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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."
Surely you mean increased centralization, however.
Oh, you were using O'Hare as an example? Nevermind.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Can someone please explain WTF does that have to do with anything? Do they just throw that kind of stuff in as an onbligatery 9/11 reference?
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
Internet access and bandwidth are very vulnerable, but remember there are lots of copies of the DNS server records, and the actual content is extremely widespread and can easily be put online again given some time - in a genuine emergency situation internet access would only be a priority to those on the periphery anyway. Fine, we need more hubs and greater decentralisation, but lets not get carried away.
The Internet really isn't alone. Ads have really taken over society. Everywhere you look, from people's clothing to the garbage on the ground, to blatently all over every layer of packaging on the goods you buy at the local Safeway.
I've gotten so sick of it. The reason I switched to Linux (probably the dumbest reason in a lot of people's opinions) was to escape the fact that every program I installed had huge logos and ads plastered all over.
I remember when you were mocked and considered weird if you sold out. Now, if you don't sell out, you're considered stupid for not making money while you can.
I get the feeling this blatent lack of ethics will be part of the downfall of our economy. You can only have so many people leeching at one time before it runs out of blood.
Now, now, give the Editors a break. If that particular filter worked there'd be no need for "-1 Redundant."
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
They do have a point here.
:-)
The fewer centralized points the traffic has to go through the higher the risk of failure. And with failure, the lack of service to millions of people.
I can't validate the correctness of the story, but my impression has always been that the backbones are designed to failover if they hit a problem and that there are several routes between multiple backbones that is serving the same strecth of net. I may be wrong on this, but at least that was the goal back in the 80's when I first started using the net.
The article needs to be taken serious, as more and more business depends on the net. If it fails one one or more backbone stretches, it will have enormous consequences for business, meaning your's and my paycheck may be endangered. Oh, and the answee is not to get rid of Microsoft in this case
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
It would have ripple effects throughout the internet..."
Veni, vidi, vici.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
--
Sex Gateway
Sex - Find It
In what was considered a shocking move today, members of the Mouse Movement known as You moved my Cheese, you Rat Bastard, or YMMC,YRB for short, have declared war on the ever popular internet.
Speaking from his private "nest" in the foothills of Santa Barbara, General Carlissimo P Rodentia had this to say:
"You have bombarded my people for years with your unwanted peecees and aol ceedees. No longer. Your precious internet cannot stand the assault of 100 billion of my brother's and sister's teeth. Consider yourselves warned."
A truly ominous sign of the times.
Signing off, this is Reginald Rattus, reporting.
Sent from your iPad.
Think for a minute, what country has about the most centralized internet backbone? That would be China, or, The Great Firewall of China. Look at it this way, in order to Do Something Really Bad in China, they have to implement it on one set of backbones with one central authority.
Now that the backbone is mostly owned by big business in the United States, it centralizes control of the Internet toward big businesses. Which yeah, could really pretty much suck.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
In its early days the net was as decentralised, as possible with multiple links between many of the nodes forming it. If one node disappeared, traffic could easily flow to other links and route traffic to all parts.
.edu's, .gov's and .mil's, there was no need for centralization. However, suddenly, one day everyone wanted to be on the net! And out of that chaos, logical central points developed.
I would not give this article a lot of serious thought. It describes how simulated attacks show vulnerable spots in the internet, and seeks to lay blame for it. However, comparing the current state of the Internet to it's own beginnings is obviously going to show differences (DUH!). I mean, back in the pre-web days (you remember those, folks? ah, sweet gopher. R.I.P.), if you didn't know exactly where or what you were looking for... well... none of this fancy googlin' stuff, that's all I gotta say.
If you consider the growth of the internet from that point, which was basically a loose, random interconnection of
I like to explain the internet to non-techie people as something like the Interstate highways in the United States. And using that metpahor... if you take out a central location... well, it'll be a lot slower and harder to get to where you need to go, but it's not like you've isolated an entire region for all eternity.
My point is, there are centralized locations because it was efficient to do so. Eventually, as more and more high speed wire is laid out across the world, these will slowly become less important. It's just that the growth has been too fast for the present time!
I moderate "-1, Fool"
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. :-)
Carousel is a lie!
Obviously there were good reasons to introduce CIDR (Classless Inter Domain Routing) and concentrate the ability to route around problems to the 'core' of the internet, but this is the price you pay.
The only way real redundancy and fault-tolerance will be restored is to introduce IPV6 - or some other means to widen the availablity of routable IPV4 space, and remove the barriers currently in place for people to partipate in the 'routable' internet.
Of course with this comes lack of control for MPAA/RIAA/Governments, increased freedom for independent operators, and also increased complexity and route-table storage requirements for all.
