Breakpoint Read Free

problems and we are dropping packets all over the place.
    â€œCouple of the older Sytho routers at PacificWestel began flapping under the load, so we are coordinating flow control, but we have no way of knowing what traffic is priority and what is grandma writing to the kids at college. We’re still at less than twenty-five percent of normal outbound traffic to European Internet Service Providers, and a lot of that is garbage because of dropped packets. Latest thing we heard is that traffic to the domain name root servers is way off. They act like the four-one-one of the internet, converting www addresses into numbers. Traffic to them is off because most of the world can’t get to eight of the ten roots, which are all here in the States. Means a bunch of internet traffic doesn’t know how to get where it’s supposed to go.”
    â€œWhat about protecting the Pacific beachheads? Isn’t it just about seven A.M . there now?” the FBI rep asked.
    â€œThat’s being done,” Fred Calder responded. “We placed calls to the state police in the three West Coast states.”
    â€œState is unable to get through to any U.S. Embassy in Europe, Africa, the Mideast, or South Asia, doesn’t matter whether its classified or unclassified comms,” the Department of State rep declared.
    â€œYou still have voice to the embassies, right?” the man from ETT asked.
    â€œWe can talk to them, but no data links,” the State Department man complained.
    John Peters from Treasury punched the button activating his microphone and announced in a high-pitched voice, “The New York, American, and NASDAQ exchanges are all reporting an inability to communicate test messages with London and the other European markets. Will we have this fixed by opening bells tomorrow?”
    â€œNo, we won’t,” Fred Calder said flatly, and turned to the three-star Air Force general sitting behind the Defense Department plaque. “General Richards, I assume the Pentagon still has connectivity abroad?”
    The Air Force man frowned at being called on, but he pulled out a set of half-glasses and opened a loose-leaf notebook in front of him. He had been a fighter pilot most of his career, but he was now in charge of Pentagon cyberspace activities. The General read, “PACOM reports some degradation to the classified SIPRNET and unclassified NIPRNET, but high-priority traffic is moving without problem on SIPRNET. EUCOM and CENTCOM report serious outages in connectivity on both classified and unclassified networks. Defense Information Systems Agency has initiated an INFOCON ALPHA condition, switching some SIPRNET traffic to unutilized bandwidth on space-based national assets, but four of the seven war-fighting commands are reporting nonoperational mission-critical functions because of NIPRNET outages and, as Jake there just indicated, we cannot prioritize NIPRNET traffic.” With that, the General removed his half-glasses and closed his book.
    There was a moment of dead air as some in the room pondered the implications of what the General had just said and others tried to figure out exactly what it was that the General had just said.
    â€œI’m sorry, General…is it Richardson? I’m not a military man or really very technical at all. I represent the Commerce Department. Could you or somebody explain what you just said in words I might, well, understand ?” It was Undersecretary of Commerce Clyde Fetherwill, who had played an important role in the President’s campaign in Florida.
    Gordon Baxter, a seasoned CIA bureaucrat, leaned forward and activated the microphone in front of his seat. “NIPRNET is Defense’s unclassified internet system. SIPRNET is their internet for classified information, Secret and higher. What he said was that more than half of our forces overseas could not fully carry out their wartime missions right now because they do not have unclassified