This document discusses denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. It defines DoS as a malicious attempt to deny service to customers of a victim site or node. It can cause network congestion, use up CPU time and memory, and make sites unavailable. Symptoms include slow performance, inability to access websites, and connection issues. DoS attacks are classified into bandwidth/throughput attacks, protocol attacks, and software vulnerability attacks. The document provides examples like SYN floods, Smurf attacks, and discusses ways to help mitigate attacks like using firewalls, switches, routers, and distributed defense systems.