Did Freepers witness a test takedown of the Internet in preparation for War?

Self | 02/18/03 | acnielsen

[acnielsen guy]

At 4:15am EST a strange thing happened on the Internet. Two Freepers were posting pictures and communicating with each other, one in Spain and the other in Florida. Suddenly all logos and pictures filed to appear on the separate sites although the text did. Up to that time the refresh time was two to three seconds. A single server going down or a photographic site disabled is common and would not be a cause for concern. But when servers in two different countries are affected at precisely the same time with only graphics involved then we have a very unusual phenomenon.

Checking sites in different countries produced the same results, text showed immediately but logos and pictures were blank. In about six minutes everything was back to normal.

1. Server failures or takedowns last longer than six minutes and do not come back up in synchronization.

2. All hosting sites do not fail at the same time.

3. Servers in different countries do not have the same unusual problem at the same time.

My conclusion is that this could only have been an engineered failure.

America and Britain run the Internet, for them to practice a takedown without anyone being aware of it could be accomplished in just the manner that it happened at 4:15am this morning.

A picture failing to show is a very common failure because of the host site being serviced; ones own server having a glitch it could be caused by an overload or for many other reasons. No one would even give it a minute’s thought. People working in isolation would not realize that anything strange was happening. In all my time on the Internet I have never known all logos to disappear on all sites and yet the text still show. That failure is itself a rare anomaly. I understand that all graphics are on separate directories and accessed independently, so a block could easily be placed on them. The success of the block would be a sufficient test of a takedown of the entire Internet.

Why would anyone do it? The answer, in my view is simple, to save the Iraqi oil wells. It does not take a genius to think you can fire 8OO rockets and then take over wells rigged with explosives. They must be taken over before anyone knows the war has started. The take over must be accomplished quickly and everywhere at the same time without warning, all communication must be cut, both in the country and around the world. Satellites and the Internet have to be temporarily silenced.

Does that make sense of the strange happening at 4:15am this morning?

[acnielsen guy]

I glad it is not taken seriouly otherwise it would be pulled and then where would you guys have fun.

[Unassuaged]

Speaking as a cube dweller at a large ISP, I can tell you that most all backbone work is scheduled during a config window of 12-6 am depending on the time zone, ect. Also did you traceroute to the offending sites? maybe there was a single point of failure, i.e. a down peer.

[Joe Hadenuf]

That's what happens when you reach the end of the internet.

[SpaceBar]

The Internet Traffic Report does not report anything unusual.

[babaloo999]

http://zapatopi.net/afdb.html

[americanbychoice]

That's impossible you darn liar!!!!!!!!!
Socks only disappear one at a time. If two disappeared at the same time it MUST be a Government conspiracy.

[Petronski]

Go back to conspiracy school and dream up a better one!

You talkin' to me?

[Mad Dawgg]

"Did the socks match, or one each of two pairs"

It was one each of two pairs!

Further, in order to comply with the full disclosure policy now in effect I report that four Sam Adams and half a liter of Vodka mysteriously disappeared from the kitchen yesterday during the level 3 snow emergency.

After repeated questioning of me by Mrs. Dawgg I have not been able to shed any new info on this matter.

The only other fact (which may or may not have bearing on this incident) I can relate is I woke up this morning with a severe case of cotton mouth and a slight headache.

My theory is either Aliens or Hillary Clinton are involved.

Developing...

[Doomonyou]

You Dog!

[katana]

That would have been at 9:15 AM GMT in London, 10:15 AM in Frankfurt, and 6:15 PM in Tokyo. If this had been worldwide six minute shutdown of the internet it would have attracted one helluva lot of attention in most of the major trade and financial centers around the world.

[McGruff]

Mine's bigger than yours!

[Quilla]

This is such a FRunny thread. LOL!

[Mad Dawgg]

"What color were they??????"

One green one purple and both were my daughters. So it could be some weird Sock fetish by some pedophile.

Does anyone know where Michael Jackson was this morning?

[acnielsen guy]

There were not offending sites - I only checked sites in four countries, but with the same result the same - quite a backbone we have there. It must circle the globe.

[VRWCmember]

You might need these:

+

Soon, you and all your friends can look like this:
or
or

[mikegi]

My guess: most html files are small (except MS FrontPage generated htm's ... but that's a separate issue) while bitmaps are large files. The internet was probably tossing packets and that caused the large files to fail to load.

[acnielsen guy]

It was not a shutdown of the Internet, it was a block of all graphics for a six minute period which would not attract any attention in the counting houses of the world.

[Doomonyou]

Mine's bigger than yours!

Yours came first!

[Mad Dawgg]

"The internet was probably tossing packets and that caused the large files to fail to load."

Yeah? Well then how do you explain the socks?

[acnielsen guy]

All files small and large, logos even FR´s logos did not show on two computers 3000 miles apart.