North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Flash crowds and DOS on POTS

  • From: Iljitsch van Beijnum
  • Date: Mon May 17 04:35:46 2004 
On 17-mei-04, at 4:53, Sean Donelan wrote:


All networks are vulnerable to Denial of Service attacks and flash
crowds.  Broadcasting & Cable investigates the problems with the
telephone and SMS voting with the Fox television show American
Idol.
This is _very_ old news. Something like this happened in Holland ages ago, and it was even named the "Henny Huisman effect" after the show's host.

The phone network is very fragile. Just about anything unusual causes massive congestion. For instance, the 9/11 problems in New York disrupted long distance service throughout the entire US and even international service in some unrelated parts of the world. But even more mundane problems such as last summer's power outage have similar effects.

The difference is when people get a "busy" signal on the phone
network, they don't think phone network is collapsing.
If they knew the difference between a busy signal and a congestion signal they probably would...

BTW, what do you think happens when everyone starts running the water tap at the same time?