If This Had Been An Actual Emergency

saridder writes "In an increasing attempt to regulate the Internet like the current PSTN, the US Government has asked the IETF to come up with a system to prioritize government and emergency worker traffic in the event of another disaster, much like the GETS system already in place for the PSTN. It's interesting to follow, because it's only an RFC, so you don't have to follow it. I probably won't be prioritizing government traffic on any of my routers." The story has a link to the ieprep working group if you want to get involved or comment. Perhaps this is a better way than GOVNET.

Comments

However . . .

[cjpez]

. . . wasn't most of the problem just with the major news sites? When all hell broke loose last September, the majority of the "net" seemed to be functioning basically as usual, and it was just the news websites that were being hit.

Were there other problems I just didn't notice? I'm guessing that the government won't need to have priority access to cnn.com if something like that happens again.

Heck, even then, the servers themselves seemed to be the bottleneck. Load levels were pegged beyond comprehension, but I was under the impression that the infrastructure itself held up well. Once again, I could be entirely mistaken about that.

Re:However . . .

[.sig]

Actually, if you believe the popular idea, the government actually does get a lot of it's information from sources such as cnn. It makes sense, as the only time they would need their own news-gathering source would be for classified issues. After all, more often than not the media is the first group on the scene for any occurance.

Re:However . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, even the intelligence agencies get a lot of their information from civilian agencies. For example, one NIMA installation I know of used to have/has televisions mounted out in the halls tuned to things like CNN so people can get quick updates to things going on in the world. Conspiracy theories aside, the intelligence agencies don't know everything that is going on in the world (or else the planes wouldn't have hit the Towers in the first place).

Re:However . . .

[CrackElf]

I was able to get streaming video from bbc, but could not hit cnn's website, implying to me that the bottleneck was @ cnn, not with the infrastructure.

Re:However . . .

[Happy go Lucky]

On 9/11 the Emergency Broadcast System here in the USA was not used AT ALL. WHY?? Because the news channels knew what was going on before the government.

Not quite true. The EBS is mainly intended for "All people downstream of the Lake Pueblo dam, move to higher ground immediately. The dam is breached" or "A tornado has been sighted in the southeastern corner of Arapahoe County, moving northeast at about twenty-five miles an hour. All persons in the area of Blah Blah Blah take cover." EBS isn't just a news substitute. Thats what Denver's (lack of) all-news AM stations are for.

All this talk of emergency communication networks is bogus. They just need to feed information to the news outlets like they always do.

Again, negative. They serve two separate purposes. The news is to inform the public. The EBS is to get very-high-priority, extremely time-sensitive stuff to specific parts of the public. Emergency communications are generally not for public consumption at all.

Emergency logistic communications (like the prioritized email, I'm guessing) are for things like "We need at least three additional ambulances at Fourteenth and Clark" or "We need a dozen more cops at the hospital to keep order" or "Can someone have the Red Cross bring soap and blankets for about five hundred people to City Hall?"

As for tactical communications, we need something to say "two-adam-twelve, two-adam-sixteen, back door's open. Can you send a King unit around this way?" Our radio channels are not designed to have eighty or a hundred cops working on them at once, plus explorers and volunteers. Even with one channel used for nothing but wants checks and one specifically planned for special events, we'll swamp our dispatchers very quickly. Email and internet won't do a lot of good there, unless we need to coordinate with another agency and they have to talk to a dispatcher twenty miles away from ours. It doesn't happen very much, but when it happens you NEED that capability.(As an aside: That was a big problem at Columbine High School a few years ago. There were a half-dozen tactical teams that were simply not equipped to talk to each other.)

For instance, during 9/11, we went into shock when the first plane hit, just like everybody else on the planet. When the second plane hit, I was just getting out of the shower and getting ready for bed (graveyard shift) when my cellphone range and I was told to gear up and get my ass back to the office. I don't watch TV, and rarely listen to the radio (except for "Car Talk" on NPR on Saturday mornings) and so the EBS wouldn't have told me anything. An email might have gotten to me, but it turned out that the cellphone was the easiest (for most of us. About half of the department doesn't have email and most of us deliberately avoid television news, as a mental-health measure.)

Re:However . . .

[gfxguy]

Or "Turn on Cartoon Network."

Some kind of flag?

[MonkeyBot]

So there would have to be some kind of flag on government traffic so it could be placed in a higher priority, right? Does that mean it would be possible to set this flag with some sort of hack so I could get a better ping rate in Quake 3?

Re:Some kind of flag?

[saridder]

You could with diffesrv right now (which is what this system will be based off of), but nobody would honor it.

Sounds good in theory

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

But I don't think it would really work well in practice, unless it becomes government mandatory. Seems to me that it's like blocking spammers or virus spreading, you actually have to make the sysadmin care to do this.

