You also have the problem of cascading failures. Just because there are redundant paths and alternate peering locations does not mean those facilites have the bandwidth to handle all the redirected traffic. If A gets swamped you go to B if the redrected traffic is to much for B then you go to C and so on - each time the amount of traffic increases and the avialble bandwidth decreases. According to the analysis I've seen and run on the the Baltimore incident this is the jest of how a few cut lines rippled across the Internet. I would think Alex's scenario would have a bigger impact than that incident. sean ----- Original Message ----- From: alex@yuriev.com Date: Friday, September 6, 2002 10:29 am Subject: Re: Vulnerbilities of Interconnection
Lets bring this discussion to a some common ground -
What kind of implact on the global internet would we see
should we observe
nearly simultaneous detonation of 500 kilogramms of high explosives at N of the major known interconnect facilities?
N? Well, if you define N as the number of interconnect facilities, such as all the Equinix sites
Lets say that N is 4 and they are all in the US, for the sake of the discussion.
(and I'm not banging on Equinix, it's just where we started all this) then I think globally, it wouldn't make that much difference. People in Tokyo would still be able to reach the globe and both coasts of the US.
This presumes that the networks peer with the same AS numbers everywhere in the world, which I dont think they do.
The other thing to think about is that the physical transport will be affected as well. Wavelenth customers will lose their paths. Circuit customers that rely on some equipment located at the affected sites, losing their circuits.
Alex