5% of net unreachable

DailyRotation ^ | Dec 26, 2001

[John Jorsett]

There's a headline over on DailyRotation of a SlashDot story entitled "5% of the Net is Unreachable". Unfortunately, SlashDot appears to be part of that 5% so I can't read the story. I've noticed that Google is unreachable, as well as a number of other sites. Does anyone have details of what's going on?

[SGCOS]

Annual cleaning. Happens every year around this time.

[Billy_bob_bob]

Those sites are working fine for me.

[synarch]

I am reaching Google just fine; 3 p.m. EST.

[tbeatty]

I can't reach Yahoo from the Cox@Home network but I can reach it from my work proxy. The routes are completely different and one works, the other doesn't. Don't know why though.

[John Jorsett]

Can you reach your work proxy from home? If so, that's quite bizarre, since it's supposed to take a complete net split for something to become completely unreachable.

[Leroy S. Mort]

It's linked (rather poorly at Slashdot) to a BBC article which follows:

Expedition to the lost net

The global reach of the net is one of its greatest charms.

But there are some parts of the net that no-one can reach, parts that are cut off from even the most dedicated net user either by accident or design.

A study of these lost sites by US researchers has investigated the extent of the "dark net" and just what causes a net address to fall off the map.

The study found that up to 5% of the net - potentially 100 million hosts - are completely unreachable.

Return to sender

The internet works because all the computers on it have an individual address.

Routers, devices that shuffle data around the net, know where to send data because they maintain lists of these addresses.

But occasionally some of these addresses disappear and researchers at Arbor Networks have spent three years finding out why.

The researchers found that the number of sites an individual surfer can see depends on their starting point.

Contractual wrangles between net service providers can mean that customers of the rowing firms are cut off from portions of the web that the rival firm gives access to.

The infrastructure is increasingly unwieldy and vulnerable

Craig Labovitz, Arbor Networks

More often though, the researchers found that net sites are cut off because of wrongly-configured routers or malicious hackers and computer vandals abusing loopholes in net software.

The study reveals that all parts of the net are not equally connected to every other part. By contrast some networks inadvertently act as gatekeepers for sections of the net that lie beyond them.

Hijacked routers

In their study, the three researchers, Craig Labovitz, Abha Ahuja and Michael Bailey, reported that many of the lost net sites flare into life briefly when being used to send spam (unsolicited commercial e-mail messages) or to launch attacks on other parts of the web.

The Computer Emergency Response Team, which monitors security problems online, has already issued a warning about malicious hackers hijacking routers to use as a launch pad for attacks.

The specifications that govern the way routers co-ordinate to ensure the net keeps running are unfortunately susceptible to subversion by those who are determined enough.

Routers can be made to pose as particular net addresses and be used to launch barrages of data at other target sites.

"The sheer quantity of routing information, coupled with the lack of security both in routers and the routing protocol itself create an infrastructure that is increasingly unwieldy and vulnerable," said Craig Labovitz, lead researcher on the Arbor Network study.

Other parts of the internet, mainly sites used by the US military, are lost because they use old addresses that no router references anymore.

[Prodigal Son]

I got google from Scotland. I notice they've decorated their logo with holiday lights.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I used Google less than 5 minutes ago. No problem detected.

[tbeatty]

It's VPN. The gateway I use to get into work is a physically and logically different than I use for the Internet proxy. We have leased lines for the company backbone so it's very undertandable that the proxy that I use for work can access sites that I can't from my ISP.

[John Jorsett]

Aha. They're referring to the "dark net". Not exactly a new story, and not what I was expecting. I thought it meant that a portion of the net had gotten cut off. I'm still not able to get at Google or SlashDot from this Cox@Home account. Think I'll give it a try via my dialup. Maybe it's an @Home thing.

[John Jorsett]

Annual cleaning. Happens every year around this time.

No doubt instigated by people who dunk their floppies in soapy water when told to put their data on a clean disk.

[germanshepherd]

I can't reach Yahoo from the Cox@Home network but I can reach it from my work proxy. The routes are completely different and one works, the other doesn't. Don't know why though.

Could have something to do with the bankruptcy problem of Cox's high speed carrier and their current re-do of the whole thing?

I can't reach google either. It says it cannot find that site.

Also wouldn't bring up Rush's site just now.

[Redcloak]

Maybe it's the 5% who insist upon running their sites off of old Commodore 64s.

[bulldog905]

%5 of the internet unreachable?

Try a liberal site like Democratic Underground.

They are pretty well 100% unreachable there.

[newzjunkey]

FR was unreachable earlier from IE. Netscape was fine. IE also consistantly fails on FTP transfers which Netscape always handles cleanly and quickly.

[TankerKC]

FR was unreachable earlier from IE. Netscape was fine.

You know, I read these kind of comments here often. Given the same Internet connection, should the browser you choose really make the difference on which sites you can or cannot hit?

[Leroy S. Mort]

Have had more problems with Netscape than with IE 6. (I use both). Perhaps you need to upgrade to the latest version.

[ravingnutter]

Click here for the remaining 5%

Real answer: It can depend on what browser you are using or sometimes it depends on the your ISP's server. I could not access our company's online benefits enrollment until I used Netscape instead of my default browser. Every now and then I have to log off my account and then log back on so I don't get error messages such as "Website is down or experiencing difficulties".

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

5% of net unreachable

Hopefully, Clinton's web site is among them....

Ed Thompson 2002