The problem I forsee is how are they going to identify these high priority packets and data transmissions? If they just flag it with a special flag, how long before some haxor figures it out and suddenly everybody has high priority /. reading or pr0n surfing?

Can't miss Slashdot!

[PolyDwarf]

From the article...

Among the applications required by emergency management agencies are voice, video, instant messaging, e-mail, database services and Web browsing.

Good to know that web browsing is an essential service. Can't have the congress-critters missing out on slashdot, right?!
Oh wait, that would require them to have a clue..... Can't have them missing out on msn.com, right?!

If I'm right...

[Have Blue]

...doesn't TCP/IP already have a system for prioritizing packets? Which no one (especially no router) uses for the obvious reason: It's too unregulated and too easy to exploit, especially if you let just anyone onto the net like today.

If this system goes through, all that will happen is that every single packet on the net is a priority-one red-alert packet and the routers will just start ignoring the priorities (again). There is no honor on a completely public medium, don't forget what happened to the idea of open relays.

sounds like..

[raindog151]

sounds like they should just build their own damn secure network. considering this is a resource (not yet) 'owned' by one person, why the hell should they get priority?

sorry, awful things happen. get carrier pigeons.

Re:sounds like..

[mpe]

sounds like they should just build their own damn secure network. considering this is a resource (not yet) 'owned' by one person, why the hell should they get priority?

The US government already has plenty of private voice and data networks, with various level's of security.
The problem, on September 11th, was tha lack of appropriate use of the communication systems available. In other words a failure of people rather than technology. Better technology won't do much when the problem is relevent information not being communicated when it needs communicating. Technology is only an issue when lack or failure of the technology is preventing communication. AFAIK the entire telephone system in the US was working perfectly. A further example of such failure was someone calling the "all clear" in WTC2.

On 9/11 the EBS was not used

[darnellmc]

On 9/11 the Emergency Broadcast System here in the USA was not used AT ALL. WHY?? Because the news channels knew what was going on before the government.

All this talk of emergency communication networks is bogus. They just need to feed information to the news outlets like they always do.

Maybe it's a good idea

[cassandy]

During Operation Sandstorm in Iraq, CNN was one of the quickest, most reliable sources of intelligence that the American military had. Reporters can go where government employees can't, and generally have sources that the government doesn't. Also, most government intelligence has to go through and review, briefing, debriefing, etc. before it can be used. Seeing it live on CNN is much more efficient, and helps to back up intelligence already going thru the ranks

Web-browsing is an essential part of much government intelligence activity now. Using some random example, if some terrorist group has a website, and they put information about themselves and their activities on that website, then that's a bona fide use for web browsing. Checking news sites in other countries is exteremly usefull as well.

In an emergancy, I would want the government ( I'm Canadian btw) to have priority checking updates on CNN over me checking updates on /.

Not the most important...

[Rev Snow]

On 9/11, the most important communications did not come from the government. They were the cell phone calls to/from the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. I'd hate to think that those lifesaving phone calls among private citizens might get squeezed out because giving the governor an update on resuce efforts took priority.

TCP/IP over *what*!?

[Tackhead]

> US Government has asked the IETF to come up with a system to prioritize government and emergency worker traffic in the event of another disaster

When I first read this, I was thinking of the application of routing theory to the movement of vehicles such as would be required in an emergency, which naturally led to...

If you thought TCP/IP over carrier pigeon had huge-azz latency, wait'll you try TCP/IP over government bureaucrat!

First, the IP datagram is printed on a form I-TCPIP by the former acting deputy chief. The scroll of paper is inserted into his briefcase and he's reassigned to acting director for international affairs.

At each hop, the source address is taken by the executive associate commissioner for field operations, and filed according to procedure. After he becomes regional director for the western region, he looks up the address of the next hop.

The next hop's address is glommed onto the datagram by the assistant commissioner for inspections, formerly the acting executive associate commissioner in the office of programs.

Finally, the router, upon receipt of the datagram, forwards it to the special counsel to the commissioner, who herself is then reassigned to assistant deputy executive associate commissioner for immigration services.

Six months after the hijackers initiate transmission via a high-delay, low-throughput, and low-altitude service, the router at the flight school gets the packet containing the 9/11 hijackers' visa approval notifications.

Security is not only a problem in a normal operation, as special measures (such as the firing of the incompetent) cannot be taken even when government bureaucrats are used in a tactical environment.

Humor - "Emergency IP routing system"

[Seth Finkelstein]

I can just see it ... an obnoxious pop-up ad takes over your whole screen, and reads:

This is a test. This is a test of the emergency IP routing system. If this were an actual emergency this message would be followed by instructions on what to do in the case of an actual emergency.

