Quote from: throughput on August 12, 2010, 15:28:43
Definitively, we need some overall network hps meter in every node.

And at last I’ve found that article:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1237179

Network splits are easier to produce, and happen more often, than many users on this forum think.
You don’t really need to cut any cable, nor hack into ISP’s router to plug that ISP off Internet.
You don’t need to hack his peers either. All you need is BGP router in any AS (and some unwary BGP peers).
I have one 🙂

So, it is possible to talk about a short (1 – 3 hours) and controlled network split.
Not just split in half, but split into ASes. After an hour or three-four most of ISPs will recover, but that
really depends on work hours. Weekend attack may have more prolonged effect.
Perhaps in the future that will be fixed and no BGP router will be vulnerable, but
anyway, nobody should count on Internet stability and persistent connectivity.

How would an attacker connect to both sides during this split in order to spend the coins? And if the attacker can do it, the likelihood that one or more honest nodes could bridge the divide is pretty good.

True, there would probably be someone with a dial-up modem or satellite dish internet.  Rarer would be someone who has both that and the wired internet that has the outage, but if it’s a big enough segment to matter, out of a million people there’s bound to be a multi-home geek.

ISP network cuts are just your local area.  If you still have communication with the rest of your area, it would probably be something like 1/1000 of the world or less.  Block generation in the segment would take several hours per block.

I favour the plan to monitor if the frequency of blocks received drops too slow.  That covers a large range of possibilities.

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