On Fri, Feb 04, 2011 at 02:27:32PM -0800, Matthew Petach said:
The Internet itself will continue to function, no matter what silliness the US political system attempts to engage in; from the perspective of those in the US, it may appear that "the Internet" is unable to survive such an attack; but from the perspective of the rest of the world, it really will be localized damage in the US, and not at all a case of the Internet being shut down.
Hardly. A lot of top level/very popular sites likely have no extra-US redundancy. However, shutting the internet down (you know, when they press the magic button that makes my telebit trailblazer no longer able to do UUCP) would instantly create a market for services more robust/localized/ culturally-customized than those that suddenly go missing on that day. (wonder if anyone has contingency plans in the wings waiting for such an event). That's a pretty dumbass business decision, IMHO. Will nevar evar happen. Political and economic suicide. "internet presence vacuum" - there I coined it. [ side question, how many of the root servers evaporate on that day? ] [ additionally, when the usa is shutdown taking 80% of Canada with it, (truly, w'iz yr biyatches) do we declare a diplomatic emergency/act of war for american actions? or do we just hang our heads in shame at our poor redundancy? ] I suspect the 'internet kill switch' will be used in far more localized situations, like containing single ISPs/cells/threat vectors, as required. (Harkens back to GWB's rarely-mentioned theorizing end-run around Posse Comitatus suggesting 'who else but the military to contain an epidemic outbreak' without mention of threat authentication by independent civilian bodies). Popular uprising in city X tweeting out the new version of Rodney King? Good night and good luck. /kc -- Ken Chase - ken@heavycomputing.ca skype:kenchase23 +1 416 897 6284 Toronto Canada Heavy Computing - Clued bandwidth, colocation and managed linux VPS @151 Front St. W.