One way to take down the web easily is to take out DNS servers.
Even if you have connectivity and the destination does as well, if you don't know the address and can't find it, you're SOL.
You can mitigate this by setting up your own DNS server, either as a local mirror, or even with static records. You can also use static records locally on your machine with a hosts file.
The key is that you have to do all this prior to global DNS going down. Also, most web sites will not serve traffic to a request to only the IP, either due to configuration or because the server is hosting multiple sites on the same IP. It needs to see the browser making the request to the hostname. This used to be done on the server by looking at host headers, but I've been out of that particular area of IT for awhile and things may have changed.
Doing this ahead of time could be as simple as doing DNS lookups (using ping or nslookup) and writing them down on paper should you need them later.
In theory, some great pre-planning would be to agree on a couple of email providers. Everyone keeps those DNS records written down with basic "break glass" instructions. Then if DNS goes down, that group all has the ability to send mail to those providers and access the web interfaces to receive mail. Could quickly distribute more advanced instructions and lists of IPs to allow greater communication. If coordinated well, it quickly mitigate a lot of the issue compared to trying to pick up the pieces afterwards with no prep.
Actually knowing the IP addresses won't help much these days with virtual servers hosting hundreds of websites on the same IP address plus how most websites pull in assets from multiple servers rather than having everything local.
I did ave a ist of nearly two dozen IP addresses like Orangetastic1 suggested, but now I see it may be in vain. Maybe X would still be up, being that Mr Musk owns it and all, it might be hardend.
One way to take down the web easily is to take out DNS servers.
Even if you have connectivity and the destination does as well, if you don't know the address and can't find it, you're SOL.
You can mitigate this by setting up your own DNS server, either as a local mirror, or even with static records. You can also use static records locally on your machine with a hosts file.
The key is that you have to do all this prior to global DNS going down. Also, most web sites will not serve traffic to a request to only the IP, either due to configuration or because the server is hosting multiple sites on the same IP. It needs to see the browser making the request to the hostname. This used to be done on the server by looking at host headers, but I've been out of that particular area of IT for awhile and things may have changed.
Doing this ahead of time could be as simple as doing DNS lookups (using ping or nslookup) and writing them down on paper should you need them later.
In theory, some great pre-planning would be to agree on a couple of email providers. Everyone keeps those DNS records written down with basic "break glass" instructions. Then if DNS goes down, that group all has the ability to send mail to those providers and access the web interfaces to receive mail. Could quickly distribute more advanced instructions and lists of IPs to allow greater communication. If coordinated well, it quickly mitigate a lot of the issue compared to trying to pick up the pieces afterwards with no prep.
Replying to agree. I used to have my DNS list of go to but fell out of habit. Thanks for the reminder.
A useful command to know is ipconfig /displaydns
If you're running a Linux system that has nscd installed you can try
strings /var/cache/nscd/hosts | sort | uniq
or
strings /var/db/nscd/hosts | sort | uniq
The problem with writing them down is some sites do change IPs.
Actually knowing the IP addresses won't help much these days with virtual servers hosting hundreds of websites on the same IP address plus how most websites pull in assets from multiple servers rather than having everything local.
I did ave a ist of nearly two dozen IP addresses like Orangetastic1 suggested, but now I see it may be in vain. Maybe X would still be up, being that Mr Musk owns it and all, it might be hardend.