The ISP's in your area, in voluntary cooperation with federal, state, and local authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. Had this been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to surf in your area for official news, information, or instructions.

On the other hand, how much of an emergency could it be if your biggest problem is that your Net connection is down? :-)

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Television Scales Better

[mlknowle]

A broadcast technology like TV or Radio will ALWAYS scale better than a point-to-point technology like Telephone, TCP/IP, SMS, etc.

The best information distribution would be if there was a way to send a message to every phone in the country - to make them all ring at the same time - but that isn't possible with the way switches work.

This technology will never be useful for 'breaking' news distribution, like "GET OUT OF TOWN - TORNADO!" but rather could be useful for managing the long term (i.e., several days - weeks) effect of a massive attack (terrorist, military, or otherwise) on the nation's information systems.

If this was the actual PSTN

[phr2]

then ISP's would be common carriers and many the crazy threats to internet reliability would go away. If someone thinks the song on our outgoing answering machine tape infringes their copyright, they can't get our phone disconnected without a goddamn court order, so they shouldn't be able to make our ISP's censor content without a court order either. And we'd be able to get long-term permanent IP addresses like phone numbers, that couldn't be reassigned at an ISP's whim. Those might be harder to remember than domain names, but they'd be immune to trademark disputes and in general very hard to take away from us, so we could include the numbers in our publications in case something happened to our domain names. All that would be left to screw up is the transport layer, and as the world gets covered with wireless network fabric accessed by low powered devices, transport (at least of low bandwidth, important data) gets extremely hard to disrupt.

IPv6

[chill]

Good excuse to push forward the rollout of IPv6. Gov't grants to ISPs to get new, IPv6 capable, equipment.

IPv6 has better QoS than IPv4.

Can we please have more obscure acronyms?

[harborpirate]

Please, there weren't enough obscure acronyms in this piece for your average government agency. We need more. Have someone get on this ASAP. We need more acronyms PDQ. We need to assign a DOAP and make sure they PATFT. That way we'll all be MHIB. Clearly LIAP for posts or we'd have LODT. So lets KUTGW with OAP and we'll all be VAFWWH.

I consider myself a tech-head, and if I can't make sense of a tech article at a glance after getting a Bachelors in Computer Science, something is wrong. I don't even know if I'm interested in this article. It has something to do with the internet, emergencies, and 9/11; and the rest is friggen jibberish. To add insult to injury, michael the slashdot moderator adds an unrecognizable acronym of his own!

PSTN? GETS? IEPREP? Not to mention the slightly better known RFC and IETF? This is crazy. IMHO, I shouldn't have to follow a link just to find out WTF the article is about. These kind of posters need to STFU or slashdot will be a FUBAR POS that just wastes my time.

DOAP: Designated Obscure Acronym Poster
PATFT: Post All The Friggen Time
MHIB: Much Happier I Bet
LIAP: Length Is A Priority
LODT: Lots Of Descriptive Terms
KUTGW: Keep Up The Good Work
OAP: Obscure Acronym Posts
VAFWWH: Very Appreciative For What We Had

Preserving end to end is more important

[gdyas]

As I see it, preserving the end to end, nondiscriminatory nature of the internet backbone is more important than any current concern about national security or natural disaster response. Creating preferences for any group, no matter how worthy the group or the motive, undermines the essence of what makes the internet a good network and creates opportunities for abuse. Just to touch on a couple points & questions:

• Is There Even A Problem? After our most recent large-scale disaster, 9/11, the internet was one of the networks that had absolutely no problem coping with increased data traffic. Both the POTS and wireless phone systems were overloaded quickly, but the 'net kept chugging along with all due speed. So if everyone's being served quickly even during that large disaster, what's the problem you're providing this solution for? Also, what has been the magnitude increase in state & federal government internet traffic during 9/11 and previous disasters? Is the internet even a minor source of emergency communications? In the face of existing priority access to the phone network, is it even necessary?
  
• Potential For Abuse. Nevermind the local/state/federal flunkies who suddenly realize their goatsec.x is too precious to travel on the non-expedited internet. What I'm worried about are the 3133t HAXX04S out there who're going to have this preferred network busted in a matter of days. All this internet Red Phone system would do is create a federally funded cracking competition, grand prize being superfast uploads.
  
• Feature Creep. It starts out being just for emergencies. Then it's just so damn convenient, the state/local gov't uses it all the time. Next, it gets to where everyone down to your city alderman has preferential net access, for no other reason than they've got a gov't job. I know, it sounds funny, but I don't doubt the possibility of it occuring. It eventually becomes one connection speed for important people (as determined by your friendly neighborhood Federal Bureaucrat) and one speed for the rest of us. And why? Refer to point 1 above.
  

