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74 Comments
- mjoe, on 11/02/2009, -1/+43The biggest worry about a pandemic is that it "keeps large numbers of the workforce at home and causes network congestion"?
- inactive, on 11/02/2009, -8/+33"which may be similar to what China does now"
Nuff said. This is *****. - Barackalypse, on 11/02/2009, -5/+25No, that's just their excuse for expanding their emergency powers to other areas of your life.
- starlon2, on 11/02/2009, -2/+16First they came for the gamers. Then they came for the third party.
- tgc1, on 11/02/2009, -3/+17It's a free country.
LOL. - Atario, on 11/02/2009, -8/+20Quick, everyone have a paranoid freakout...
[yawn] - allisonaxe, on 11/02/2009, -1/+111. Large portion of population has a contagious illness.
2. infected population uses lots of bandwidth so they can stay home, not infecting others, and still manage to stay in touch with friends or telecommute.
3. internet is cut off due to increased use.
4. infected population is forced to go outside, infecting even more.
5. SWINE FLU ARMAGEDDON!!!! - boogerthecat, on 11/02/2009, -1/+11When 9/11 happened everybody got on the web because after the first two hours, the TV news people were repeating themselves.
- FaithclubDotNet, on 11/02/2009, -2/+10In the event of a quarantine: Go to your room and no Internet.
- JoeHague, on 11/02/2009, -4/+12I have to be honest, if there is a serious dangerous pandemic and I home sick or home to avoid becoming sick, the last thing I'll be worried about is my Xbox live connection.
That being said, the technology and/or the corporate cooperation, to limit home bandwidth should not exist. - Barackalypse, on 11/02/2009, -3/+10Unfortunately your refusal to comply with emergency mandated service degradation means you are a domestic terrorist and will be renditioned to Turkey for interrogation.
- pagno, on 11/02/2009, -0/+7What? The "Land of the Free?"
Whoever told you that is your enemy. - skipvt, on 11/02/2009, -0/+6I guess I don't understand how a large percentage of the population staying at home will cripple the internet. Just how many of the sick workers will need (or even want, being sickly and all) to contact work electronically? These "legions of teleworkers" the link in the article talks about, what are they going to be doing that is going to require such a huge amount of bandwidth? Reading e-mail (subject: fwd: fwd: fwd: This kitty is *so* kute!)? Sending documents (subject: Report on Nigerian Banking Opportunities attached .doc file 517k)? Isn't this really just a front for some nefarious big brother scheme to limit free flow of information during time of emergency?
- j0phus, on 11/02/2009, -6/+12Does anyone else think about what would have happened if Iran had this capability? They could have shut down internet access and then blocked twitter/YouTube for people who were still able to get thru.
Am I being paranoid? I did just burn a fat bowl. - inactive, on 11/02/2009, -0/+5Microsoft, is that you?
- roho76, on 11/02/2009, -2/+7You mean like anytime after 5:00 PM M-F or like Saturdays and Sundays.
- gbates31, on 11/02/2009, -2/+6Sorry bro, but nothing takes priority over me headshotting some noobs.
- j0phus, on 11/02/2009, -0/+4Isn't AT&T his biggest lobby? Am I wrong? I thought they put up towers near his property because he complained about his reception at his house. Perhaps his motivations for saying something like that are different than you think.
- pagno, on 11/02/2009, -1/+5Instead of crippling their citizens' bandwidth, they should be up the ISPs asses to fix the last "crucial" mile setup. In any case, I think the Govt. should have its own Internet, if theyre concerned about a bed-ridden populace sucking up all their bandwidth. I find it troubling that you can access YouTube and a city's traffic light system on the same damn network.
- j0phus, on 11/02/2009, -0/+4I really despise who McCain has become. Sorry if I seemed abrasive. I don't want the government to have this power either, so I guess I'm disagreeing with the wrong thing in my comments.
I don't get why people are burying you. I'll never understand other diggers. - OBKenobi, on 11/02/2009, -4/+8In the event of a pandemic, I will not be worried about my internet access. I will be dusting off my assault rifle and packing up to head for the mountains. Hasn't Katrina taught you anything about government "help" in a crisis? Their disaster recovery plan is to round you up like cattle and keep you contained. They will quarantine any area that this so-called "pandemic" hits.
They may even be the ones responsible for the pandemic.
The bottom line is, unless you're one of the privileged, you are expendable. - iXneonXi, on 11/02/2009, -0/+3This has been done for years. Not by the US Government, but by ISPs. Cable modems have a configuration file with tons of information. Look at the link below for an example. Anyway, it can easily be overcome by using a firmware such as SB5100Mod or Haxorware. It's using the same techniques uncappers use... This 'pandemic' bandwidth throttling is pretty much a cap.
http://pastebin.com/m662eeaea - DaviDTC, on 11/02/2009, -3/+6He doesn't want the government to have any control over the net. Having no control would mean the government couldn't order the ISPs to cripple bandwidth to home modems. With all the buries I am getting, it seems people want the government to be able to control the net like this, which is strange considering how much they want NN.
Yes I understand the main point of what McCain is proposing, to let the ISPs themselves decide who/when/where/why to restrict net access and bandwidth cause he knows that if the government has their say they wont allow the ISPs to do this and that isn't what they paid him almost $1m to believe in. - herozero, on 11/02/2009, -0/+3you couldn't get through that one with a straight face either, huh?
