What percentage of the Internet Traffic is junk?

Wed May 5 22:26:10 UTC 2004


> I'm not sure that I'd agree with this statement.  What
> about the traffic from compromised sources?  The pps
> floods or spam emails are not being created with the
> knowledge of the source, so it would be hard to say
> that the source "wanted" to send it.

	Exactly. A great example is a web server struggling to continue to accept
connections in the face of a spoofed SYN flood. The SYN/ACK packets are
junk.

	The definition of "junk" is that the sender would not have wanted to send
it or the receiver would not have wanted to receive it if either had had a
chance to have the appropriate human or humans investiage the transaction in
full detail.

	Traffic you are duped into sending by traffic you wish you hadn't received
or cannot distinguish from legitimate traffic is junk.