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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:10:59
Allen Ethridge (ethridge@onramp.net)
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 00:27:47 -0500
David Honig wrote:
>At 03:00 PM 8/18/98 +0200, Andreas Bogk wrote:
>>On Sun, Aug 16, 1998 at 08:01:36AM -0700, Alex Alten wrote:
>>> 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
>>
>>Resistance against nuclear attacks has never been a design goal of
>>the Internet[0], and the Internet will not resist a well-organized attack
>>against a handful of key points.
>
>
>
>The following are from the mid-60's. See:
>http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/baran.list.html
>(excerpt at bottom)
>
>http://www.rand.org/cgi-bin/Abstracts/ordi/getab.pl?525148-525676
>
>You may argue that these systems did not become the internet, but the
>funders' are the same and their motivations didn't change.
I haven't looked at your references, but...
Redundancy and/or the ability to dynamically route around dead nodes are
certainly critical to a highly reliable network. But such a network
must also have the ability to intelligently shed the excess capacity
generated when nodes are lost. This requires that packets carry
different priorities. Even with this capability survival of the network
is not survival of the service. Low priority packets, like, say, this
particular email, just wouldn't go through. And this would mean that from
my point of view the network was dead, although the general down the street
might still be able to browse the web at will.
The current funders' of the internet are private corporations. Their
concern is reasonable service at a reasonable cost. They're not planning
for nuclear war or any other major catastrophes.
Of course, with my telephony background, where switches are expected to
remain up at all costs, I get a little frustrated when my ISP reboots
their name server nearly every night just before midnight. It's effectively
five(!) minutes of downtime every day!
Allen
The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Sat Apr 10 1999 - 01:10:59