DoS attacks continue
KARACHI- Pakistan Telecommunication’s claim that it had fixed ‘denial of service’ attacks, fails to survive reality-check, as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and browsers say the misery continues.
Recently, the PTCL announced that it had inducted another STM of 155 megabytes bandwidth in its Internet exchange but several parts of the country continue to face a complete Internet breakdown.
“They shifted the traffic of some Lahore based ISPs to this new link. There were abnormal delays in ping time on this circuit, from 500 to 600 milli seconds. After complaints from ISPs for slow speed, they shifted back these circuits to old STM-1,” an office bearer of ISPs Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) said on April 30, 2003.
STM, abbreviated for ‘Synchronous Transfer Mode’ is a 155 megabytes bandwidth transformer through which the PTCL distributed bandwidth connectivity to its customers.
The PTCL has recently added another STM to its Information Technology Infrastructure to enhance service and eliminate DoS.
However on the contrary, the ISPs and Internet browsers complain; that the PTCL’s effort brought no relief.
“Internet users of northern Pakistan, Islamabad, Peshawar and other adjoining areas faced an absolute breakdown of Internet service for almost all day on 23, April 2003 as the PTCL’s link connecting Islamabad with Karachi’s core router was down,” said the ISPAK representative.
This phenomenon occurred in spite of the announced induction of yet another STM of 155 Mbps.
The PTCL, against all advice, believes that by increasing the bandwidth the attacks will be halted, and insists it is quite aware of the situation and has all necessary expertise to handle it but needs time to normalise it.
“PTCL has done its best to cope with the problem and deployed additional hardware and software in addition to providing additional links to the Internet backbone,” said a top company official while wishing not to be named.
He said; that the newly inducted STM1 was cable to meet all the requirements of the country’s ISPs besides having ready availability of connectivity with the Service Level Agreement from FLAG in major cities of the country. “The situation would get better soon,” he said but was unable to give any timeframe.
Source: The News
Date:5/1/2003
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