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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:10:58
David Honig (honig@sprynet.com)
Tue, 18 Aug 1998 14:31:04 -0700
At 08:01 AM 8/16/98 -0700, Alex Alten wrote:
>Bruce,
>
>You are making it sound worse than it is. The underlying network
>routing infrastructure is designed to be extremely robust in the face
>adverse conditions (originally it was nuclear attack). I'm only aware
>of two incidents that actually ground large parts of the Internet to a
>halt. The 1st involved a bug in the backbone rounters when the Internet
Packet-routing is robust to node failure. The IP, as such a protocol,
can handle the occasional backhoe.
The internet protocol was *not* designed for hostile nodes. The enemy was
not going to be in your net; she was going to be lobbing bombs on it.
The IP assumes friendly use of the resources a host devotes to its network
i/f. Existing higher-level protocols (e.g., TCP) support the occasional
lost packet, but e.g., denial-of-service or name-resolution attacks are not
handled well by popular networking protocols or the software that
implements them.
The internet (as commonly deployed today) is *comically ridiculous* as a
reliable system (eg for 'critical infrastructure' and/or commerce), but
don't tell anyone, or they'll stop investing in it. "Rickety" is an
understatement.
"If civilization was built like software, the first woodpecker that came
along..."
**
"Why is my computer not faster?" asked the gardener.
"Turn the spigot" said the engineer, pointing to the valve
at the far end of the hose which the gardener held.
The gardener did so, and shortly thereafter felt the hose stiffen.
With that, the gardener was enlightened.
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:10:58