BT strike could affect internet and phone connections
Internet and phone connections across Britain could go into meltdown as BT workers threaten their first national strike for 23 years... ‘Many business and residential phonelines could go out of action, and if broadband crashes then thousands and thousands of people will find their internet goes down.’ http://www.metro.co.uk/news/828021-threat-of-bt-strike-could-affect-internet... -- Andrew http://sites.google.com/site/n3td3v/
Internet and phone connections across Britain could go into meltdown as BT workers threaten their first national strike for 23 years...
‘Many business and residential phonelines could go out of action, and if broadband crashes then thousands and thousands of people will find their internet goes down.’
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/828021-threat-of-bt-strike-could-affect-internet...
I get a lovely vision from that of a real old-style manual switchboard operator, frantically plugging internet connections together with patch cords as each SYN packet rings a little bell. Clearly BT engineers being on strike will stop broken things from being fixed[0]. I'm very unclear how it will cause things that are working today to suddenly "go into meltdown"... Regards, Tim. [0] As a residential customer, it's arguable how much of a change this is.
On 5/27/2010 10:48, Tim Franklin wrote:
Internet and phone connections across Britain could go into meltdown as BT workers threaten their first national strike for 23 years...
‘Many business and residential phonelines could go out of action, and if broadband crashes then thousands and thousands of people will find their internet goes down.’
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/828021-threat-of-bt-strike-could-affect-internet...
I get a lovely vision from that of a real old-style manual switchboard operator, frantically plugging internet connections together with patch cords as each SYN packet rings a little bell.
Clearly BT engineers being on strike will stop broken things from being fixed[0]. I'm very unclear how it will cause things that are working today to suddenly "go into meltdown"...
In between the cord board and today, then the switchmen or repeatermen went on strike, they pulled down all the patch cords and make-busy plugs to put all the broken equipment back into service. For the first few hours all we did was reshoot troubles that should have been repaired long before but were "too hard". One of the engineers discovered that a lot of stuff in the Master Test Frame was broken, mis-wired, etc, with lots of workarounds in use. We made it all right, including ensuring that the workarounds wouldn't work any more. (Since we left the place with nothing broken, we figured the "managers" would have enough time to train and enforce procedures before customers noticed. Much.)
[0] As a residential customer, it's arguable how much of a change this is.
One small step will take out our residential telephone, TV cable, and Internet Access in one swell foop. [I wonder if we had a dry run last night....everything (including the provider's telephone when called from a cell phone) were out for about a 1/2 hour last evening. Eggs and baskets.] -- Somebody should have said: A democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Freedom under a constitutional republic is a well armed lamb contesting the vote. Requiescas in pace o email Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Eppure si rinfresca ICBM Targeting Information: http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml
On 27/05/2010 16:48, Tim Franklin wrote:
I get a lovely vision from that of a real old-style manual switchboard operator, frantically plugging internet connections together with patch cords as each SYN packet rings a little bell. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgqEIp2YmtE
Poggs
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org> wrote:
Internet and phone connections across Britain could go into meltdown as BT workers threaten their first national strike for 23 years...
‘Many business and residential phonelines could go out of action, and if broadband crashes then thousands and thousands of people will find their internet goes down.’
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/828021-threat-of-bt-strike-could-affect-internet...
I get a lovely vision from that of a real old-style manual switchboard operator, frantically plugging internet connections together with patch cords as each SYN packet rings a little bell.
Clearly BT engineers being on strike will stop broken things from being fixed[0]. I'm very unclear how it will cause things that are working today to suddenly "go into meltdown"...
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years? -- Andrew http://sites.google.com/site/n3td3v/
On Thu, 27 May 2010 10:42:37 PDT, "andrew.wallace" said:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
A co-worker of mine was asked by somebody high in the US government in late 1999 if he was worried about attackers trying to pull something on New Year's. Randy thought for a moment, and said "Hell no. There's going to be 3 zillion engineers and programmers watching for any minor hiccup that day. The time to pull something would be late January, when everybody's relaxed and stopped worrying". The room got very quiet... :)
On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 7:23 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Thu, 27 May 2010 10:42:37 PDT, "andrew.wallace" said:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
A co-worker of mine was asked by somebody high in the US government in late 1999 if he was worried about attackers trying to pull something on New Year's. Randy thought for a moment, and said "Hell no. There's going to be 3 zillion engineers and programmers watching for any minor hiccup that day. The time to pull something would be late January, when everybody's relaxed and stopped worrying".
The room got very quiet... :)
Are you *still* using the same threat models as you were 11 years ago? -- Andrew http://sites.google.com/site/n3td3v/
On Thu, 27 May 2010 12:57:42 PDT, "andrew.wallace" said:
Are you *still* using the same threat models as you were 11 years ago?
No, it's just in the late 90's our threat models and protocols were already advanced to where everybody else is just getting to now. You won't be able to comprehend our *current* threat models till 2021 or so. ;)
On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 1:17 AM, joel jaeggli <joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
On 2010-05-27 10:42, andrew.wallace wrote:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
Not to put to fine a point on it, a normal working day is the best time to strike if you want to maximize the value of your attack.
