Allow me to be the first to recommend the following IP address as a potential target for your efforts:

207.46.193.254

Me too - you can add my machine to your pool. It's on 127.0.0.1.

Second Life? A fully formed world, full of actual humans whose reactions you can test, and no-one will give a toss if you cyber-nuke the entire thing.

<<<This research may include research in networking protocols and architectures (such as mobile ad hoc networks) or network and end-point capabilities (such as revolutionary collaboration capabilities, security concepts, or network-enabled military systems)." .... SN08-04 Request for Information ... Cyber Network Range Capabilities (CNRC)>>>

Sounds just like a little sister to AI HyperRadioProActivity a la Bletchley Boffin Control in C42 Quantum Control Systems .... the Creation in CyberSpace of the Command and Control of Computers and Communications ....or would it be a plagarising clone of IT, courtesy of Menwith Hill and Echelon and all that spooky stuff, which might be the current state of the art and capabilities across the community?

<<<. The requested information is sought to determine the current state of the art and capabilities across the community. No funding has been allocated to this effort at this time. >>> .... Pay peanuts, get monkeys, which is why that is as much as everyone now knows. The potential of the art and ITs capabilities will require the allocation of funding. Just dream up a figure, it'll probably do the trick, if realistic.

cc DARPA

And Skull and Bones, because they need IT for Real as their Sub-Prime Performance testifies. You know IT makes Sense [if you have been joining up all the dots]

I bet they get every firewall developer in the business at their door tomorrow.

"Hi, I'm from Mcaff... erm, no wait, I'm Joe, I would like to offer my network for your firing range."

The U.S. government is taking hte threat of cyber war serously! Discussion about creating a new department/agency that specifically addresses cyber defense/security have been reported in Washington for months. Reallocation of fund toward cyber defense and security has recently taken place all indicating the level of concern. However, awareness of the impact on corporate systems is at this point very limited. Only a few clients have cyber war as one of the items listed on their enterprise threat matrix. In 2001, when I was the Chief Strategist of Netscape I raised this concern. Now our cyber threat matrix includes over 100 countries and special interest groups with capabilities ranging from limited to extremely advanced. I firmly believe we will experience a cyber war in the (Estonia withstanding) in the next 18 to 30 months. Are we prepared NO!

I understand that large networks, containing machines of varied types on heterogeneous network architectures are readily available at reasonable prices.

Simply go online looking to hire/buy a BattleOperationsTesting-net...

Isn't there already a massively online set of connected computers running different operating systems, protocols and connected in pretty much every conceivable way possible?

You don't see botnetters and hackers looking for funding, they just get on with it. The easiest thing for Darpa to do at this point is just send out one of those emails purporting to be from the DoJ. Half the population will click on them regardless of authenticity and anyone who DOES check the authenticity will also click on it.

"I firmly believe we will experience a cyber war in the (Estonia withstanding) in the next 18 to 30 months. Are we prepared NO!"

Kevin,

What do you think the present sub-prime/credit crunch is all about? Cyber warfare or dumb market adjustment/wealth transfer/global theft? Is there a difference?

..yes, I represent the Russian Business Network...and now that the Cold War is over, to show that Putin is really a good guy, we'll let you use our "distributed" network for testing"...

..if only

"Please let us shoot at you"?