Live data from Hacker News

After 3072 hours of manipulating BGP, a Nyancat was drawn on this RIPE interface

stat.ripe.net

11–20 of 114 posts

Re: After 3072 hours of manipulating BGP, a Nyancat was drawn on this RIPE interface

#13
OMG. The ingenuity (and geek level) of achieving this with something that is essentially invisible to 99.99999% of the human race (even most network admins) and planning ahead to do this is... indescribable.

(the AS holder is http://instituut.net/~job/, to those uninitiated - I had to double check my comment)

Sir, I take my many virtual hats off to you.

Re: After 3072 hours of manipulating BGP, a Nyancat was drawn on this RIPE interface

#15
This sort of endearing Internet-scale thing reminds me of how NTT changes their reverse DNS's (https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2016-February/0841...). There's other vanity reverse-DNS tricks that you can see in traceroutes, but this is done with a global-scale IPv4/IPv6 network that actually is carrying a lot of customer traffic. Try "traceroute ntt.net" now, you'll see hops like:

9 ae-19.sayonara-todd.r04.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.66.57) 17.225 ms 17.166 ms 17.171 ms

10 ae-5.sayonara-todd.r21.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.7) 16.257 ms 16.156 ms 16.101 ms

11 ae-3.sayonara-todd.r23.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.124) 33.097 ms 33.125 ms 31.566 ms

12 ae-7.sayonara-todd.r23.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.4.155) 69.840 ms 69.764 ms 69.763 ms

13 ae-6.sayonara-todd.r10.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.4) 69.634 ms 74.424 ms 72.319 ms

14 ae-0.sayonara-todd.a01.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.244) 74.050 ms 74.046 ms 74.035 ms

or

3 ae-13.sayonara-todd.r05.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:5000::bae) 1.324 ms 1.307 ms 1.205 ms

4 ae-15.sayonara-todd.r02.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::172) 2.505 ms

5 ae-10.sayonara-todd.r23.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::cd) 2.091 ms 2.067 ms

6 ae-7.sayonara-todd.r23.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::1fa) 38.386 ms 39.757 ms 38.312 ms

7 ae-6.sayonara-todd.r10.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::1c1) 41.586 ms

8 ae-1.sayonara-todd.a02.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (2001:418:0:2000::135) 51.986 ms

Re: After 3072 hours of manipulating BGP, a Nyancat was drawn on this RIPE interface

#17
post #11

There's 28,000 IP addresses that could be used for something worthwhile instead of hoarded by clowns playing games with BGP to draw internet cats.

I agree (irony warning!) those IPv4 addresses would be best used for Hue lamps or something, no?

On a more serious note, I've been watching IPv6 "rolling out" since 2004 (which is when I had an active role in mobile network planning), and I'm somewhat saddened that we haven't yet been able to switch over completely (even if it is somewhat more awkward to shout IPv6 addresses across the room, which was one of the arguments one of my colleagues had against it.)

Re: After 3072 hours of manipulating BGP, a Nyancat was drawn on this RIPE interface

#19
post #17
post #11

There's 28,000 IP addresses that could be used for something worthwhile instead of hoarded by clowns playing games with BGP to draw internet cats.

I agree (irony warning!) those IPv4 addresses would be best used for Hue lamps or something, no? On a more serious note, I've been watching IPv6 "rolling out" since 2004 (which is when I had an active role in mobile network planning), and I'm somewhat saddened that we haven't yet been able to switch over completely (even if it is somewhat more awkward to shout IPv6 addresses across the room, which was one of the argu…

thats why we use DNS more effectively. A tool is only useful is if it implemented correctly. it would be easier and faster with well thought out DNS to yell a name across the room. (would have been my response to that silly argument)

Re: After 3072 hours of manipulating BGP, a Nyancat was drawn on this RIPE interface

#20
post #11

There's 28,000 IP addresses that could be used for something worthwhile instead of hoarded by clowns playing games with BGP to draw internet cats.

Correct me if my understanding of internet routing is wrong, but the IP blocks were not out of service during the experiment. Only that a router(s) was advertising that it would accept traffic for those addresses. It would cause traffic to be sent through AS15562 during the time, which may have been suboptimal at times, but eventually would have reached the destination without visitors being aware of the game being played behind the scenes.
Post reply on HN