The point I'm getting at is this strike of this nature is a threat to national security and the internet is supposed to be classed as critical infrastructure, so shouldn't it be against the law for them to strike? Or has the law in the UK not got as far as the United States has on deeming what's critical infrastructure yet? We are far behind the United States and its about time we played catch-up. -- Andrew http://sites.google.com/site/n3td3v/
-----Original Message----- From: andrew.wallace [mailto:andrew.wallace@rocketmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 5:58 PM To: joelja@bogus.com Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: BT strike could affect internet and phone connections
On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 1:17 AM, joel jaeggli <joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
On 2010-05-27 10:42, andrew.wallace wrote:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
Not to put to fine a point on it, a normal working day is the best time to strike if you want to maximize the value of your attack.
The point I'm getting at is this strike of this nature is a threat to national security and the internet is supposed to be classed as critical infrastructure, so shouldn't it be against the law for them to strike?
Sounds to me like the best defense the UK could implement would be fostering competition with BT. BT goes on strike, customers move elsewhere, life goes on.
On 2010-05-27 17:57, andrew.wallace wrote:
On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 1:17 AM, joel jaeggli<joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
On 2010-05-27 10:42, andrew.wallace wrote:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
Not to put to fine a point on it, a normal working day is the best time to strike if you want to maximize the value of your attack.
The point I'm getting at is this strike of this nature is a threat to national security and the internet is supposed to be classed as critical infrastructure, so shouldn't it be against the law for them to strike?
The phone system has been critical infrastructure for 120 years...
Or has the law in the UK not got as far as the United States has on deeming what's critical infrastructure yet?
We are far behind the United States and its about time we played catch-up.
I don't think a CWA strike has been declared illegal in recent history...
-- Andrew
On May 28, 2010, at 4:10 36AM, joel jaeggli wrote:
On 2010-05-27 17:57, andrew.wallace wrote:
On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 1:17 AM, joel jaeggli<joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
On 2010-05-27 10:42, andrew.wallace wrote:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
Not to put to fine a point on it, a normal working day is the best time to strike if you want to maximize the value of your attack.
The point I'm getting at is this strike of this nature is a threat to national security and the internet is supposed to be classed as critical infrastructure, so shouldn't it be against the law for them to strike?
The phone system has been critical infrastructure for 120 years...
Or has the law in the UK not got as far as the United States has on deeming what's critical infrastructure yet?
We are far behind the United States and its about time we played catch-up.
I don't think a CWA strike has been declared illegal in recent history...
In general, strikes by telco, power company employees, etc., are legal in the US. Under certain circumstances involving the national interest, the president can order workers back to their jobs for 80 days, after which they're free to walk out again. The only people who can never strikes are public employees. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
On Fri, 28 May 2010, Steven Bellovin wrote:
The only people who can never strikes are public employees.
I know we've left the realm of NANOG, but come again? Oakland teacher strike of 2010. various teacher strikes in the Chicago area over the years air traffic controllers in 1981 postal workers in 1978 1968 Memphis garbagemen 1974 Baltimore police strike 1969 Cicero, Illinois police strike 1919 Boston police strike 1980 Chicago firefighters strike sam
On May 28, 2010, at 12:06 56PM, Sam Hayes Merritt, III wrote:
On Fri, 28 May 2010, Steven Bellovin wrote:
The only people who can never strikes are public employees.
I know we've left the realm of NANOG, but come again?
I should have added the word "legally", and then for most jurisdictions.
Oakland teacher strike of 2010. various teacher strikes in the Chicago area over the years air traffic controllers in 1981 postal workers in 1978 1968 Memphis garbagemen 1974 Baltimore police strike 1969 Cicero, Illinois police strike 1919 Boston police strike 1980 Chicago firefighters strike
sam
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
On 2010-05-27 10:42, andrew.wallace wrote:
Look at it from an attackers point of view. If you're thinking about carrying out an electronic jihad of some kind when is the best time? A normal working day or during an engineers strike that only happens once every 23 years?
Not to put to fine a point on it, a normal working day is the best time to strike if you want to maximize the value of your attack.
-- Andrew
On Thu, 27 May 2010 15:48:09 +0000 (GMT) Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org> wrote:
Clearly BT engineers being on strike will stop broken things from being fixed[0]. I'm very unclear how it will cause things that are working today to suddenly "go into meltdown"...
Quite, and.. it's not unheard-of for reliability of services to actually improve when no-one's mucking about with them! d.
On 5/27/2010 14:16, David Reader wrote:
On Thu, 27 May 2010 15:48:09 +0000 (GMT) Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org> wrote:
Clearly BT engineers being on strike will stop broken things from being fixed[0]. I'm very unclear how it will cause things that are working today to suddenly "go into meltdown"...
Quite, and.. it's not unheard-of for reliability of services to actually improve when no-one's mucking about with them!
however during a strike, the strikers will be destroying their companies network. Think about a firebomb down a man hole and no one to fix it, bullet holes through switch gear and the like. Unions fight dirty. -- Bryan Fields 727-409-1194 - Voice 727-214-2508 - Fax http://bryanfields.net
On 27 May 2010, at 16:48, Tim Franklin <tim@pelican.org> wrote:
Internet and phone connections across Britain could go into meltdown as BT workers threaten their first national strike for 23 years... I get a lovely vision from that of a real old-style manual switchboard operator, frantically plugging internet connections together with patch cords as each SYN packet rings a little bell.
So off-topic it hurts, but... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgqEIp2YmtE Andy
participants (12)
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andrew.wallace -
Andy Davidson -
Bryan Fields -
David Reader -
George Bonser -
joel jaeggli -
Larry Sheldon -
Peter Hicks -
Sam Hayes Merritt, III -
Steven Bellovin -
Tim Franklin -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu