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yes, waiting to hear from someone has taken a cert exam remotely so as to know the testing protocols required

Here's the Internet Society's commentary. The message is don't trust anyone, look after your own defenses (like, don't just rely on others to block advertising their RFC1918 IPv4 prefixes, you should prevent any such prefixes being allowed into your network). Google claims it was fixed in 8 minutes, but too late she cried!

Jimmy Ray Purser (formerly of Cisco Techwise TV) explained it well on FB.
When asked "So who peed on what?" He repied-
"Google peed in a glass that Verizon took a drink of then Verizon puked all over the rest of the party guest, which total killed the party vibe for a while" 

https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/tech-matters/2017/08/google-leaked-prefixes-and-knocked-japan-internet

Some news for those who route in the AS stratosphere, rather than just in lowly IPv4/6 prefixes   

https://bgpmon.net/bgp-leak-causing-internet-outages-in-japan-and-beyond/

Yeah, the cartoon is more about data at rest I guess, "saved" ones and zeroes are always there. My context was about data in motion, "dropping packets", etc. Won't anyone think about the dropped packets? 

Although networkers might groan at the PHB's "dumb" question in this Dilbert strip, over the years I've had a few students seriously ask "What does happen to packets/frames when they are dropped?".
And I think that it is question worth asking because all the texts that I've read just state that they are "dropped", or even worse, have topology diagrams or flow charts with the dropped packets being dumped into a "bit bucket" (with a picture of said bucket). WTF?
Like depicting electricity as water flowing through pipes, or connected VPN interfaces as communicating through a literal tunnel, or firewalls as brick bbqs/pizza ovens, these analogies/metaphors/whatever are confusing, and in my opinion, technically incorrect.
Ok, not all network technicians/engineers are necessarily electronic or electrical engineers, but how about this; when a packet matches an ACL deny condition, or can't be routed, or a frame FCS doesn't match; the electrical signals representing that PDU are just turned off; buckets are not involved at all. Or perhaps more specifically, the buffer/memory location holding that PDU is overwritten by another PDU, or set to the null value for that system. I hope that makes sense - but, please, no more bit buckets!
http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-08-01

[RFC8200]

Old hands here will know me as an IPv6 fanboi, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that this protocol has finally been adapted as an Internet Standard by the IETF. RFC8200 is now where all things IPv6 reside.
18 years in the making but it is now a Standard. Hopefully this means vendors and users will notch up their implementation - in the past I know that the lack of a real definite standard has made some hesitant to really run with IPv6, but it's here now 
The article also describes the IETF's Draft - RFC - Standard process; yes, if you work in this industry these tiresome processes are important to know; you should be aspiring to contributing to the development of the technology that you work with, not just implementing it.
btw, the Internet Society which has published this article, and sits above the technical IETF in the hierarchy of Internet organisations, is an open and free international organisation that anyone can join. And so endth my sermon for the day 
http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2017/07/rfc-8200-ipv6-has-been-standardized/

Ok, this is networking related but is just news. Once upon a time IPv4 addresses weren't yours to on-sell, but not any more it seems. They claim that they're selling theses blocks to help finance their new IPv6 network - meanwhile someone else can postpone their upgrade by using unwanted MIT Iv4 addresses ...

https://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2017/05/mit-goes-on-ipv4-selling-spree/

Aubrey

Why, thank you very much!  Just like old times, with that quick climb up the ranks I guess I'm expected to contribute some wisdom ... 

Hey guys, only just found out about networking-forumSSSSS from young Mr Dieselboy! So here I am, again. Thought I'd retired two years ago so became quiet over on that other *cough* forum. But it seems that in a small town of ~2M peeps there's always a call for network trainers, university tutors, etc, and Cisco Press/Pearson Ed are still sending tech editing projects my way; so I guess I'm coming back into the fold, with the same username and all.
cheers
Aubrey