- gbates31, on 11/02/2009, -1/+4Needs /s, unfortunately...
- AgeofMastery, on 11/02/2009, -1/+3In the event of a disaster I would think it's common sense that government and/or emergency crews, hospitals etc use of bandwidth took priority over somebody's game of Halo.
- j0phus, on 11/02/2009, -2/+4The same story was submitted multiple times.
- LeepII, on 11/02/2009, -2/+4The internet being shut down will be part of the control of information.
- allisonaxe, on 11/02/2009, -1/+3the /s tag wouldn't make it funny.
- Nishnabotna, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2Wouldn't it be more efficient to just shape the traffic at the ISP instead of trying to root each modem?
- kaykfrink, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2The GAO provides half of the counterargument to its own case in a seemingly offhand footnote on pg 14: "According to one provider, this additional traffic in residential neighborhoods may not result in an increase in Internet traffic overall because it may be traffic that would have otherwise come from businesses in other parts of the Internet access networks, but during a pandemic would originate in the residential access portions of the networks instead. "
The other half of the argument comes from page 19: "Staff at Internet providers try to run their networks between 40 and 80 percent capacity at peak hours. They added that in the normal course of business, their companies begin the process to expand capacity when a certain utilization threshold is reached, generally 70 to 80 percent of full capacity over a sustained period of time at peak hours." So ISPs maintain excess capacity, which would probably handle the excess demand caused by a pandemic.
If everybody decided to stream Hulu during a pandemic then I would say, yea, the Internet would be boned. But realistically, I don't think that is going to happen and I think the Internet will handle a pandemic fairly well. There could definitely be some congestion and slow down, but I don't think it would be at the economy destroying levels that the GAO and Congress are foreseeing. That said, I'm really glad to see the GAO and DHS doing these kinds of studies; they help to shine a light on the weakest link in the American IT infrastructure and are evidence in the case for improving our broadband system. - Zetal, on 11/02/2009, -2/+4Thank Glenn Beck while you're sick.
- Genma, on 11/02/2009, -3/+5it's just adspam don't read too much into it. basically what they're saying is that an isp has the power to change your modem's firmware, and the gov't could issue some sort of directive in times of crisis. NO *****. first he says "they might do it and you should care!" and then he goes "they should do something like this before it's too late!" worthless spammy pseudo-controversy article buried as lame.
- sonder, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2Much like the Chinese government, republicans HATE the internet, and will do anything they can to ***** it up. harry8227 asked 'what the hell does the internet have to do with the pandemic?' the answer is - nothing. Old guard republicans and 'moderate' democrats like lieberman and other members of the reagan era 'moral majority' see the internet as a direct threat to their agenda of social engineering and moral oppression, and will use any excuse they can to implement 'temporary measures' to push their agenda of keeping us under control.
Tinfoil hat talk, sure, but when thy start tacking on restrictions like that - restrictions that won't help at ALL it is clearly the hand of the bad guys. - Auto, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2Then I'd go outside to entertain myself and get sick. :(
- herozero, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2"Isn't this really just a front for some nefarious big brother scheme to limit free flow of information during time of emergency?"
a resounding "YES!" - moskrin, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2NOOooooooo!! We'll be home and sick not not able to get to our porn!
- FyberOptic, on 11/02/2009, -2/+4Such a pointless article just to incite some fear or whatever nonsense.
A lot of people use the internet AT work too, you know. Not to mention, lack of general business traffic would likely balance out with what some folks piddling around at home would do.
Besides, if there's a pandemic and people are sick with flu or something, they're not gonna feel like ***** around on the computer anyway. - Nishnabotna, on 11/02/2009, -0/+2Why is there dust on your rifle? You need to get some more range time in.
- TheGuruStud, on 11/03/2009, -0/+1They would have the IP from illegally (yay unpatriot act) obtaining it from w/e site I was on (how else are they going to notice).
But the IP is useless. My mac is registered to someone else and I'm not even paying for cable service. I'm a ghost on the node that just so happens to be using 30 Mbit. There's no way to cut me off except to disable that mac on the CMTS. But they would be disconnecting the legit user. I would change macs in 15 secs and be back online. They would have to actively monitor and disable each mac. Docsis and their mac registration is seriously flawed. You can still register macs from across the country on some providers. Hell, on comcast all you need is a config file or the name of it and you're online. - iXneonXi, on 11/02/2009, -2/+3same here. What firmware are you using?
- whipnet, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1Wow! I am glad you have all of that figured out..
* - Ajajadude, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1I'd also expect a country such as Iran where personal liberties don't actually exist to do something like that just because.
- sab0tage, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1The connection was reset
The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.
OMG OMG OMG IT'S STARTED!!!!!1!1!!! - OBKenobi, on 11/02/2009, -3/+4You're also posting the same comment in multiple threads.
- ftc08, on 11/02/2009, -2/+3Eh. Didn't put much faith in it.
- JohnnySoftware, on 11/19/2009, -0/+1The disease does not last that long unless you are dying of it.
I don't think sick people staying at home will use a lot of bandwidth.
TP, maybe. - non00b, on 11/02/2009, -1/+2how is this any different than 6pm when everyone comes home from work and everyone goes online at the same time to watch videos, download over p2p, and play games. Or weekends, when people don't work.
The Internet handles the traffic fine. - Zetal, on 11/02/2009, -0/+1That's a new one. ...and I thought the content on Fox was crazy enough.
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