However, if the internet is to withstand prolonged and/or distributed attack, then the ability to route effectively will have to be extended further toward the edge of the net than it currently is.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
In other news, Bin Laden has been sighted in Saudi-Arabia with 20 Al-Quada script kiddies. Latest findings of the CIA conclude that Bin Laden is trying to build a biochemical weapon throwing sludges of contaminated biomatter called a "GES BioRifle" and that Australia has mysteriously disappeared of the world map. Weapons experts disagree with these findings, claiming "Redeemeers" are much better, though the news about Australia was ethusiastically welcomed with cheers like "No more Steve Irwin or Kylie Minogue!".
However, a recent investigation in some random MS Monopoly lawsuit indicated that Bill Gates does indeed cheat, playing with several copies of the authentic Broadway and Park Drive cards, as well as a recent donation of 20 Windows XP Pro packages to Palm Tree Nr 137 in Saudi-Arabia with a note reading "BOMB FINLAND" and enough funds to construct a backbone connection to Saudi-Arabia. US officials are skeptic about the current findings, saying "Haven't we blown up Saudi-Arabia yet? Oh, that was Australia?" Several high ranked military officials were unavailable for comment, but disapproved of Bill Gates cheating at Monopoly.
Coalition forces have responded by pre-emptively bombing Iraq like they have done for the last decade. US fighter-bombers scrambled and succesfully bombed 3 hospitals, 2 schools and a Burger King in Washington DC. Brittish commandoes went in and simply cut the backbone connection with Margaret Thatcher's fake teeth. Bin Laden and the 20 script kiddies have escaped, leaving a videotaped message behind, calling for a holy war against the US and against Saudi-Arabia for disconnection power to Palm Tree Nr 137. Bin Laden was last seen hiding on the North Pole in a red suit, a sleigh, a bunch of biochemical reindeer and 20 script kiddie elves. US bombers are underway as this article is written.
Film at 11.
Hate me!
It would be interesting to see if more people started running alternate routes through friends houses and what not. A guy I work with has a p2p 802.11b link to another guy I work with's cable modem 5 miles away, despite having DSL himself. I know that when I pulled my (late) linksys router out of the box, I was surprised to see that it supported RIP.
The truth is that it is really not that hard to run multiple routes out of your bedroom. If you use *nix for your router (like I do since I burned up my linksys), it's as easy as dropping in another NIC (wireless, or ethernet, or modem, or whatever) and configing the new interface.
There's also the growing trend in community nets (particularly wireless community nets)... these could link themselves together fairly cheaply by setting up additional wireless links with directional antennae pointed at other peer community nets.
Anyway, I'd be curious to see how many new routes start springing up between these 2nd-class (and no-class) networks. The beauty of Internet Protocol is that this really works.
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq
The government is the absolute antithesis of decentralization. Look at the heirarchy - if there's anything that public servants and the government structure as a whole is known for, it's a pecking order. Government doesn't understand decentralization, because ultimately that tends to make things harder to control and administer, and governments are all about controlling and administering. That's their core goal.
The government's primary self-chosen mission in most countries of the world today is to promote economic growth, which often is interpreted as doing whatever the industrialists ask of them. And guess where the industrialists stand on the commercialization of the internet....
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I don't see why centralization would come up though, regardless of who owns the fiber, it's still in the same place. The routers are also still in the same place most likely, which basically means what's getting centralized are the servers, and we already know that. Imagine how many fewer webservers there would be if San Jose were to lose connectivity, or New York for that matter. It's also possible that with fewer providers we have fewer routers which means there are fewer places BGP is routing with. This decreases fault tolerance, of course, and to some degree performance. It's like how when you're in Iowa you see most of your traffic going through Kansas City, even if it's going to Chicago.
*shrug*
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Shouldn't that be: mediocracies
:-)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Yes, Virginia, the health of the Internet *does* depend on decentralized technologies such as multiple backbones, gegraphically distributed root name servers, and standards committees not answerable to any single political entity or product vendor.
It's no different from a business monopoly, (or cartel, or oligopoly) which tends to create artificially high prices, poor quality of goods and services, and in the case of computing and networks a fertile breeding ground for viruses, worms and other nasty exploits.
And the analogue these worlds share with real live ecosystems is uncanny: Plant an entire state in one strain of corn for a few seasons in a row and watch the fun.
Didn't we already learn this crap? Why do the FCC, FTC, SEC and other god-forsaken, nutless bend-over wastes of acronyms keep rubber-stamping all the mergers?
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
The Internet was developed under the watchful guidance, and using the money, of none other than Uncle Sam -- the U.S. government. Way back in the early days of the ARPAnet, it was deliberately made decentralized, and designed to treat any blockage to the free flow of information as damage, to survive a nuclear attack.
