Slashdot Mirror
Internet Routing, Looming Disaster?
wiredmikey writes "The Internet's leading architects have considered the rapid growth and fragmentation of core routing tables one of the most significant threats to the long-term stability and scalability of the Internet. In April 2010, about 15% of the world's Internet traffic was hijacked by a set of servers owned by China Telecom. In the technical world, this is typically called a prefix hijack, and it happened due to a couple of wrong tweaks made at China Telecom. Whether this was intentional or not is unknown, but such routing accidents are all too common online. While BGP is the de-facto protocol for inter-domain routing on the Internet, actual routing occurs without checking whether the originator of the route is authorized to do so. The global routing system itself is made up of autonomous systems (AS) which are simply loosely interconnected routing domains. Each autonomous system decides, unilaterally, and even arbitrarily, to trust everything it hears from any other AS, to use that information without validation, and to further transmit that information to its other peers..."
So it's "omfg, we non-technical people just learned how BGP works! it's scary!"
/. about china doing it!"
seeing something like this coming from an AP site, or Fox, I would have just brushed it aside and ignored it. but really? slashdot?
Owner: "you mean I can hijack someone else's traffic!!? omfg!!"
*pays to have someone implement it*
Owner: "WHY DOESN'T IT WORK!!?"
Tech: "I have no idea.. it should! I read an article on
*phone rings*
ISP: "you seem to have a configuration issue on your equipment, you're trying to advertise routes that belong to someone else. you'll have to get that fixed before we continue routing your prefixes to you. "
Owner: "omg, [isp] called me.. undo it all..."
"would i trust everything i see from bear stearns?"
yes
"would i trust everything i see from lehman brothers?"
yes
oh wait..
Now we all know that no one routes traffic over the public internet that it doesn't assume bad actors will see. Right?
Keanu sees my packets?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Tech to owner: you mean just fix it?
Owner. NO NO NO OMG OMG OMG Take it all out, turn it all off, cut all the wire. Cut the electricity to all of it and shotgun the machinery. We have to stop NOW! IT all BorKen!