Blackout Shows Net's Fragility

It doesn't come easy wrote to mention a ZDNet article discussing a recent outage between Level 3 Communications and Cogent Communication. A business feud inadvertently highlighted the fragility of the Internet's skeleton. From the article: "In theory, this kind of blackout is precisely the kind of problem the Internet was designed to withstand. The complicated, interlocking nature of networks means that data traffic is supposed to be able to find an alternate route to its destination, even if a critical link is broken. In practice, obscure contract disputes between the big network companies can make all these redundancies moot. At issue is a type of network connection called 'peering.' Most of the biggest network companies, such as AT&T, Sprint and MCI, as well as companies including Cogent and Level 3, strike "peering agreements" in which they agree to establish direct connections between their networks. "

Comments

It always will be fragile

[squoozer]

The Internet will IMVHO always be quite fragile. While the design lends itself to robustness the reality is that there is only money for a few very big connections and therefore a disaster that affects one of these connections is going to cause wide spread outages.

Take, for instance, the connections running between Europe and America. I bet most of them run in almost exactly the same place on the sea bed because it's the cheapest / shortest path to take. A fairly localized geological disaster (at least in geological terms) could cut all the cables at once; or at least enough to make to difference.

If we wanted the network to be robust we would need to run cables up over the north pole and round the equator and probably stick in some satelite links as well. There just isn't money for that. People are willing to accept the risk that it might fail in extreme situations.

FWIW I think the problem is worse on the global scale than the country scale. I imagine most developed countries probably have enough redundancy in their own country. It's the interconnects between countries that are probably the biggest problem.