Quote:
Originally Posted by whitecrow
Steve, my site goes down once in a while too, and server downtime was my first thought. Especially with the rapid growth of this site.
But ALL the alternative sites at once? And ONLY them? Every single server, but none of the mainstream ones?
I think the community took a hit last night. Since it took place in the middle of the night (morning in Europe though) I'm guessing it was aimed at hosts. Since the sites are back up, maybe it was a warning shot.
Something strange happened on the Internet last night, folks.
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Actually there are several possibilities, and just because you're pranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
For next time, you might jot down a few IP numbers to further check things out. For instance if Google won't come up, try going to 64.233.167.99 and see if that brings it up.
I also noticed that one very contrarian financial sit I read went down last nite. and was down for most of the evening. It is up again this morning, with no post from it's author, which means it's possible he never even knew it was down.
Now, if a site is down by name, but comes up bty IP address, it means the Internet is working just fine, it's the DNS servers that are kaput. To backfill a bit,
1. what DNS servers do is mintain the database of domain names (google, etc) to IP numbers.
2. info travels in packets. When a packet is received poorly, incompletely, etc, a signal is given to re-send it.
3. DNS servers have their own set of communication protocols, re. their own business. they even have their own "re-send data" signals.
Ok, one thing I watched happen one night about 3 years back, was basically the Chinese testing ways to bring down the internet using a weakness in the DNS signals. In this case theyd picked the PacBell (now AT&T) servers as their target. I say it was the chinese, because, being lucky enough to have seen it begine, theoriginal machine starting all this was located in China. I't might have been spoofed, or hijacked, but they are known for doing this kind of thing.
They used a weakness in the DNS re-send signal; that being there was no packet number to re-send.
The best pictureI can think of is this:
Imagine a park bench where seated are two very hard of hearing, kinda senile old men. A third one sits down, and after a few seconds he opens a conversation by saying to a another, "What was that? I didn't hear you, what did you say?"
Naturally the one he's speaking to has no clue and so he says, "What was that? I didn't hear you, what did you say?" Pretty soon, what you have is three old gentlemen busily jabbering away to each other, saying, "
What was that? I didn't hear you, what did you say?"
In fact, they're so busy doing this that they don't hear, or have time for what anyone else might ask or say to them.
Diabolical, isn't it?
I watched this begin in california, about 1 AM, 3 years ago. Pretty soon I found that I could not reach ANY website in my favorites. Next thing I tried was connecting to a few sites via IP numbers from my firewall logs. sure enough! The web was all there, working like charm. You just couldn't reach anything by name.
This lasted until bout 6 AM before it was fixed. Now, if AT&T knows, our Feddle Gummint knows, so if they want to take some sites down, without raising too much fuss, that'd be one good way.