[LINK] Attack On Internet Called Largest Ever

[Howard Lowndes]

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002, Roger Clarke wrote:

> I've just yesterday finished a set of slides for a presentation on
> Friday on Internet Governance (trying to convince lawyers to learn
> enough about the Internet before they start discussing how to
> strangle it with laws):
>      Internet Architecture and Operation:
>          'Supra-National' Rather Than 'International' Governance
>      http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/IGCLPC02.html
> (Constructively negative comments much appreciated, as always)
>
> The thought struck me during this and other recent discussions re DNS
> that the volume of traffic at the root servers would generally be
> very low.  That would be because the relatively small number of
> domains for which the root servers are (equal) authoritative
> name-servers are pretty stable, and hence the entries are cached all
> over the place, and hence there don't need to be many enquiries to
> them.  They're effectively the reboot-mechanism of last resort.

I don't think this is true.  My understanding (and I would like to be
corrected if this is wrong) is that if a local DNS server is either not
authoratitive for a domain, or does not have the requested address already
cached, then its next place of recourse is directly to a root server and
then steadily back down the chain.

I originally thought that the process was steadily up the chain to a given
point and then back down, but I was corrected on this only the other day.

If my current assumption _is_ correct then the root servers will be
getting a fair pasting and a DDoS would have severe impact.

Please, someone, correct me if I am wrong.

>
> If that analysis is correct (and I certainly don't vouch for it!),
> then, if the DDoS attack was intended to be nasty, it was
> poorly-targetted.
>
> If, on the other hand, the attack was intended to send a fairly
> harmless but highly symbolic warning-signal to the world that
> Internet infrastructure is fragile, then it was extremely
> *well*-targetted.
>
>

-- 
Howard.
LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people
Contact detail at http://www.lannetlinux.com
"Flatter government, not fatter government." - me
 Get rid of the Australian states.
------------------------------------------
If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?


----------
For Link list information see http://sunsite.anu.edu.au/link/