I guess an awful lot of traceroutes will ... / 2012-10-05

I guess an awful lot of traceroutes will be done today and the results will be analyzed, after reading Suspicion over Dotcom net glitch - National - NZ Herald News:

Information held by the Herald shows Gen-I studied data showing the amount of time it took information on the internet connection to reach the Xbox server. It went from 30 milliseconds to 180 milliseconds - a huge increase for online gamers.

The reason for the extra time emerged in a deeper inquiry, which saw a "Trace Route" search which tracks internet signals from their origin to their destinations. When the results were compared it showed the internet signal was being diverted inside New Zealand.

The data showed the internet signal had previously taken two steps before going offshore - but was now taking five.

Via @csoghoian: If you're a spy agency & are going to illegally intercept a geek's residential internet connection, don't add 3 hops + 150ms to traceroute.

There is a reason the technical rules for "lawful" intercept of Internet traffic in a lot of countries are quite strict that network routes should not change when a subscriber is tapped. But I guess being your own ISP would circumvent that and give the interceptors a problem.