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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: $400 million network upgrade for the Pentagon
On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Brad Knowles wrote: > > Building a surviable network in such a small area, relatively speaking the > > Pentagon is small, is a much harder problem than diversity on a regional > > or even national network. > > Keep in mind that it was DARPA that funded the original research > on what we now call the Internet. There are plenty of clueless > morons in the building (the one with four sides and a spare), but > there are also some exceptionally sharp people. Its not a matter of having smart people. Distance offers protection against many risks. The closer you put two critical systems to each other (e.g. in the same building) the higher the risk a single catastrophe (or system engineer) will impact both of them. Of course there are limits to diversity, earth is a single point of failure for the foreseeable future. > Perhaps true for the unclassified systems. But then they're not > really that critical to the real day-to-day operations. Moreover, > where the plane struck is not the side where the majority of this > kind of networking is done. I have no idea how many or where the cable entrance facilities are located or how major cables are routed through the Pentagon. Demarcs are sometimes located in the darndest places a long way away from where you might do your work. It might even make sense to put an alternate building entrance facility not on the side where the majority of the networking was done. In any case, classification level is orthogonal to quality.
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