Back in the 1980s a NATO exercise nearly ground to a halt because of network problems somewhat similar to what is described above. Recall that the military enables packet stream splitting and re-routing as a security and fault management process. Apparently one or more critical nodes went down during the exercise. Because of packet re-routing, transmission latency and normal error detection and correction protocols, the net became clogged with re-transmit requests and the re- (and re-re-) transmission of “lost” packets, resulting in huge surges of information that caused transient botlenecks on key information pathways. In the After Action Report it was described as “large system oscillation.”

And news of this development was hardly classified. The summary mentioned above was published in several industry trade periodicals at the time.

Stock market guru Joe Granville had it right. He observed that there are only three types of market analysis: Fundamental, technical…and mob psychology. You can reckon the first two, but you’ll never nail down that last one. Even physical systems have their own “madness.”

Lee_K