Get Ashcroft on DDOS Enforcement
Sigh. I love Speakeasy. I've had DSL from them for years and it's been amazingly reliable. I live 3 blocks east of the WTC, they had me back online in a matter of weeks, way before I had phone service (and my DSL was the my last connectivity link to fail when the attacks happened to boot--I was able tell people I was fine and on my way out of the dust and rubble via email and IM well after when the phone and cellular circuits failed/were overwhelmed).
Which is all to say, I am an extremely loyal and highly satisfied customer. But, as Chris Wallace said, things done changed. My connection is pretty much one and the same with my livelihood these days. Over the past week or so, Speakeasy's NYC POP has been getting blistered by DOS attacks. Details aren't extensive, but I'm willing to take them at their word. I've been seen a couple of DDOS attacks firsthand in the past and my impression was that they're really nasty buggers. I haven't yet seen a lot of folks on the infrastructure side that can flat out neutralize them, at least in the non-enterprise space.
Steve Gibson's recounting of his experience was a pretty good primer on the issues and outright scariness of DDOS implications. For my money, I say we get John Ashcroft focus on ruining the people initiating these kinds of attacks days. I don't care if they're 15 years old venting teen angst--they should end up doing time at the version of prison evoked in Office Space (the obvious inference is I don't mean some white collar resort prison;).
To my way of thinking the attacks themselves are so difficult to detect and thwart, given existing infrastructures, that the penalties associated with doing so should be so extremely severe that it's launching one is not even a reasonable option. This is probably just over-the-top ventilation on my part, but working off 56K will do that to a guy.