On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:48 PM, Jeff Aitken <jait...@aitken.com> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 09:14:13AM -0700, andrew.wallace wrote: >> This isn't the rhetoric of a super power, more like one of a university >> campus. [...] It strikes me straight away as amateurish to be blocking >> web sites in able to have enough bandwidth for operational purposes. > > On the contrary, it's entirely plausible that US forces assisting with the > recovery are (1) using more communications resources than normal, and (2) > relying on infrastructure that's operating in a degraded state due to > fiber or power issues. If so, it's entirely reasonable to put limits on > bandwidth-hungry but non-essential applications as a precautionary measure. > > Here's an excerpt from > http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20110314_9111.php?oref=topnews: > > Military units operating in Japan face bandwidth shortages and > network limitations that inhibit communications and command and > control, Defense sources told Nextgov. Misawa Air Base, located on the > northeast tip of Honshu, warned its personnel on a blog post Friday > that the Defense Switched Network, which handles voice calls, was in > backup mode and had only limited capacity, a fact confirmed by a > Pentagon source Monday. > > The blog post added, "We have a number of connectivity issues. > Internet has been up and down due to our connections through other > places in Japan. For example, Yokota [Air Base] and several other > locations are having issues because we all have power and connectivity > issues right now." > > The Pentagon also took the extraordinary step of blocking access to a > range of commercial websites to ensure that its networks have enough > bandwidth to support mission-essential communications, Nextgov > learned. This move, a military source told Nextgov, possibly indicates > one or more undersea cables used by military networks were damaged by > the earthquake. > > > --Jeff > > >
Here's the problem with the logic of blocking all of the most popular sites; they tried this from time to time in Afghanistan on the NIPRnet. Whenever someone was unable to get to YouTube, Facebook, etc. they, still bored and/or wasting time, simply went to some other web site which also wasted equally as much bandwidth. -- Jeffrey Lyon, Leadership Team jeffrey.l...@blacklotus.net | http://www.blacklotus.net Black Lotus Communications - AS32421 First and Leading in DDoS Protection Solutions
