02-01-2008, 11:30 AM | #1 |
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How to bring a country to its knees
As some of you may have read, there were two trans-oceanic data cables cut earlier this week. As luck would have it, both cables (FLAG and SEA-ME-WE 4) are the cables that provide the data traffic to this part of the world.
That means that we have had virtually no terrestrial internet and long distance access since late Tuesday night / early Wed morning (and why I've been silent since Tuesday...you did notice, right?). No big deal, right? Ah, think again Kimosabee. Business has come to a virtual standstill and many folks are panicking as they tell us it could be 12 to 15 days before they fix both breaks. So, in a totally off-topic post, I thought I would ask how would YOU communicate if you didn't have readily available internet or long-distance phone communications? (in case you are wondering, unlimited data connections on a Blackberry are wonderful in a time like this) Steven |
02-01-2008, 12:11 PM | #2 |
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Steven,
When Nora and I were in India, and we didn't have any readily accessible internet, or even television for the better part of our stay there (I know this is NOTHING like an entire region being disconnected), we were initially fine with it because, well, we had things to do, people to see, and were preoccupied. When the newness of the place wore off, we were getting antsy. Quite honestly, it truly surprised us how addicted / dependent we felt to the internet. There is this visceral feeling of being totally helpless... Maybe that's just 'cause we're geeks. -Sal
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02-01-2008, 12:52 PM | #3 |
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How to bring a country to its knees
"Kick it in the balls"
Jonathan
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02-01-2008, 02:07 PM | #4 |
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Communicating isn't really a problem here. I'm an amateur radio operator, so I regularly talk all over the world without the use of phones or computer links. That's actually one of the things we prepare for, and in a disaster, it's usually the hams that set up the initial communications.
Jim (VE6JKV)
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02-01-2008, 02:11 PM | #5 |
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I would just say by means of a blackberry! That is how I would communicate. Now a blackout, that would be horrible. That would cause no internet, phone, and on top of it all, your Blackberry or cell phone will not be able to be charged! I remember the New York to Detroit blackout. I was not living in Detroit at the time, but was visiting my dad. It took 14 days for the area my dad was in to get power back. For two weeks we were stuck in a living he!! Just be thankful, Steven, it was not a blackout!
Jeremy Ryan |
02-01-2008, 02:12 PM | #6 |
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02-01-2008, 03:06 PM | #7 |
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For a while I went better than the Blackberry. I could "see" that there was limited bandwidth and that they had blocked five of the six ports coming into my house, the sixth open but with virtually no access to anything.
So, I did a little sniffing back towards the IDF using the "closed" ports and was able to route myself out through a couple of working ports in the IDF. Had to do a little spoofing and I did clone one MAC address but hey, they weren't devices that were sending packets so I figured no blood, no foul. For a good while I had access, that is until I tried to get cute last night and add a router to my configuration so I could NAT multiple devices behind it. Well, that spelled the end of that access 'cause they shut it down real quick. I'm still working on it and have some connectivity out through the IDF / PoP but they seem to be trying everything 'cause I'm seeing DHCP servers changing almost hourly and since lease time is 2 hours I have to be quick to keep from getting kicked off. Never fear, I'll get access, even if it is through my BB. Steven |
02-01-2008, 03:37 PM | #8 |
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Heh, I was wondering why we stopped getting so much spam.
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02-01-2008, 03:50 PM | #9 |
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Hmmm, that is a very good point. We aren't getting any, about 12 an hour when we normally average that many a minute. Need to look in to that.
On another point, found another open hole. However, all speeds aren't equal: HTTP: ~8KBps Slingbox: ~14KBps FTP: ~23KBps P2P: ~98.5KBps Even stranger: Exchange to Outlook, no problem PoP3 to Outlook, nothing, nada I can understand slightly slower HTTP (most servers I'm hitting are in US) but 11 to 12 times slower? Sure, normal route to US (less congested) is via Europe but same could be said for P2P P2P is rocking though, which makes me wonder what type of redirection they are using. It's getting late but now is the best time to dig around. Steven |
02-01-2008, 09:57 PM | #10 | |
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Quote:
FTP and HTTP both use TCP but FTP has less overhead than HTTP. I don't know enough about Exchange to comment on why it works but POP doesn't. My first guess is that POP ports are blocked to reduce traffic and Exchange probably uses some proprietary protocol that does it's best to find a path around.
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