A network being disconnected (video)

Last month hosting company McColo was disconnected from the internet. This was because some of its customers were believed to be sending vast amounts of spam. Computer Shopper has covered the story, so go and read that if you want to find out why this was an important step in the battle against spam. However, I want to illustrate what it actually looks like when a network is disconnected from the internet and when it continually tries to reconnect.

The video below was generated by HostExploit.com, using software called BGPlay. BGPlay "is a Java application which displays animated graphs of the routing activity of a certain prefix within a specified time interval." In other words, it creates a visual representation of internet connections. The video below shows McColo struggling to reconnect to the internet during Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th November 2008.