earlier discussion on Beowulfs for net-shutdown.

[Jesse Davis]

Off-topic, but if anyone's curiosity was piqued by our discussion a few
months ago about taking down the 'net--topology, strategy,
analysis--there's an article on topological vulnerabilities in the *web*
here:

http://chronicle.com/free/2000/07/2000072702t.htm

They take an interesting tack--they analyze the web for *linking*
topology, rather than routing topology, and find that the diameter is
about 19 clickable links.  If one disabled the most-linked-through sites,
the article claims you could disable the web without taking down any
routers, because users wouldn't be able to click from site to site.  This
is naive--it focusses on linking among static pages, which is increasingly
irrelevant--but it's quite interesting.  There's also a discussion of the
net as an organism.

	Jesse

==============================================================================
|| A. Jesse Davis || ajdavis at cs.oberlin.edu || www.cs.oberlin.edu/~ajdavis/ ||
==============================================================================

"I think what an abrupt precipice cleaves asunder the male intelligence,
and how they pride themselves upon a point of view which much resembles
stupidity."                                --Virginia Woolf, Diaries 1919.