Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 12:28:13 -0400 (EDT) From: BCPL.NET SysAdmin To: BCPL.NET News Subject: BCPL.NET NEWS: Bad Day On The Internet ----------------------- BAD DAY ON THE INTERNET ----------------------- Yesterday (Thursday, August 2) was NOT a good day for BCPL.NET Internet users. We were hit by a triple whammy that slowed some activities down to a crawl. Whammy #1 was a router failure at UUNET Technologies that reduced our incoming bandwidth capability to one T1 line instead of our normal three. That caused a massive traffic jam that slowed down Web browsing and other access to the rest of the Internet very noticeably. This problem was sorted out by about 4:00 PM, restoring our incoming bandwidth to full capacity. Whammy #2 was a general slowdown of traffic on the whole Internet, attributed my some to increased Code Red Worm activity. Whatever the reason, we received many reports from people who connect via other Internet providers that things were slow all over, so our T1 line problems were not the only reason your Internet activities crawled along. This improved gradually during the evening, and seems to be back to normal today. Whammy #3 was a slowdown of our mail server (mail.bcpl.net) that occurred sporadically throughout the day. This was most noticeable when you tried to send e-mail via a POP3 mail program (Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape, etc). It could sometimes take several minutes to send even a short message. This problem had lessened by early evening, and seems completely gone today. The only reason I could find for this slowdown was a huge number of Code Red Worm probes aimed at our Web server (which runs on the same UNIX computer). Our Web server is immune from Code Red infection, but the big increase in connection attempts caused by the probes may have been the cause of the slowdown. All in all, Thursday was NOT a good day! So far everything is working smoothly today. Keep your fingers crossed. Chip -- BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES 320 York Road Towson, MD 21204-5179 U.S.A. CONTACTS: -------- Web Site: http://www.bcpl.net Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Domain Name Service Issues: dnsadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091