Vulnerbilities of Interconnection

Mon Sep 16 17:41:56 UTC 2002

I had really hoped Bill, or someone who knew Bill and this talk could give
more input on it. I found a vague summary of the whole talk:
http://www.tcsa.org/lisa2001/cnn.txt

> > The internet sucked as a means of getting information on 9/11. I spent
> > about 20 minutes hitting every news site I could think of, and they had
> > all tanked. I set an away msg on IM:
> > "Internet news sucks, I'm going to watch CNN."

> 3. This type of situation doesn't lend itself well to typing in the news

To answer the comment I've got off list, I was looking for images at the
least of what was going on. These were not small (middle-of-nowhere)
cities. Text on IRC or Usenet were not giving me the visual I was looking
for, and pages like slashdot were vague to begin with.

> > William said they changed a lot of the way they do things at the company
> > that hosts CNN.com since 9/11. I don't believe they were the only ones.
>
> Can you name a few examples of the things they changed?

>From the link above:

Aftermath
- volatility worse than ever before
- automate swing process ([it was] on todo list for a year)
- faster page reduction
- network redesign
- increased WAN bandwidth (if the servers could have handled the load,
  the WAN link would have been saturated)
- Standing phone bridge reservation
- review crisis procedures

Gerald