While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old
wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by
routing any packets that used to go directly from Cogent to Level 3
though some 3rd (and) 4th (and) 5th set of providers that are connected
in some fashion to both...
It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
that is likely what would happen. Of course, there are a few downsides
to running RIP on the open Internet as well...
Today's Internet is a few generations beyond what Paul Baran
originally conceived and the policy and politics of
business does tend to gum up the works a bit now that
there is no serious threat of global nuclear war.
I believe the mental->mythical sequence went something like:
- some people (Paul Baran among them) were interested in ways to build
communications networks that could survive lots of damage, and came
up with the idea of distributed networks that could route through
multiple redundant nodes
- the US was in a cold war and nuclear arms race
- a nuclear attack could inflict lots of damage to communications
networks
- the Internet was eventually, to some extent, built as a distributed
network with routing through multiple redundant nodes (if nothing
else, the protocols that ran it were capable of such)
- the Internet was therefore built to survive a nuclear attack
I believe the mental->mythical sequence went something like:
- some people (Paul Baran among them) were interested in ways to build
communications networks that could survive lots of damage, and came
up with the idea of distributed networks that could route through
multiple redundant nodes
Redundant is probably the wrong word, failure-tolerant is probably more accurate.
- the US was in a cold war and nuclear arms race
- a nuclear attack could inflict lots of damage to communications
networks
- the Internet was eventually, to some extent, built as a distributed
network with routing through multiple redundant nodes (if nothing
else, the protocols that ran it were capable of such)
- the Internet was therefore built to survive a nuclear attack
Roughly modeled after something designed to continue to route packets following the loss of a few nodes.
> > While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old
> > wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by
[...]
> It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
For the Internet, I believe it was indeed a myth. I wasn't there,
but according to someone who was:
We'll probably never resolve this question entirely,
but a simple internetwork (partial mesh, not too big)
running RIP does seem to be able to survive in the face
of multiple failures. Presumably, the network view of
a nuclear war would be multiple failures.
In any case, I think that you have to go further back
to find the roots of this story. Paul Baran came up
with the basic ideas of packet-switching and partial
mesh networks which are the foundation of the Internet.
There is a nice explanation of this on his bio page here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/baran.html
I think Dave Reed should have just said to the reporter
that the Internet survived 9/11 so well because it was
largely a non-centralized network that does not depend
on any kind of central traffic control. It's like a road
network where every driver(packet) is free to detour around
obstructions.
I think Dave Reed should have just said to the reporter that the
Internet survived 9/11 so well because it was largely a
non-centralized network that does not depend on any kind of central
traffic control. It's like a road network where every driver(packet)
is free to detour around obstructions.
He should have given the the real reason: most of the Internet routers
were at the old WUTCO building at 60 Hudson St, a safe distance away
from the WTC, while the phone switches were across the street on West
St in a building that was severely damaged. Swap those two buildings
and the myth would be that the phone system is robust and the Internet
is fragile. The phone network reroutes pretty well when the switching
equipment that does the routing hasn't been smashed.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"I shook hands with Senators Dole and Inouye," said Tom, disarmingly.