On March 13, 2010 at 10:53 ck@sandcastl.es (ck) wrote:
i believe in keeping host names as short as possible, so to start, i
At BU we brought down about 1/3 of the internet (no joke!) around 1985 when our very first host table entries to SRI-NIC contained single letter hosts (like a.bu.edu) and names starting with a digit (I remember 3b.bu.edu) which put the HOSTS table to /etc/hosts converter into an infinite loop filling up BSD root disks which back then would invariably hang/crash the OS (No space in /tmp No space in /tmp No space in /tmp No space in /tmp....) I think there's a write-up by me in an old RISKS digest from the time and it was quite a flap on the TCP-IP list ("BU Joins The Internet!") Completely inadvertent but it was probably as disruptive, relatively, as the Morris worm. -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*