In the future we'll see lots of this. We'll see people coming to us or to the gov't with lots of good reasons for discriminating content on the net. National security. Preserving copyright. Stopping kiddie porn. All putatively good motives, but nobody's seeing that the cure, perfect network control, is worse than the disease. It puts innovation in a box and lets our current interests and concerns block what can be done with the internet in the future, and in return all we get is a network that's little more than a fancy mail-order catalog.

if face == spite (nose = 0);

Re:Preserving end to end is more important

[gdyas]

Damn, thanks for proving my point. As I said in my previous post and if you'll choose to read what you linked, those doctors used the Qwest high-speed network, not the internet, and it was only an assist (advice given while watching an actual doctor perform the procedure), not real surgery being done by robotics over a high-speed connection, no matter how much ABC news wants to hype it as "internet surgery". Such a thing is still so distant as to be well ignorable for quite a while.

And I'll capitalize internet when we start capitalizing dog & cat.

Bravo to the gov on this one.

[glrotate]

Following Internet protocol. Asking for an RFC from the IETF instead of congress passing an unworkable law.

Re:Bravo to the gov on this one.

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

You use whatever is handy (and working).

Wireless TCP/IP networks might be one of the last things left standing.

Also, TCP/IP networks with too many users will give slow service (until it gets so slow it breaks), whereas phones will completely block any calls above 100% load.

On the flip side, if you have a phone connection and the switches/lines aren't damaged and you aren't preempted (which GETS doesn't do, although it probably should *) you have a much more reliable connection than you would on a TCP/IP network.

*) If all circuits are busy, a GETS call won't get through until someone terminates one of their calls. Granted call terminations happen very often (whenever anyone on or through that switch hangs up) on a large switch - but it is still a delay.

oh they have one..

[LinuxHam]

I took a tour of a major defense contractor a couple years ago. They have two separate PCs on each desk, with two separate cable runs -- one to the company network and the Internet and the other to a private military network. They have two separate phone networks, too. The guy took me through *three* swipe card doors to show me their kerberos keyserver. I saw Wargames-like status boards showing link states to various bases across the country and around the world. Over lunch I asked about secret networks, and he says there are at least 4 "Internets, if you will" that he knew of, and was pretty sure there were a few more. They gave the the crappiest one to the general public to play with.

I asked him what would happen if an email intended for the "dark side inbox" somehow landed in the "light side inbox" (his words, not mine). He said guys in dark sunglasses would be there shortly thereafter. :)

The other four touch-tones: A B C D

[Nonesuch]

There are 16 valid touch tones, not 12. You just never get to see the rest of the system.

Yes, there is one additional column of buttons on a military phone, commonly labeled A-D.

I am curious how they maintained this after the AT&T breakup, but I imagine that law that prevents majority foreign ownership of a US LEC has something to do with it.

The extra four buttons have no effect on PSTN, they are only effective on the DoD non-secure switched network.

This is not some ultra-secret network, it is a set of features that is only implemented on military phone switches. It's not widely known, but the frequencies are published, and you can buy surplus phones with the extra keys for cheap:

• http://www.surplussales.com/Communications/Phones. html
• http://www.navyrelics.com/tribute/touch_tone_info. html
• Here's the picture: http://www.surplussales.com/Images/Communications/ Telephones/tel-200809.jpg.
• And an Autovon picture http://www.navyrelics.com/tribute/images/66dial6c_ reduced_size.jpg

The 1963 Autovon system uses the four extra keys for priority, as follows: Autovon legends:

FO = Flash Override
F = Flash
I = Immediate
P = Priority

Oh I see...

[El Camino SS]

The govenment wants the instantaneous communication in case of emergency... instead of the damn near instantaneous communication that all people on the internet have today.

Are their concerns that specialized? First rule, don't put the DOD on the net! Just a bad idea all around. Most everything they would be trafficking is standard office files stuff, right?
Would it kill them to not instant message with sub-20 pings?

I really don't see the concern here. If you can sit on top of a mountain and get your E-mail in a few seconds... then I suppose that I am misundrestanding the information needs that the government has. I don't suppose that they ALL need to have streaming video for their government purposes. Government decisions are not made in nanoseconds... and if they are, they are automated and definitely need not be automated on an open system.

So what is the real concern here? Do the Senators want to less lossy streaming prOn? Does the DoD want to really stream war footage back to the continent over the net? That is what their super expensive sattelites are for. Once again... why the speed when the net is almost instantaneous?

Besides, wouldn't any #1 priority packet get automatically sniffed by whoever was sitting a "listener" next to the routers, knowing that the US Gov't would be the only ones trafficking in #1 packets?

Just a bad idea all around, IMHO.