And when you go to figure out why that IP wont ping through Cogent on
your exchange, and start troubleshooting but can't get any answers
as to why things are bust...
[ Clearly now an operational issue for NANOG. ]
Purposely breaking routing and not being able to talk about why is going to
set many orgs at odds with their basic operational charters. I expect that
a paid service will work when it's provided, including help debugging their end.
This is slightly different from a service provider, ostensibly you can
go elsewhere to get service - but when you are a member of a nonprofit *IX
(as we are with TorIX), things get a lot more complex.
I imagine contract lawyers are going to be all over this.
Just meant it as a parallel operational example. Both situations, while legally
distinct, present the same operational issues.
Purposely breaking things - and then being required to keep the breakage secret -
is going to mess up a whole lot of things. (How does Chinese operators handle this?)
Additionally the snooping is an issue, though I can't imagine anyone depends on
an IX for maintaining secrecy at a contract level Today's realities.
There is one problem: The article is factually incorrect on multiple points.
It would be interesting to know what points those are, it reads mostly accurately
to me.
The proposed constitutional changes are in the public domain.
The main problem, though this point may have gotten lost in the very long
discussion on the LINX members list, is that the reasoning and motivation for
the changes was not made clear. Even when explanatory materials were
belatedly provided, they weren’t especially clear.
So instead of saying, "we have this new spying law in the UK and we need
to rejigg the decision-making at LINX so we will be ready in case we are
required to do something that must be kept secret" what was proposed to
the membership was, "we have embarked on this long governance journey
and this is what we have come up with as the best way to run LINX". Those
are two very different propositions, especially for busy people who don’t have
time to read in detail and understand all the implications.
All that I suggested is that the members be properly informed so that they
can make this choice with their eyes open. It is important to have this
discussion in the open, and explicitly mark the transition where Internet
Exchange Points re-organise themselves to accommodate spying laws and
gag orders.
William Waites
Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science
School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
Informatics Forum 5.38, 10 Crichton St.
Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, Scotland
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
So instead of saying, "we have this new spying law in the UK and we need
to rejigg the decision-making at LINX so we will be ready in case we are
required to do something that must be kept secret"
Yes but "hey government, swivel on this" isn't going to be an
effective secret weapon, they'll neutralise it before you use it
what was proposed to
the membership was, "we have embarked on this long governance journey
and this is what we have come up with as the best way to run LINX". Those
are two very different propositions
It's one thing to nobble a single network under the IP Act to interfere
with equipment but to use a neutral exchange to nobble shared
infrastructure used across US and UK and ... is a completely different
can of worms.
I don't exercise a vote anymore at LINX but I do hope members will pause
and consider this very carefully indeed.
Today's realities.