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"They have not been charged yet, but the house was the source of 3,678 packets in about two-and-a-half hours."

really? were they mounting a DDOS attack using a pocket calculator attached to 4800 baud modem?

3678 packets / 2.5 hours = One packet every 2.44 seconds * 1500 byte MTU = 3.5KB/s Yup, a 4800 baud modem.

You don't multiply packet size by interval, you divide (or multiply by the inverse). And baud is measured in bits. But the numbers come out close anyway. 3678 / (2.5 * 3600) * 1500 * 8 = 4904.

Did 4800 baud modems even exist in volume?

I just checked wikipedia and there's indeed a protocol for them, but I've never seen one in the wild. In my day it was 300, 1200, 2400, 9600, 14400, 16800, 19200, 28800, 33600, 56k ...

So, back on topic, wouldn't it be more likely he was channel bonding two 2400 baud modems?

Perhaps someone at that house was having trouble connecting to PayPal (because of the DDoS) and left a ping running, but forgot to hit ^C to stop it.

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