Re: Re- TCP broadcast storm

Jon Postel <postel@isi.edu> Mon, 08 November 1993 16:51 UTC

Date: Mon, 08 Nov 1993 08:43:10 -0800
Sender: ietf-archive-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US
From: Jon Postel <postel@isi.edu>
Message-Id: <199311081643.AA24710@zephyr.isi.edu>
To: braden@isi.edu
Subject: Re: Re- TCP broadcast storm
Cc: ietf-hosts@isi.edu, TCP-Group@ucsd.edu, MGauthier@iit.nrc.ca

Bob:

Well, Ethernet broadcast storms are caused by the hosts misbehaving, but
they behave in a way that overloads the network, so that other traffic
from other hosts does not get through.  In the Morris Worm situation, i 
don't think the network was overloaded, and traffic from uninfected hosts
did get transmitted normally.

Certainly from the end users point of view it hardly matters if it is the 
network that is broken or it is the hosts that are broken or even if it is
the database (or whatever) services that are broken.  From the end users
point of view, it doesn't work, and the "it" is the Internet.

--jon.