You've heard of ASCII Art? How about DNS Art!?

Saving the world, one bug at a time - Hilarious network configuration

"I call this DNS art :) Try running this from a cmd prompt:

tracert -h 99 216.81.59.173

You'll get something like this:

...

14 150 ms 153 ms 144 ms Episode.IV [206.214.251.1]
15 152 ms 147 ms 143 ms A.NEW.HOPE [206.214.251.6]
16 146 ms 148 ms 147 ms It.is.a.period.of.civil.war [206.214.251.9]
17 147 ms 145 ms 148 ms Rebel.spaceships [206.214.251.14]
18 145 ms 147 ms 150 ms striking.from.a.hidden.base [206.214.251.17]
19 144 ms 150 ms 143 ms have.won.their.first.victory [206.214.251.22]
20 145 ms 142 ms 145 ms against.the.evil.Galactic.Empire [206.214.251.25]
21 143 ms 145 ms 147 ms During.the.battle [206.214.251.30]
22 155 ms 153 ms 147 ms Rebel.spies.managed [206.214.251.33]
23 156 ms 146 ms 153 ms to.steal.secret.plans [206.214.251.38]
24 145 ms 148 ms 146 ms to.the.Empires.ultimate.weapon [206.214.251.41]
25 142 ms 171 ms 145 ms the.DEATH.STAR [206.214.251.46]
26 171 ms 146 ms 153 ms an.armored.space.station [206.214.251.49]
27 157 ms 151 ms 142 ms with.enough.power.to [206.214.251.54]
28 161 ms 148 ms 144 ms destroy.an.entire.planet [206.214.251.57]
29 148 ms 150 ms 149 ms Pursued.by.the.Empires [206.214.251.62]
30 144 ms 145 ms 147 ms sinister.agents [206.214.251.65]
31 146 ms 142 ms 146 ms Princess.Leia.races.home [206.214.251.70]
32 152 ms 149 ms 147 ms aboard.her.starship [206.214.251.73]
33 151 ms 156 ms 145 ms custodian.of.the.stolen.plans [206.214.251.78]
34 149 ms 145 ms 147 ms that.can.save.her [206.214.251.81]
35 149 ms 150 ms 145 ms people.and.restore [206.214.251.86]
36 152 ms 150 ms 148 ms freedom.to.the.galaxy [206.214.251.89]
37 144 ms 151 ms 150 ms 0-------------------0 [206.214.251.94]
38 149 ms 144 ms 151 ms 0------------------0 [206.214.251.97]
39 149 ms 145 ms 149 ms 0-----------------0 [206.214.251.102]
40 148 ms 145 ms 146 ms 0----------------0 [206.214.251.105]
41 146 ms 144 ms 160 ms 0---------------0 [206.214.251.110]
42 150 ms 151 ms 146 ms 0--------------0 [206.214.251.113]
43 145 ms 147 ms 147 ms 0-------------0 [206.214.251.118]
44 147 ms 148 ms 148 ms 0------------0 [206.214.251.121]
45 149 ms 149 ms 147 ms 0-----------0 [206.214.251.126]
46 146 ms 149 ms 153 ms 0----------0 [206.214.251.129]
47 146 ms 143 ms 149 ms 0---------0 [206.214.251.134]
48 150 ms 149 ms 148 ms 0--------0 [206.214.251.137]
49 149 ms 153 ms 148 ms 0-------0 [206.214.251.142]
50 169 ms 146 ms 147 ms 0------0 [206.214.251.145]
51 149 ms 111 MS 260 ms 0-----0 [206.214.251.150]
52 204 ms 166 ms 204 ms 0----0 [206.214.251.153]
53 160 ms 153 ms 169 ms 0---0 [206.214.251.158]
54 181 ms 150 ms 147 ms 0--0 [206.214.251.161]
55 160 ms 150 ms 149 ms 0-0 [206.214.251.166]
56 163 ms 151 ms 151 ms 00 [206.214.251.169]
57 150 ms 153 ms 152 ms I [206.214.251.174]
58 150 ms 149 ms 149 ms By.Ryan.Werber [206.214.251.177]
59 152 ms 152 ms 151 ms When.CCIEs.Get.Bored [206.214.251.182]
60 160 ms 124 ms 129 ms  read.more.at.beaglenetworks.net [206.214.251.185]
61 151 ms 150 ms 149 ms FIN [216.81.59.173]

..."

How did I do the Starwars Traceroute?

How did I do the Starwars Traceroute?

Bored, and in a blizzard in Boston; I was inspired by my IRC friend 'Plazma' constantly making fun of my reverse dns of scrye.net, I came up with this pretty neat hack.

It is accomplished using many vrfs on (2) Cisco 1841s. For those less technical, VRFs are essentially private routing tables similar to a VPN. When a packet destined to 216.81.59.173 (AKA obiwan.scrye.net) hits my main gateway, I forward it onto the first VRF on the "ASIDE" router on 206.214.254.1. That router then has a specific route for 216.81.59.173 to 206.214.254.6, which resides on a different VRF on the "BSIDE" router. It then has a similar set up which points it at 206.214.254.9 which lives in another VPN on "ASIDE" router. All packets are returned using a default route pointing at the global routing table. This was by design so the packets TTL expiration did not have to return fully through the VRF Maze. I am a consultant to Epik Networks who let me use the Reverse DNS for an unused /24, and I used PowerDNS to update all of the entries through mysql. This took about 30 minutes to figure out how to do it, and about 90 minutes to implement. All VRFs and DNS were generated by a PHP script. 
..."

That's pretty darn funny...