Sept 26

My home business was down for hours from side effects of 1,
most of a day from side effects of 2, and didn't notice 3.

Current backbone engineers I talk to on a regular basis fall
about 50:50 into similar experience and having also taken
a hit Sept 26 AM when Backhoe Roundup began.

Speaking of which, this *has* been an interesting 2+a bit
week period; reflecting on the various effects sounds like
a good NANOG paper.

>The Nimda, Code Red I/II, and other worms had a more difuse
>impact.  Their effects show up with a ramping period, peaking
>after a few hours and then slowly declining over several days.
>Their impact is extremely long lived.  It mostly affects the
>edges of the network.

I'd disagree somewhat there.  I think it mostly affects things
the further from "backbones" that you get; a lot of ISPs took
severe hits across their entire network depending on the manner
in which IP space is allocated across their networks interacting
with the attack patterns of Nimda.  That doesn't map well to at
least some usage of "edge", but I think I get your point...


-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com




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