At the movies with network technology

How often have you found yourself sitting home watching TV or in a darkened theater watching a movie when some striking actor very seriously strings together a series of words that amounts to nothing short of technology Gobbledygook - and that without a shadow of a doubt you know in the real world makes absolutely no sense?

I am guessing a lot. Heck, I'm just a simple journalist covering network technology and often find myself thinking - and sometimes saying aloud to my dismayed family and friends - "Hey! That's not right! It doesn't work that way!"

For instance, last year's "Live Free or Die Hard" caused many technology buffs to cringe when technical impossibilities became part of the plot. According to IMDb.com, factual errors in the film run the gamut from speedy downloads of terabytes of data (which arguably could be used only to keep the film moving) to bad guys looking up IP addresses.

"Factual errors: While the bad guys may have been able to identify the IP Address that someone was using, the name of the user does not come up. The best they could do is identify the ISP the IP Range is registered to," the Web site explains.

This week network professionals in particular will be able to see firsthand how well the directors, writers, creators and consultants that worked on Sony Pictures "Untraceable" did translating DNS technology to the big screen. The movie, of which I have seen only trailers, depicts the FBI's hunt for a cyber serial killer that uses a Web site to murder victims and lure voyeurs to help. The apparent premise is the more people that click on the link, the faster the victim dies.

To add to the plausibility of the plot, the film uses technology that exists on the market today. DNS vendor DNSstuff made its way into the Hollywood script on the recommendation of a former FBI agent that says he used the vendor's tools in his job.

"DNSstuff is one of the various companies I would use to do a whois search and track down domain name information," says Ernest "E.J. Hilbert II, former FBI agent and current director of security enforcement at MySpace.com. "I worked with the movie's CGI folks to help them understand how such technologies would work and could look, or how they should appear. For example, what Web site you would to go to run whois or where to go to run traceroute."