Re: Which had more impact on the net?

[cowie () renesys com]

Actually, my vote goes for #2 .. in terms of sheer number of 
prefixes whose routes were affected (obviously a question of 
how you define "impact..")   Take a look at the following:  

      http://www.renesys.com/projects/bgp_instability

These pages contain some unsettling analysis of the effects 
of Microsoft worms like Code Red II and Nimda on global BGP 
routing instability.  They've been significantly extended  
since last week, and we *strongly* invite the NANOG community 
to send us supporting data (or even anecdotes, let's be 
generous) from the propagation periods. 

We were shocked to see how little sustained global effect 
on routing stability there was from power outages, train 
wrecks, backhoe fade, and the like.  In terms of generating 
sustained routing noise and affecting (at least transiently)
large numbers of prefixes, the worms win hands down. 

--jim (cowie () renesys com)



> At 01:47 AM 9/27/2001 -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  >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
>
> I vote for #3, if you are considering a purely technological / routing 
> Point Of View, which is the point of this mailing list.  Affecting the 
> backbones hurts everyone, everywhere, trying to do anything on the 
> 'Net.  The other are two localized (either in type or location) to matter 
> overall.
>
> NIMDA did not affect e-mail, chat, IM, et cetera (pretty much), and did not 
> even affect most web servers enough to matter to end users.  News web sites 
> being down did not affect anything other than the news web sites being 
> down.  And the destruction of a couple COs within a few city blocks (*and* 
> a few city blocks :-{ ) is not - from a purely technological / routing 
> standpoint - that big a deal.
>
> OTOH, #1 has a much more lasting impact.  From increased traffic on web 
> sites for years to come if this drags out, to the affect on "disaster 
> planning", to the impact many of us who help run the Internet feel (I know 
> I do), September 11th will have a much more profound impact on the 'Net 
> than fiber cuts, especially in the long term
>
> But then, even if not one fiber was cut, not one website saw increased 
> traffic, and not one colo was damaged on September 11th, it would still 
> have a more of an impact than the other two in a lot of ways which are hard 
> to measure at the command line of a cisco or Juniper.
>
> --
> TTFN,
> patrick