On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Jeff Aitken <jaitken@aitken.com> wrote:
What's to be surprised about?
This isn't the rhetoric of a super power, more like one of a university campus. To think these guys have built a cyber command with war waging capabilities, and allegedly capable of building nuclear worms such as Stuxnet. It strikes me straight away as amateurish to be blocking web sites in able to have enough bandwidth for operational purposes. You would think their war fighting networks, weren't the same ones used for civilian-based web sites on the public internet. It seems there is a conflict here between what they push out to the media as to what their cyber capabilities are, and what the realities are on the ground. In that respect, yes I'm very surprised. --- Andrew
Andrew, I am not sure I understand your statement (below). The ONE-NET network is what I have worked on in the past while in the Navy Reserve http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0OBA/is_1_23/ai_n15390013/ http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Multimax-Awarded-74-Million-in-Optio... The military has a bunch of sub systems that can integrate with crypto devices. In any event, military end users need classified and unclassified networks for their desktops and I am guessing the article is talking about military unclassified networks which provides internet access. -- Joe On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 9:14 AM, andrew.wallace <andrew.wallace@rocketmail.com> wrote:
You would think their war fighting networks, weren't the same ones used for civilian-based web sites on the public internet. It seems there is a conflict here between what they push out to the media as to what their cyber capabilities are, and what the realities are on the ground. In that respect, yes I'm very surprised. --- Andrew
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 09:14:13AM -0700, andrew.wallace wrote:
This isn't the rhetoric of a super power, more like one of a university campus. [...] It strikes me straight away as amateurish to be blocking web sites in able to have enough bandwidth for operational purposes.
On the contrary, it's entirely plausible that US forces assisting with the recovery are (1) using more communications resources than normal, and (2) relying on infrastructure that's operating in a degraded state due to fiber or power issues. If so, it's entirely reasonable to put limits on bandwidth-hungry but non-essential applications as a precautionary measure. Here's an excerpt from http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110314_9111.php?oref=topnews: Military units operating in Japan face bandwidth shortages and network limitations that inhibit communications and command and control, Defense sources told Nextgov. Misawa Air Base, located on the northeast tip of Honshu, warned its personnel on a blog post Friday that the Defense Switched Network, which handles voice calls, was in backup mode and had only limited capacity, a fact confirmed by a Pentagon source Monday. The blog post added, "We have a number of connectivity issues. Internet has been up and down due to our connections through other places in Japan. For example, Yokota [Air Base] and several other locations are having issues because we all have power and connectivity issues right now." The Pentagon also took the extraordinary step of blocking access to a range of commercial websites to ensure that its networks have enough bandwidth to support mission-essential communications, Nextgov learned. This move, a military source told Nextgov, possibly indicates one or more undersea cables used by military networks were damaged by the earthquake. --Jeff
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Jeff Aitken <jaitken@aitken.com> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 09:14:13AM -0700, andrew.wallace wrote:
This isn't the rhetoric of a super power, more like one of a university campus. [...] It strikes me straight away as amateurish to be blocking web sites in able to have enough bandwidth for operational purposes.
On the contrary, it's entirely plausible that US forces assisting with the recovery are (1) using more communications resources than normal, and (2) relying on infrastructure that's operating in a degraded state due to fiber or power issues. If so, it's entirely reasonable to put limits on bandwidth-hungry but non-essential applications as a precautionary measure.
Here's an excerpt from http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110314_9111.php?oref=topnews:
Military units operating in Japan face bandwidth shortages and network limitations that inhibit communications and command and control, Defense sources told Nextgov. Misawa Air Base, located on the northeast tip of Honshu, warned its personnel on a blog post Friday that the Defense Switched Network, which handles voice calls, was in backup mode and had only limited capacity, a fact confirmed by a Pentagon source Monday.
The blog post added, "We have a number of connectivity issues. Internet has been up and down due to our connections through other places in Japan. For example, Yokota [Air Base] and several other locations are having issues because we all have power and connectivity issues right now."
The Pentagon also took the extraordinary step of blocking access to a range of commercial websites to ensure that its networks have enough bandwidth to support mission-essential communications, Nextgov learned. This move, a military source told Nextgov, possibly indicates one or more undersea cables used by military networks were damaged by the earthquake.
