North American Network Operators Group

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Re: False-alarm generator

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Fri Sep 27 16:51:02 2002

On Fri, 27 Sep 2002 [email protected] wrote:
> If the government map is designed properly then it won't turn red unless
> 75% of the ISP maps have turned red.

If 75% of the ISPs have turned red, do you really need a multi-million
dollar government monitoring system to tell you that?  Just watch on BBC,
CNN, MSNBC, FOXNEWS because its probably one of the top stories.

Of course the (US, Chinese, German, etc) government wants to collect all
information about everything, but how does does it actually help ISPs
more than the monitoring and response systems ISPs already use? In reality
most major ISPs today not only monitor their own network, but also monitor
beacons in, on and through other providers' networks.

The issue is not detecting when there is a "big" problem on the network.
I've been able to figure out when there are problems on the network with
a very small budget for years.

The unsolved problem is communicating why there is a problem on the
network.

My concern with the NCS proposal is the NCS/NCC wants to detect unusual
activity on the Internet.  So ISPs are going to end up being tasked to
respond to the NCS everytime someone in Washington thinks they saw a
puddycat on the Internet.  And as CAIDA will tell you, there is a lot of
strange stuff on the Internet on a "normal" day.