Perhaps the government won't be willing to pay the bills to keep today's Internet from becoming overly centralized, but it knows how.
Catherine
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.
www.enthea.org
You're absolutely right! Can you even imagine some part of the government trying to think about decentralization? Ha! Their brains would probably explode! Stupid governments.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
What does commercialization have to do with the Internet backbone being in fewer hands, shouldn't the title be "Growing Backbone Consolidation threatens Net Security. The last thing we need is G.W. thinking that their are comunists on slashdot. We will all be branded as terrorists.
Much of global Internet traffic on the intercontinental level is routed through the USA, even though the origin or destination may be totally outside the USA. For instance, traffic between Asia-Europe, or South America-Australia will almost always pass through the US, because most of those "hubs" are, as the article mentions, in the USA.
I believe more work should also be done on interconteninental links that do not go through the USA as well.
I have nothing againt the USA, but the Internet is critical to more than just the USA now, and were the unthinkable to happen again in the USA, there should be redundancy. Also, it would be much more efficent in terms of latency (eg, Europe-Asia instead of Europe-USA-Asia).
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
It seems to me that the commercialization of the
Internet has brought so much new capacity online
that it is more reliable than the old days, due
to the existance of competing long-haul cables
operated by different companies.
For example, back in the early 90's Australia was
served by a single 10mbps trans-pacific Internet
connection. If it went down (as frequently
happened), the whole continent was cut off!
Today there are several links to the rest of the
world, and outages of that kind are unknown.
Guess who paid for those links? That's right,
for-profit commerical corporations.
The problem of centralized control is different from the problem of centralized points of failure.
Sure, if the government decides to break the infrastructure, it only has to make that choice once. That is the problem of centralized control.
They are perfectly capable of putting connex between every police station in the nation, though, and providing incredibly decentralized points of failure. In fact, that's what they've done. There was some federal bill for emergency communications centers, so now many new police buildings take federal money. The feds pay for the whole building in exchange for using the basement as a communications center.
The question is, are you more worried about a backhoe taking out an essential backbone, or are you more worried about our government turning into communist China. I'd say the backhoe is more likely, just because it already happened.
Of course, the reason you're opposed to this isn't because the government can't do it properly. It's because you think the government would spend too much money doing it. And of course, you're right. Don't mean to bait, but when you start acting like you have some other set of reasons... you sound like a liar.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The design of TCP/IP allows for redundancy and survivability, however most if not all of the research backbones that evolved into the commercialized Internet never had a great deal of redundancy. Granted, later incarnations like the NSFNET T3 network were better, but most had single points of failure which could be felt across large parts of the Internet when those points had problems...
--zawada
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
It could be useful to point out once again that multiple interconnections and multiple routes was an important part of the original Arpanet that led to the Internet. It was (as the commercial people keep forgetting) a project funded 100% by the US Defense Department, and they wanted a network that would survive in battle conditions. Fact is, this is also a good design principle for design in a world where many of the components have a MTBF of days or weeks.
Problem is, commercial folks invariably see reduncancy as a needless expense. Their natural tendency is to reduce everything to the bare minimum (while selling the maximum, of course). Then when anything breaks, big chunks of the system are down.
The World Trade Center attack is an excellent example that woke up a lot of people. There was far too much infrastructure passing under those buildings, and as a result, a lot of the communication systems in Manhattan collapsed along with the buildings. This stupidity was pointed out by people before the attacks, but the commercial interests in charge of the comm lines saw no profit in decentralizing. Even now, they're resisting the idea and merely rebuilding a lot of the destroyed capacity, because a better system would be more expensive.
Governments have stepped in and forced things like the phone, electricity and highway systems to have alternate routes that can be used in disasters and emergencies. The Net is becoming an important part of the world's infrastructure, and eventually those evil old governments are going to step in and force the commercial crowd to supply redundancy in the same way.
--
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is far better than the pre-1993 days when there was a single backbone, operating on non-redundant private lines.
I guess this guy wanted some publicity. He got it.
I'm amazed to see comments like yours on a tech forum. Civilization has put its eggs in the internet basket. Basically, because it's cheaper.
Most data traffic having to do with operating the supply chain that gets those grapes to your grocery store in terms of wine and that cattle rancher's product to your store in terms of steak goes through the Internet. Even in the cases where this isn't so, you can bet that at least a few critical links in the supply chain are via Internet.
Could workarounds be found? For the short term, maybe. However, perhaps you'd notice if the price of milk in your grocery store went up 50% or average prices at WalMart went up 100%.
The only people who wouldn't notice the effects of a long-term loss of the Net are so remote from civilization that the international market economy doesn't touch them much, and that doesn't even describe most of the Third World. They might not know why they suddenly can't make a living or the price of anything imported doubled or worse, but they would notice.
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