If you liked the broadband test, you'll like this little site too. It shows in table and graph form the performance of the internet (http://average.matrix.net/). It really bottomed out yesterday.

Do you know why it was called Slammer? When it hit about 12pm (EDT) so many of the IT guys were in bars getting slammed.

Jeff

DVInfo.net seemed to have been out for a day as well. What was the cause of that?

The one and the same, Slammer Worm. It's compromised about 200,000 server so far. At the height of the attack in the US (Saturday morning) about 20%of the internet traffic was lost. Bank of America lost 13,000 ATM's. It swamped parts of the internet backbone causing a denial of service.

Jeff

Thank God we're back up, I was just about to go into withdrawl shakes!

It was definitely a frustrating experience.

Why would the DVInfo.net server have been affected, I thought it wasn't running MS-SQL?

It wasn't, but whatever our server host did to fix their routers managed to knock the dvinfo.net server off the network. Details are sketchy.

It's funny that in the news the "analysts" were saying that while it only affected a security flaw in MS SQL, the patches and/or fixes were available, but the problem was due to users of MS SQL not updating the bux fixes. In my (ever so humble) opinion it was caused by anyone stupid enough to trust secure data to MS SQL. Microsoft is notorius for releasing flawed programs that let hackers use program hooks to create worms. Having worked on OS/390 & AS/400, 50+ versions of UNIX, it amazes me that anyone would even consider the most immature SQL software and systems for critical data. I guess you get what you pay for.

my 2 cents.
Mark
p.s. I use Sybase, and in fact MS SQL was engineered from an early version of Sybase (MS bought the code lock stock and barrel) known as one of the only bad versions that Sybase ever released :-)

www.tinternabbeystudio.com

Haha, good old Microsoft.. why anybody would want to pay for MS SQL when MySQL is free and secure is beyond me.