[luau] packet loss to hosef.org

[Keith]

Greetings.

I'm sure you're all aware of the immense packet loss to www.hosef.org
and other sites out there in the Pacific.  There has been general
Internet congestion all day, even out here on the East Coast of the
Mainland.

The congestion could be due to recent worm activity, specifically the
Blaster and Anti-Blaster (welchia) worms.  See the URL:

	http://www.cert.org/current/current_activity.html#welchia

Note that welchia causes a high level of ICMP traffic so various ICMP
tests -- such as the following ping test to hosef.org -- will return
horrible results.  Take a look:

kw at behemoth[0]:~$ !ping
ping www.hosef.org
PING hosef.org (128.171.104.133): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=85 ttl=48 time=183.373 ms
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=236 ttl=48 time=186.132 ms
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=271 ttl=48 time=265.524 ms
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=348 ttl=48 time=190.897 ms
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=416 ttl=48 time=246.152 ms
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=467 ttl=48 time=185.829 ms
64 bytes from 128.171.104.133: icmp_seq=481 ttl=48 time=163.343 ms
--- hosef.org ping statistics ---
561 packets transmitted, 7 packets received, 98% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 163.343/203.035/265.524 ms

It is possible that, in response to worm propogation, some ISPs are
configuring routers to block certain ICMP traffic or otherwise give it a
very low priority.  TCP traffic seems to be fairly well behaved;
www.hosef.org still refreshes pretty quickly in the browser.  :)

Aloha!
krjw.
-- 
Keith R. John Warno                  [k r j w  at  optonline dot net]
"And that's the way it is..."
       -- Walter Cronkite