Internet2 Taken Out by Stray Cigarette

AlHunt writes "A fire started by a homeless man knocked out service between Boston and New York on the experimental Internet2 network Tuesday night. Authorities say the fire, which also disrupted service on the Red Line subway, started around 8:20 p.m. when a homeless man tossed a lit cigarette. The cigarette landed on a mattress, which ignited and led to a two-alarm fire."

obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Obligatory firewall joke here, please...

Hmmm.

[CannonballHead]

I wonder if there will be a new Internet protocol for protection against malicious smoking hackers.

Woa

[Anonymous Coward]

What a great DoS attack. Forget the terrorists, watch out for accidents. That's a level 4 from Symantec.

Firewall

[Dude163299]

Guess they forgot to install the firewall.

Homeless?

[bulliver]

It wasn't a homeless guy, it was a torch job paid for by Internet 1.

Level3?

[BigDuke6_swe]

Internet2, level3? What's level3?
"Level 3 Communications cables used by the network went up in flames"
"Level 3 engineers estimate it could take one to two days to restore the circuit"

Taken out by a level 1 homeless person?

In other news

[Baricom]

In other news, witnesses reported a spontaneous cheer coming from the corporate headquarters of the Recording Industry Association of America.

This is why we need tougher safety standards...

[Mish]

Obviously the newly imposed mattress fire safety rules [consumeraffairs.com] just aren't working!

We Must act Now!

[scenestar]

Clearly the homeless are not only unsightfull to look at, they also pose a direct threat to homeland security by sabotaging our infrastructure.

It seems clear that we must *eradicate* the homeless.

(don't mod this a troll straight away)

Re:Level3?

[Anonymous Coward]

He obviously rolled a 20 on his attack roll.

Smokey says...

[Genocaust]

Only YOU can prevent Internet fires!

Re: obligatory

[spyder-implee]

Forget hardhack, this is hobohack!

O How the mighty have fallen.

[ShagratTheTitleless]

From the article: "The homeless man, whom authorities identified as one Kevin Rose, was apparently despondent after the recent shutdown of his tech news aggregation site. Witnesses reported seeing him staring into the flames and rocking slowly while mumbling a series of letters and numbers."

Re:Hmmm.

[deftcoder]

Is IPv6 flame-retardant?

Re:obligatory

[maxwell demon]

It actually was a successful test of the ultimate firewall. It prohibited all malicious hacking on Internet2.

In other news...

[Monsterdog]

...US Government brought down by chili farts. Pictures at eleven.

Re:so the fire starter didn't have a home?

[Detritus]

We also eat lost tourists. Throw another Aussie on the barbie, Billy-Ray! The young'uns is hungry!

smoke kills

[dunkelfalke]

smoke kills [antimult.ru]

Re:We Must act Now!

[Glowing Fish]

I heard they have hammers.

Internet and Internet Killers have this in common:

[Glowing Fish]

What are cigarettes, after all?

They are tubes, a series of tubes...

Re:Homeless?

[Hanners1979]

Or, more likely, the RIAA and/or MPAA. ;)

Re:If a cigerrette can

[Anonymous Coward]

take out the internet... what hope do we stand against nukes?

No need for anything that elaborate, terrorists will just send a DMCA notice to ATDN/AT&T/GX/LVL3/Verizon/NTT/Qwest/SAVVIS/Sprint informing them that their core routers are caching the IPv6 address 09F9:1102:9D74:E35B:D841:56C5:6356:88C0 inside the routing tables.

Re:reliability?

[Half a dent]

It is still safe this was just a lucky strike.

Re:If a cigerrette can

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens because the internet is designed to deal with nukes.

This is common misunderstanding, so you have nothing to be ashamed of. Internet and Internet2 were first built for fast porn delivery, later military got interested and started using it for reliable porn delivery under nuclear attack.

Re:O How the mighty have fallen.

[fuse2k]

"He just just kept saying '09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0' over and over"

Old Slashdot poll

[dj245]

I am reminded of This [slashdot.org]

I remember voting backhoe.

Re:so the fire starter didn't have a home?

[dhalgren]

Anyone who's been beaten by an Aussie after complaining about the steak can confirm both points.

Torben

Re:If a cigerrette can

[ronanbear]

You fool! The entire online porn industry is just a way to fund the NSA. What better way to ensure they have enough bandwidth and ability to shift lots of data than to control a huge chuck of it. When the time comes the porn will be the first thing they switch off to keep their access. This way they have a network backup operational and ready to operate at the flick of a switch.

[/tinfoilhat]

Re:We Must act Now!

[0rionx]

I was going to mod this comment -1 Unsightfull but for some reason I couldn't find that option...

Firehose

[Chiisu]

No wonder Slashdot developed Firehose....

Re:Fuckin' hobos.

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Nightmare scenario ... they merge by some obscure genetic process (involving a spider bite or something like that) to form a backhoebo.

Re:Geek priorities...

[Anonymous Coward]

~ <-- joke

* <-- your head

Re:G0d@|\/|N smokers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Call the cops, someone is smoking a cigarette. Someone else may or may not have to smell cigarette smoke, oh no! They may or may not throw their filter on the ground, oh no! You do know that Hitler was a rabid anti-smoker too, don't you?

Re:obligatory

[CmdrGravy]

I worked somewhere once which had one main comms link and then a backup comms link if the first one went down. They had bought each one from a different carrier to be on the safe side only they hadn't realised one carrier was simlpy leasing space on the other carriers link, the exact same link their main one ran over.

Re:G0d@|\/|N smokers!

[neglige]

Both Miller's Bar and Redcoat Tavern do have non-smoking sections

Smoke doesn't know how to stay in the smoking section...

Re:G0d@|\/|N smokers!

[pestario]

"A smoking section in a restaurant is like a peeing section in a swimming pool."

Re:Geek priorities...

[noidentity]

~ <-- joke
* <-- your head

If the Internet2 had't been down, we wouldn't have had to settle for this low-bandwidth ASCII illustration.