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.
Which four? Makes a big difference. And there, we just got proprietary/classified. I've often wondered what difference there would be in attacking cable heads instead of colo sites. Cut off the country from everywhere. How bad would that be.
I was under the impression that OCS/Homeland Security had already done a little study, perhaps aided by some other 3 letter agencies and some Telco's, for this very thing. I was also under the impression that the number of sites had to be sigificantly higher than 4 to do any real damage.
That study probably came from the same people who believe that Echelon can intercept every single email sent, in addition to every phone conversation and fax. Bankruptcies of two fiber carriers showed rather clear that those companies themselves do not know where do they have what and what depends on what.
(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.
Hadn't thought of that. I'm not sure then of the impact.
Additionally, a majority of peering, big peering, isn't on public exchanges is it? So, you'd have to find all the places that the larger providers connect to eachother and perhaps target these. Even with this there are the public exchanges so things 'should' fail over to them...
Interconnect sites are not public peering. It is simply a location where the networks exchange traffic with each other.
This was about the result I heard, you can easily cut out 'mom and pop' ISP, but cutting out a large provider is a tougher task with bombs... we already know its possible with the right routing 'update' :(
Tell it to those whose primary facility was in one tower of WTC and backup facility in another. Alex