How long will it take to download the entire internet?

[Jace]

http://www.wtfmedia.com/temp/downloadwww.gif

[MaskTVMaura]

Hilarious... and probably true! LOL

[tony404]

I was listening to npr a couple of days ago and they had said hackers tried to crash the internet and the scary part is they said 13 servers are the backbone of the whole net.

[Jace]

I was listening to npr a couple of days ago and they had said hackers tried to crash the internet and the scary part is they said 13 servers are the backbone of the whole net.

what is scarier is I bet there is a single cluster of networked boxes somewhere that is the one ultimate machine...LOL

[spazlabz]

I was listening to npr a couple of days ago and they had said hackers tried to crash the internet and the scary part is they said 13 servers are the backbone of the whole net.
I would also place a pretty good bet that there are redundancies built into the system.

the 'crash the internet' thing has been tried before and fantasized about endlessly in the blackhat group of dudes and dudettes. Its something that has been studied by the government and saftey nets put in place.

if you want to be really scared, think about this; Foreign governments have people who are paid to devise ways to attack our infrastructure over the internet. just about everything from banking to power grids and they believe that is how the next war will be carried out.......sure crashing the internet is an awesome idea......but specifically targeting the things that enable our society to function in an attack that could happen at any time and cause massive damage that could take months to recover from......that'll keep you awake at night


spaz

[Reptile]

It is impossible to download the entire internet.

By the time you completed such a task the internet would have

grown so much larger it would then take even longer to download

the rest of it. Content is being added to the internet at a far faster

rate than any one person or computer could ever hope to download

it all.

And Besides...

Even if you did somehow manage to instantly download the entire

internet all at once...

WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH IT???

[Hell Puppy]

I was listening to npr a couple of days ago and they had said hackers tried to crash the internet and the scary part is they said 13 servers are the backbone of the whole net.

They are referring to the DNS root servers. If you take them out, the internet still works, but you have no DNS service. Which for most people effectively renders it useless.

Also, they dont exactly only have 13 servers. There's 13 defined root servers, each one is highly clustered, fault tolerant and designed for high availability. They reside in 13 different locations ranging from DoD to University of Maryland to ICANN, etc.

The most recent attack never took them down but was large enough to induce some latency and make people re-evaluate ways to secure them. And these are some of the most highly defended servers on the planet.

The scary one is the one belonging to the Dept of Defense. An attack upon it is considered a cyber attack on the USA. With a Presidential order, a cyber counter attack can be authorized or even a bombing of the source of the attack.

Sounds harsh, but I can tell you first hand, counter attacks are VERY effective in making spammers, script kiddies, and even full on hackers go away and go bother someone who doesn't hit back.

[gonzo]

They are referring to the DNS root servers. If you take them out, the internet still works, but you have no DNS service. Which for most people effectively renders it useless.

Also, they dont exactly only have 13 servers. There's 13 defined root servers, each one is highly clustered, fault tolerant and designed for high availability. They reside in 13 different locations ranging from DoD to University of Maryland to ICANN, etc.

The most recent attack never took them down but was large enough to induce some latency and make people re-evaluate ways to secure them. And these are some of the most highly defended servers on the planet.

The scary one is the one belonging to the Dept of Defense. An attack upon it is considered a cyber attack on the USA. With a Presidential order, a cyber counter attack can be authorized or even a bombing of the source of the attack.

Sounds harsh, but I can tell you first hand, counter attacks are VERY effective in making spammers, script kiddies, and even full on hackers go away and go bother someone who doesn't hit back.

Counter attacks are effecitve on spammers too.