I've noticed that all the mainstream news services seem to be very slow today, mostly timing out on my connection.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the release of the Wikileaks material? Would Western Governments get involved in DDOS attacks to suppress news dissemination?

That's a worry, Antiseptic.

>>all the mainstream news services seem to be very slow today, mostly timing out on my connection<<

But I think it may be just you that they are targetting, my connections are working just fine.

So either you are quite right to be paranoid - they really are out to get you - or there is a simpler explanation.

Are you using Windows/IE, by any chance.

That would explain it, to an extent. Although the surprise would be that you get anything at all before you fall asleep at the keyboard...

No mine is fine too.
If they did do that it would only make it worse.
Even the dreaded Fox network is using it and supporting the publication, but not the leaker's.

Thanks for that folks. On my connection all the sites except the news sites are fine. BBC has been timing out since 3:30 this morning and News and Fairfax have been intermittent.

Antiseptic:

Mine's fine as well. But, I haven't been using it as much today. I will let you know if things get worse.

It may be an artefact of my wireless connection and lots of traffic generated by interest in wikileaks.

No paranoia, btw pericles, but it would be an interesting development if a Western govt decided that such an attack was necessary to manage public perceptions.

just keep reading, and listening to what everyone else tells you. hope it keeps u happy. :) maybe this will be more accessible for you, make u realize something?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1589429273035937450&hl=en&emb=1#docid=5335724479269105967

there will always be news, from all sorts of source. too many ways to get news, you just need to find out other options available.

A bit further to this. I use 3 mobile broadband, which has generally been very good. However, these problems seem to be related directly to 3. I cannpt access www.smh.com.au or any of the Fairfax sites reliably. ditto for the Murdoch sites, the ABC, the BBC, the New York Times and a couple fo others. I can access any other site with no problems.

I've just got off the phone to 3 support and they brushed me off (very politely, it must be said).

So, are there any ideas out there as to what may be going on? Up to yesterday the connection has been very reliable, with only the occasional outage. Tech support has also always been helpful. I'm not trying to bag 3 here, just after a relaible service.

A further update. I don't know if it was my call, but all of a sudden everything is coming up just fine.

Could someone in the back office at three have done some QoS shaping to reduce the network traffic to news sites generated by the wikileaks release?

Antiseptic,

Interesting that you are accessing the net via a wireless connection, and that you seem to have localised the 'shaping', or whatever it was, to that medium. I doubt that I have any ability to discuss the technical aspects of this, but I suggest there is some background that may make the phenomenon more explicable.

You may recall that, in some of the initial standover tactics adopted by the Federal government in attempting to get Telstra agreement to the splitting of their business (that is, the Australian institutionals' and Mum & Dad investors' business) one of the blackmail tools used was the threat of denial of radio spectrum access.

Additionally, and perhaps more relevantly, CSIRO is claimed to have developed a radio spectrum dependent connectivity system that is capable of supplying the held-as-being-desirable net access speeds of the much-touted NBN to most, if not all, of the regional subscribers that even the NBN as proposed by the government would not likely reach.

The long and the short of all this may be that, in conjunction with this CSIRO development, the existing Telsta FTTN capacity, with a little modification, could give EVERYBODY adequate access speeds WITHOUT the expenditure on the NBN. If I am anywhere near correct, a premium would ride upon anything capable of sabotaging or degrading radio spectrum connection capability.

What you have seen could be the trialling of just such covert deliberate service degradation designed to boost the 'appeal' of the proposed NBN.

Hi Forrest, I don't think it's anything sinister, possibly just a technical decision that was taken to reduce the load on the network at a likely peak.

I do agree that wireless via HSDPA provides an adequate connection for most purposes. The next generation stuff is even better.

I've always been keen on a fibre backbone / wireless to the home arrangement. Perhaps business that is especially data-heavy might like to have a cable, but otherwise...

Still more revelations. I did some route tracing last night and it turns out that all the dead sites are cached by Akamai Technologies. I wonder if Three have paid their bills?