North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Vulnerbilities of Interconnection
Or you cut the lines coming into the city - i.e Chicago has about 5 diverse routes for fiber into the city. No explosives required and you get the same effect. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Israel <[email protected]> Date: Friday, September 13, 2002 10:52 am Subject: Re: Vulnerbilities of Interconnection > > On 9/13/2002 at 10:30:47 -0400, [email protected] said: > > > > > > > > > > Yet, it is reasonable that people expect x % of their > traffic to > > > > use IX's. If those IX"s are gone then they will need to > find another > > > > path, and may need to upgrade alternate paths. > > > > > > > > I guess the question is. > > > > > > > > At what point does one build redundancy into the network. > > > > > > No, it doesnt necessarily use IX's, in the event of there > being no peered path > > > across an IX traffic will flow from the originator to their > upstream> > "tier1" over a private transit link, then that "tier1" > will peer with the > > > destination's upstream "tier1" over a private fat pipe then > that will go to the > > > destination via their transit private link. > > > > > > I'm only aware of a few providers who transit across IX's and > I think the > > > consensus is that its a bad thing so it tends to be just small > people for whom > > > the cost of the private link is relatively high. > > > > I think you are missing a one critical point - IX in this case > is not an > > exchange. It is a point where lots of providers have lots of > gear in a > > highly congested area. However they connect to each other in > that area does > > not matter. > > > > Now presume those areas are gone (as in compeletely gone). What > is the > > possible impact? > > They're all completely gone? Then we have a bigger issue than the > Internet not working, because lots of us are dead. A lot of the > exchange areas are city-wide, in a literal sense. Take DC, for > example. Lots of folks connect in DC, not just at MAE-East, but also > via direct cross-connects between providers, following a large variety > of fiber paths owned by a variety of carriers. A single event that > removed all the connectivity from DC would either have to devastate > the city and surrounding suburbs, or at a minimum, distrupt > electronics (EMP airburst) or hit every power plant in the area (and > yeah, that kills folks, too, especially in winter.) > > Now, having destroyed civilization in DC (so to speak), we have > removed a major exchange point, but also all traffic generated in DC. > The rest of the Internet is fine. To break the rest of the exchanges, > we'd have to do the same to New York, Dallas, Boston, Chicago, > Atlanta, San Francisco, San Jose... And that's just in the States. > > If you were to hit a telco hotel (usually a hard target, but we'll > grant you the necessary firepower), you would inconvenience the > Internet in that area until another well-connected site could be > chosen and filled with equipment. Internet infrastructure is > logically mapped to telco infrastructure, and telco infrastructure is > ubiquitous. You're looking for a weakness where it isn't. If you > wanted to hurt the Internet, you wouldn't hit a city. You'd hit the > cross country fiber paths, out in the middle of nowhere. > > -Dave > > >
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