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

The small should pay for the big?

[hkmwbz]

As I understand it, these were about the same size and had an agreement, or didn't bother to bill each other. Then suddenly one of them figured out that "hey, we are bigger, so they should pay us!"... And the smaller one cut off the connection because they didn't want to pay since they considered themselves to be as big as their rival.

What I don't get is why one of them would suddenly want the other to pay up. What's changed now, and why does the smaller company have to pay the big one's bills?

Am I missing something here?

Efficiency can be the enemy of robustness

[dpilot]

This statement popped up in some of my security readings. It's most "efficient" to have one path between two places, and it's most "efficient" to set up peering agreements to route packets. But these efficient measures can introduce single points of failure.

On a similar note, that's why there are 13 root DNS servers, and why most of us aren't supposed to use them. The DNS example though, is one where efficiency and robustness agree. It's more efficient, at least in terms of net bandwidth, to use a DNS server closer than the root servers.