-- On Mon, 1/5/09, Roland Dobbins <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Roland Dobbins <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Ethical DDoS drone network > To: "NANOG list" <[email protected]> > Date: Monday, January 5, 2009, 6:39 PM > On Jan 6, 2009, at 7:23 AM, David Barak wrote: > > > In my opinion, the real thing you can puzzle out of > this kind of testing is the occasional hidden dependency. > > Yes - but if your lab accurately reflects production, you > can discover this kind of thing in the lab (and one ought to > already have a lab setup which reflects production for many > reasons having nothing to do with security).
I agree - having a lab of that type is absolutely ideal. However, the ideal and the real diverge tremendously in large and mid-size enterprise networks, because most enterprises just don't have enough lab equipment to adequately model all of the possible scenarios, and including the cost of a lab in the rollout immediately doubles all capital expenditures. The types of problems that the ultra-large DoS can ferret out are the kind which *don't* show up in anything smaller than a 1:1 or 1:2 scale model. Consider for a moment a large retail chain, with several hundred or a couple thousand locations. How big a lab should they have before deciding to roll out a new network something-or-other? Should their lab be 1:10 scale? A more realistic figure is that they'll consider themselves lucky to be between 1:50 and 1:100, and that lab is probably understaffed at best. Having a dedicated lab manager is often seen as an expensive luxury, and many businesses don't have the margin to support it. David Barak Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise: http://www.listentothefranchise.com
