North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)

  • From: Travis Pugh
  • Date: Tue Sep 25 18:08:03 2001

From: "George William Herbert" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)

> Part of the insidiousness of all this is that currently there is
> insufficient information available to a telco line end user to properly
> plan for that sort of loss.

I was able to procure extremely detailed route information from multiple
CLECs and Verizon in the Boston area when researching both dark fiber and
SONET purchases, up to and including street-level maps.  Long-haul providers
also are able to provide detailed route information, if you're willing to
ask -- the key is to be an educated buyer.

> On top of that, none of these facilities are sufficiently hardened.
> What takes a backhoe operator ten minutes by accident would be no more
> than an hours work by hand of a sufficiently educated attacker.
(snip)
> Longer term, we all need to think about multi-level hardening of
facilities
> and connectivity to avoid "cheap kills" due to accident or malicious
attack.

Before I would jump to harden all telecom and colo facilities to physical
attack or mishap, I'd at least examine whether it was cheaper and easier to
design my network assuming that any given facility can / will go away,
either short- or long-term.

-travis