Looking back on the Internet outages that happened in those years, I could see that some outages seemed to be related to whoever or whatever was putting out these delay packets.
Their first big test was probably on the largest on-line auction system on the Net (you know who they are - or were). It was a large and hugely popular system that let people auction all kinds of stuff. Not a big deal information-wise, a delay on your auction wasn't life- or business-threatening. That was just the beginning of their test.
The next test phase seemed to be one of the big on-line trading firms. During late 1998 and 1999 and continuing into the 21st century (don't get me started on when the century actually begins), investors would start using these systems to do their own stock market trading, bypassing their brokers, and saving big bucks on trading commissions. They grew into a major force in the stock market. Many of the big advances on NASDAQ and NYSE were partly driven by these private traders. And the day-traders were becoming a big force in how they affected the markets.
In 1999, one of the big on-line trading firms got hit. (Again, I can't mention names, because I suspect that the lawyers are still out there.) During the weekend, some techs were doing a system upgrade, adding more hardware to their system to help take care of the increased load by all the private traders. Not usually a big deal, but they were also updating the software to make things more efficient. And they were adding more routers. Guess who made the routers? The same folks that made the routers that I found at my client's company down in Sacramento. (Again, no names, to protect both the innocent and guilty - and me.)
It was quite easy for the packet blockers, whoever they were, to insert their data blockers microcode into the routers. The existing routers needed to be upgraded with new microcode. And that microcode was viral. Once enabled with a few well-placed packets, the data started slowing down. It was like a big traffic jam. The data was being delayed by all the retransmission requests. Some data was getting thrown away, which caused more retransmission requests. More data added to the network, more cars on the freeway.
And some routers stopped altogether. That put a big load on the other routers. Just like a detour during rush hour. And the detour has a big traffic jam. Nobody is going anywhere.
That's just what happened to the data. Data not getting delivered. Data getting re-sent. Data getting thrown away. A big data meltdown. Data being delayed and tracked.
Not surprisingly, the techies at the companies that got hit got into a bit of a panic. Sniffers were added everywhere, but some data was getting through. And there was no discernable pattern to the data loss. New routers were installed. But that didn't work: all the new routers were from the same company. Backup copies of programs were loaded. Programs were stopped and restarted. At one point, over 60 technicians were working on the problem at that company.
They finally got the problem fixed. It took three days. The company lost a couple of million of dollars on the whole thing. Even with the spin doctors making excuses, there was a lot of fallout on this one.
And the Problem was all caused by the routers, and their viral code.
And, as I later discovered, the viral microcode was even smart enough to get updated. A simple command code in a viral packet header, and that router loaded the latest viral microcode from one of several anonymous sites.