DDOS attacks protection

This isn''t really games related, but I would like to test my theories about DDOS attacks protection. I''m not really a techical guy in the terms of protocols and hardware when it comes to networking technologies, but I do know some basic firewall and network techiques. Now to my theory; I don''t think there are any good ways of preventing people from DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacking. The problem is that when the DDOS traffic comes to the firewall, it''s removed and not passed by because of firewall filters. But the DDOS attacks takes advantage of the process time it takes the firewall to remove the filtered IP traffic, and therefore making the firewall go down, cutting of the rest of the network. So, no matter how you do it, you can always flood the filtering devices (firewalls) until it''s brought down. There are really good ways of tracking down where the IP packets came from, but then it''s too late, that attack is already made. I''m sure people don''t like when FBI comes knocking on your door, but it seems like most hackers don''t care. It wouldn''t be such a big problem if it was really hard to do, but all there is too it is simple flooding, of course a network with high bandwidth is harder to bring down. What we would get from this is wannabie hackers who uses real hacker''s programs for fun. Or am I completely out of course here, are there good ways of preventing DDOS? ============================ Daniel Netz, Sentinel Design "I'm not stupid, I'm from Sweden" - Unknown