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The Status of Routing Reform — How Fragile is the Internet?

Posted by timothy on from the hopefully-comcast-is-not-the-standard-bearer dept.

crimeandpunishment points out the Associated Press's look (as carried by SkunkPost) "at an issue the government has been aware of for more than 20 years, but still isn't fixed and continues to cause Internet outages: a flaw in the routing system that sends data from carrier to carrier. Most outages are innocent and fixed quickly, but there's growing concern the next one could be devastating. A general manager at Renesys Corporation, which tracks the performance of Internet data routes, says, 'It amazes me every day when I get into work and find it's working.'"

6 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. between this and that dnssec thing... by gandhi_2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...i'm glad I decided to wait for internets2 before i get online.

    [posted via FIDOnet]

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    THL phish sticks
    1. Re:between this and that dnssec thing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, it's on dogs. See, he posted from Fidonet! Dogs carry around TCPIP packets.

    2. Re:between this and that dnssec thing... by Abstrackt · · Score: 2, Funny

      Dogs carrying TCP/IP packets... is that more reliable than RFC1149?

      It's certainly more reliable than when they tried using cats. Not only was it very high latency but sometimes packets would get dropped or lost under the fridge. In most cases, the data wouldn't get delivered at all. Add to that the inability of RFC1149 to operate in the same spectrum as cats (too many mangled packets) and you can see that dogs were clearly the better choice.

      --
      They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
  2. Re:Use phone to manually change routes? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Funny

    How about carrying an iridium phone?

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    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  3. Re:The Internet is not going to end by timmarhy · · Score: 2, Funny

    it's hard to work out if your joking, ignorant or stupid

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    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  4. Clarke's Third Law by ChipMonk · · Score: 2, Funny

    'It amazes me every day when I get into work and find it's working.'

    Or, as Arthur C. Clarke put it, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."