What if, one day, every person who tried to shop at Amazon.com, eBay or any other online store were turned away by an attack on the Internet's core?

In the wake of massive denial-of-service attacks on the Internet's DNS root servers, that scenario seems far more likely than it once did. Although computer users barely noticed the attacks, hackers briefly took out seven of the 13 root servers that manage the Web’s traffic and disrupted the performance of two others.

While the incident showcased the strength of the Net's backbone -- even a massive attack did not bring it down -- others saw it as a frightening reminder of how fragile the Internet truly is.

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