> The first widely known case of NTP server problems began in May 2003, when NETGEAR's hardware products flooded the University of Wisconsin–Madison's NTP server with requests.[5] University personnel initially assumed this was a malicious distributed denial of service attack and took actions to block the flood at their network border. Rather than abating (as most DDOS attacks do) the flow increased, reaching 250,000 packets-per-second (150 megabits per second) by June. Subsequent investigation revealed that four models of NETGEAR routers were the source of the problem. It was found that the SNTP (Simple NTP) client in the routers has two serious flaws. First, it relies on a single NTP server (at the University of Wisconsin–Madison) whose IP address was hard-coded in the firmware. Second, it polls the server at one second intervals until it receives a response. A total of 707,147 products with the faulty client were produced.
> NETGEAR has released firmware updates for the affected products (DG814, HR314, MR814 and RP614) which query NETGEAR's own servers, poll only once every ten minutes, and give up after five failures. While this update fixes the flaws in the original SNTP client, it does not solve the larger problem. Most consumers will never update their router's firmware, particularly if the device seems to be operating properly. The University of Wisconsin–Madison NTP server continues to receive high levels of traffic from NETGEAR routers, with occasional floods of up to 100,000 packets-per-second. NETGEAR has donated $375,000 to the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Division of Information Technology for their help in identifying the flaw.
This happens in my country every New Years Eve with the telephone/cell networks. Communication networks are in general designed for a certain base capacity and foreseen spikes withing certain limits.
Imagine all the people in your near proximity wanting to use their phones at the same time...
Another example is the 'hug of death' small (unprepared) web sites suffer when exposed to legit traffic due to being mentioned in HN, Reddit, etc.
It also happens within the electrical grid here in the UK when popular TV shows and major sporting events finish and everyone flicks their kettle on. Sometimes the demand can be so huge we have to borrow power from France to cover it
"Grid employees must also be familiar with popular soap-opera storylines as one might cause a sudden rise in demand"
It's a denial of service (DoS) caused by multiple clients from different origins (D), is it not? No one means to disrupt the service by visiting it but the combined weight of all clients still leads to just that.
Agreed. And willingness to learn is more important than any current skill you have. Bet on your future skills, not your current shortcomings. Don't think "can I do this?" but "can I learn this?".
What do you mean by "ended up sticking with the monetary payments on my DO referral account" -- are you still receiving monetary payouts from DO? Truth to be told, I've got a hefty amount already, and twice as hefty still pending to be paid. If there's a chance to cash that money out, I'd definitely take it, but it doesn't seem like it from where I'm sitting.
Other than that, good suggestions, I'll have to take a closer look / think about it. Thanks!
I was on cash payments since they introduced the referral program. There's an button to switch over but (like /r/thebutton) I haven't clicked it. Not entirely sure if they will force me over to credits in the future. It's been a really good program for me thus far, as has the Linode referral program.
Project idea: a platform to pair people with hosting credits with people that are in need of hosting.
A bit sad/cheeky story from me, but still relevant I believe. The time was around TBC, I think right in the middle of its launch, I managed to hack an account back then of some characters, and thought I'd log-in to have a good time. It was my first experience of the game, granted I never did destroy any characters or items, since it was my first time playing the game, but I did spend a reasonable amount of time in-game -- killing mobs, checking out gear of other people, seeing the chat activity, even the character activity in the World (haha, wow, such a rush of feelings), only a few months later when I got my own account to play with, did I realize what this game is and how magnificent it is -- I'm so, so lucky to have had the pleasure of playing during the original TBC when the game was booming with players and such pleasurable soul, one of the best times of playing any video game in my life, hands down.
You can't replicate those experiences, because for the most part -- it was the people who were passionate about the game, that made it what it was.
I'm sure we all have some stories like this, but I did fucking love this game with my whole heart. From a creative Mage to a passionate Druid.
I think there's a lot of us that get misty-eyed on TBC. There was a lot of opportunity for just funnin' around. I was surprised Halaa wasn't shown in the article; I consider it some of the best landscape and I had a lot of fun there. It was the sort of game where you'd say in Org chat that you were putting on a fireworks show in Halaa, and people would switch to characters in the other faction to keep the Halaa battle ballanced. (And it was nice they were there: my bank alt toon was very low level.)
Of course they are just work emails, the content of those emails might not be, but at the bottom all these emails come from the corporate system that workers to this corporation were assigned, so once again -- these are only work emails.
Meh, this whole thread is loaded with so much bullshit and different opinions, it's one big ego/personality trip if you put in bigger perspective. Definitely some good points, but mostly back and forth arguments.
