Growing Commercialization Threatens Net Security

dr3vil writes "The BBC is reporting that the concentration of the net's backbone in fewer hands has made it more vulnerable to attack. The report compares an attack to travel problems when traffic is disrupted at O'Hare. Hopefully someone in a position to act will pay attention."

Comments

You can get the PDF for the paper here:

[Saint Aardvark]

Click on this link:

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tele

You'll see "View their sample issue." Click on that, then click on the link for Volume 20, Issue 1. Go there. Then you'll see "A geographic perspective on commercial Internet survivability", and you can download the PDF there.

Looks like it's meant to give you only one chance at the free issue, so I think giving the direct link would be pretty useless. Whatever; you're only three clicks away from greatness. :-)

Solution: Mesh Networks

[cosmosis]

Before we jump onto some kind of legislative solution, I think all efforts of everyone in a position to make a difference (and that is everyone) should spread the word about meshnetworks.

Assuming we can de-regulate sufficient spectrum, wireless ad-hoc networks will completely solve the problem of network vunerability, centralization and commercialization. Meshnetworks have the potention to dentralize benadwith distribution in the same p2p decentralized content distribution.

Planet P - Liberation with Technology.

Re:Commercialization ruins so many things.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of things you can do. Buy things with as few logos as possible. Buy things bulk. Just use your purchasing power to enforce your morals.

I'm not against commercialism. Yes, making businesses out of making cars, etc, has built our economy into what it is today. However, branching every new technology into a new way to deliver ads isn't a way I want the economy to expand. I would rather have less money in my pocket than to have corporate eyesores littering the land/cityscape. It's a personal preference, and I am doing what I can to further it.

I'm not that much of an extremist. Small logos and ads are ok with me. However, if I visit a website, and some company has paid for a full page shockwave ad, as well as ten pop-up windows, I'm not going to be buying from that company. If a company plasters huge logos on their clothing, I'm not going to buy it. I do not way to pay to be a billboard.

I hope that clarifies my position.

Bell System

[Detritus]

If you look at network diagrams of the Bell System, when AT&T still ran everything, you will see a system that was designed to cope with disasters and excessive loads. It provided a great deal of flexibility in how calls were routed through the network. Each central office had multiple links to peer central offices and parent central offices. A call could be routed in many different ways. If a link to a peer central office was out, the call could be "kicked upstairs" to a parent central office, which would route it over a different link to the destination central office. The only single points of failure were the local central office and the wires in between the local central office and the subscriber.