[17]SPECIAL REPORT
    48-Hour Internet Outage Plunges Nation Into Productivity

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    BOSTONAn Internet worm that disabled networks across the U.S. Monday
    and Tuesday temporarily thrust the nation into its most severe
    maelstrom of productivity since 1992.
    48-Hour Internet Outage Plunges Nation Into Productivity

    "In all my years, I've never seen anything like this," said Price
    Stern Sloan system administrator Andrew Walton, whose effort to
    restore web service to his company's network was repeatedly hampered
    by employees busily working at their computers. "The local-access
    network is functioning, so people can transfer work projects to one
    another, but there's no e-mail, no eBay, no flaminglips.com. It's
    pretty much every office worker's worst nightmare."

    According to Samuel Kessler, senior director at Symantec, which makes
    the popular Norton Antivirus software, the Internet "basically
    collapsed" Monday at 8:34 a.m. EST.

    The Gibe-F worm, an e-mail-transmittable virus, initiated cascading
    server failures. Within an hour, Internet service to more than 90
    percent of the U.S. was disabled, either by the worm or by network
    firewalls that initiated security protocols.

    "Unlike SoBig or Blaster, this worm didn't harm individual computers;
    it just used them as a gate to attack the Internet at the ISP level,"
    Kessler said. "Computer technicians at most offices couldn't do
    anything but sit by helplessly as people worked through stacks of
    filing, wrote business-related letters they'd put off for months, and
    sold record amounts of goods and services over the phone."

    Shortly after office workers found their web, e-mail, and
    instant-messaging capabilities disabled, reports of torrential
    productivity began to reach corporate offices nationwide.

    "My first thought was 'My God, this has to be some kind of mistake,'"
    said Prudential Insurance executive vice-president Shane Mullins of
    San Francisco. "My e-mail wasn't working. Nerve.com wasn't working. I
    eventually found out that the company web site wasn't working, either.
    But by that time, my inbox was filling up like you wouldn't believe."
    The Internet outage forced a Minneapolis couple to tackle a task
    they'd put off for months.
    Above: The Internet outage forced a Minneapolis couple to tackle a
    task they'd put off for months.

    "My actual physical inbox," Mullins added. "It's this gray plastic
    thing on my desktopthe top of the desk I sit at."

    With workers denied access to ESPN.com, Salon, Fark.com, and
    Friendster, employers struggled to keep up with the sudden increase in
    efficiency.

    "Our office was working at roughly 95 percent efficiency," said Steven
    Glover, an advertising executive and creative team leader at Rae
    Jaynes Houser. "It's problematic to have the rate jump like thatit
    sets a precedent that will be impossible to maintain once the Internet
    comes back."

    Glover said his department failed to reach 100 percent productivity
    only because employees stopped work every few minutes throughout the
    outage to see if Internet service had been restored.

    "This is terrible," said Miami resident Ron Lewison, an employee at
    Gladstone Finance and an Amazon.com Top 500 Reviewer. "For two days,
    I've been denied access to the vital information I need to go about my
    workday. In the absence of that information, I've been forced to go
    about my job."

    According to Labor Department statistics, companies affected by the
    Internet outage generated an estimated $4 to $6 billion in extra
    revenue.

    "Losses to online retail companies will be considerable, " said Jae
    Miles, senior financial economist at Banc One Capital Markets in
    Chicago. "Nevertheless, the outage's overall impact on the national
    economy will be a positive one. The losses should be easily offset by
    the gains to companies that depend primarily on people finishing
    actual work."

    As of press time, many administrators had begun to apply a patch that
    combats the Gibe-F worm.

    "Thank God, Earthlink service is back, and with it, online shopping
    and entertainment news," office worker Emily Jaynes said at 7 p.m.
    Tuesday. "I'm ready to head home now. I couldn't bear to spend another
    evening repainting furniture and using my pool."

    Financial experts say they hope to have detailed data on the economic
    impact of the outage within the next 24 hours.

    "When American office workers are denied access to vast, complex
    streams of ever-fluctuating and evolving information, they tend to get
    a lot done," said Nicole Dansby, a business-information analyst
    employed by the New York Stock Exchange. "The extended Internet outage
    may or may not have had something to do with the Dow's 278-point jump
    Tuesday. I'll have to, you know, check the web for a few hours and get
    back to you."


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