Tuesday October 21 8:20 AM EDT

Massive Network Failure at U. S. Justice Department

WASHINGTON - Sources within the Justice Department reported that a
massive network failure occurred there yesterday at approximately 4:40 PM EDT.
Shortly after posting the daily press releases and current issues on
the DOJ web server, all departmental network services mysteriously
failed.

Attempts to connect to the public DOJ website http://www.us-doj.gov/
returned a DNS name lookup failure, indicating that the site has
been removed from internet name services databases as well.

Sources say that this failure was not confined to Washington D.C.
headquarters but affects outlying DOJ facilities as well. It was also
noted that this failure does not appear to affect any other Federal
facilities.

Experts from IBM Global Systems were called to attempt emergency
repairs.  No-one at IBM headquarters could be reached for comment. A recorded
message stated that all personnel were currently in the field at
customers' sites.

Unnamed sources within the Department of Justice have revealed the
nature and scope of this failure. All 7500 NT servers, supporting approximately
15 thousand workstations have apparently failed. E-mail, both internal
and external, inter-departmental scheduling services and the internal
DOJ web are all affected. Technicians report that all attempts to access
department computing services result in a cartoon likeness of Bill Gates
wagging his index finger, saying "Ah..Ah..Ah! You forgot the magic
word!".

In a related story, General Services Administration has submitted
emergency requests for bids for Unix workstations, software and support.
Interested parties may contact the GSA with quotes at hammer$@gsa.gov.



-- 
Paul Hovnanian                      | spam to: Chairman Reed Hundt
hovnania@atc.boeing.com             | rhundt@fcc.gov
------------------------------------+--------------------------------
Windows 95: n.   32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit
patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit
microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of
competition.

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