nanog mailing list archives

Re: WANTED: ISPs with DDoS defense solutions


From: Dave Israel <davei () algx net>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 14:42:37 -0400


On 7/31/2003 at 18:30:12 +0000, Paul Vixie said:

However, since improvements are always welcome, please recommend tools
which would allow us to progress "above and beyond" C and it's deficencies.

I've never been able to program a buffer overrun vulnerability in
Modula 3, or Perl, or any version of Lisp or Scheme.  It's possible
that the physics has advanced enough that "low level programming"
now costs more than it saves.

On the other hand, compiled C is still significantly faster than, say,
Perl or Java.  That may not be important for some apps, but when
you're pushing hardware to its very limits (you know, the most
important stuff on the Net, like playing games and serving porn) you
can really feel it.  And if there's a security hole or exploitable bug
in Perl or Java itself, it exists in every program written with it.

There's nothing wrong with low level languages, and with the proper
libraries, they gain some of the advantages of high level languages.
Personally, it'll be a long time before I'm convinced that I want my
routers running Java.  (Like how I brought that almost back on topic
in the end, there?)



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