--Jeff
Here's the problem with the logic of blocking all of the most popular sites; they tried this from time to time in Afghanistan on the NIPRnet. Whenever someone was unable to get to YouTube, Facebook, etc. they, still bored and/or wasting time, simply went to some other web site which also wasted equally as much bandwidth. -- Jeffrey Lyon, Leadership Team jeffrey.lyon@blacklotus.net | http://www.blacklotus.net Black Lotus Communications - AS32421 First and Leading in DDoS Protection Solutions
On 3/16/2011 12:14 PM, andrew.wallace wrote:
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 12:58 PM, Jeff Aitken<jaitken@aitken.com> wrote:
What's to be surprised about? This isn't the rhetoric of a super power, more like one of a university campus. To think these guys have built a cyber command with war waging capabilities, and allegedly capable of building nuclear worms such as Stuxnet. It strikes me straight away as amateurish to be blocking web sites in able to have enough bandwidth for operational purposes. You would think their war fighting networks, weren't the same ones used for civilian-based web sites on the public internet. It seems there is a conflict here between what they push out to the media as to what their cyber capabilities are, and what the realities are on the ground. In that respect, yes I'm very surprised. --- Andrew
As a former Military Member I can tell you we don't have unlimited amounts of bandwidth...especially overseas. There's been several undersea cables damaged or completely knocked offline. I don't find this policy very surprising due to the disaster in Japan.
On Mar 16, 2011, at 4:22 PM, William Warren wrote:
As a former Military Member I can tell you we don't have unlimited amounts of bandwidth...especially overseas. There's been several undersea cables damaged or completely knocked offline. I don't find this policy very surprising due to the disaster in Japan.
Could this also be part of a "communications blackout" ? No, not in a sinister, government keeping secrets, manner. A friend of mine serves on a ship that's over there right now. He dropped me a note last night that they were going into a communications blackout to try and control some of the wild miscommunication being sent out. It seems reasonable enough if only to prevent widespread panic from someone "close" to the situation saying something incorrect. --------------------------- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold xenophage@godshell.com --------------------------- "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." - Niven's Inverse of Clarke's Third Law
Wasn't this announced on the news already? That because the infrastructure in Japan was hit (no highly publicized) but still working, that the US military also said they were blocking u-tube and other high bandwidth sites in order to conserve resources? I am definitely not one to be outside of hearing about a conspiracy theory or something, but I know up in our neck of the woods in the NorthWest of NorthWest Washington State, that this is just common sense to do. On Mar 17, 2011, at 6:57 PM, Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold wrote:
On Mar 16, 2011, at 4:22 PM, William Warren wrote:
As a former Military Member I can tell you we don't have unlimited amounts of bandwidth...especially overseas. There's been several undersea cables damaged or completely knocked offline. I don't find this policy very surprising due to the disaster in Japan.
Could this also be part of a "communications blackout" ? No, not in a sinister, government keeping secrets, manner. A friend of mine serves on a ship that's over there right now. He dropped me a note last night that they were going into a communications blackout to try and control some of the wild miscommunication being sent out.
It seems reasonable enough if only to prevent widespread panic from someone "close" to the situation saying something incorrect.
--------------------------- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold xenophage@godshell.com --------------------------- "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." - Niven's Inverse of Clarke's Third Law
On Mar 18, 2011, at 12:33 AM, Michael DeMan wrote:
Wasn't this announced on the news already?
Yup, I learned more about it later after I saw this on Nanog.
I am definitely not one to be outside of hearing about a conspiracy theory or something, but I know up in our neck of the woods in the NorthWest of NorthWest Washington State, that this is just common sense to do.
Wasn't trying to pass anything off as a conspiracy theory, just passing on info I was given by someone on-site. --------------------------- Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold xenophage@godshell.com --------------------------- "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." - Niven's Inverse of Clarke's Third Law
On Mar 17, 2011, at 6:57 PM, Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold wrote:
Could this also be part of a "communications blackout" ? No, not in a sinister, government keeping secrets, manner. A friend of mine serves on a ship that's over there right now. He dropped me a note last night that they were going into a communications blackout to try and control some of the wild miscommunication being sent out.
That's fairly common with naval operations. They go into a blackout when there is some probability of a PR or intelligence fumble, usually related to an upcoming mission assignment.
participants (8)
-
andrew.wallace -
Fred Baker -
Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold -
Jeff Aitken -
Jeffrey Lyon -
JoeSox -
Michael DeMan -
William Warren