Fw: Nuclear survivability (was: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by routing any packets that used to go directly from Cogent to Level 3 though some 3rd (and) 4th (and) 5th set of providers that are connected in some fashion to both...
It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP that is likely what would happen. Of course, there are a few downsides to running RIP on the open Internet as well... Today's Internet is a few generations beyond what Paul Baran originally conceived and the policy and politics of business does tend to gum up the works a bit now that there is no serious threat of global nuclear war. --Michael Dillon
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:54:34 +0100 Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by [...] It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
For the Internet, I believe it was indeed a myth. I wasn't there, but according to someone who was: <http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2004-April/003940.html> John
on Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 03:25:54PM -0500, John Kristoff wrote:
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:54:34 +0100 Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by [...] It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
For the Internet, I believe it was indeed a myth. I wasn't there, but according to someone who was:
<http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2004-April/003940.html>
I believe the mental->mythical sequence went something like: - some people (Paul Baran among them) were interested in ways to build communications networks that could survive lots of damage, and came up with the idea of distributed networks that could route through multiple redundant nodes - the US was in a cold war and nuclear arms race - a nuclear attack could inflict lots of damage to communications networks - the Internet was eventually, to some extent, built as a distributed network with routing through multiple redundant nodes (if nothing else, the protocols that ran it were capable of such) - the Internet was therefore built to survive a nuclear attack QED, HTH, HAND -- hesketh.com/inc. v: +1(919)834-2552 f: +1(919)834-2554 w: http://hesketh.com antispam news, solutions for sendmail, exim, postfix: http://enemieslist.com/
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Steven Champeon wrote:
on Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 03:25:54PM -0500, John Kristoff wrote:
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 11:54:34 +0100 Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by [...] It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
For the Internet, I believe it was indeed a myth. I wasn't there, but according to someone who was:
<http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2004-April/003940.html>
I believe the mental->mythical sequence went something like:
- some people (Paul Baran among them) were interested in ways to build communications networks that could survive lots of damage, and came up with the idea of distributed networks that could route through multiple redundant nodes
Read the paper here: http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/baran.list.html Redundant is probably the wrong word, failure-tolerant is probably more accurate.
- the US was in a cold war and nuclear arms race
- a nuclear attack could inflict lots of damage to communications networks
- the Internet was eventually, to some extent, built as a distributed network with routing through multiple redundant nodes (if nothing else, the protocols that ran it were capable of such)
- the Internet was therefore built to survive a nuclear attack
Roughly modeled after something designed to continue to route packets following the loss of a few nodes.
QED, HTH, HAND
-- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joel Jaeggli Unix Consulting joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2
Probably the most authoritative statement out there is at http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200003/msg0008... I quote:
So the motivation for Paul's work was to provide a minimal but highly survivable one-way communications arrangement to get out the go-code; it was NOT motivated by a requirement for a survivable command-control system that could support the forces fully in both peace and in war.
That's from Willis Ware, who was in the management structure at RAND at the time. But Baran's own attitude is a bit different. Here's quote from Abbate's "Inventing the Internet": on page 1 of the introduction to his 1960 paper describing a survivable communications system Baran explicitly characterized his proposed network as a tool for recovering from?rather than forestalling?a nuclear war: "The cloud-of-doom attitude that nuclear war spells the end of the earth is slowly lifting from the minds of the many?. It follows that we should?do all those things necessary to permit the survivors of the holocaust to shuck their ashes and reconstruct the economy swiftly." The cited paper is Reliable Digital Communications Systems Using Unreliable Network Repeater Nodes. Report P-1995, Rand Corporation; I haven't been able to find it online. --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by [...] It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
For the Internet, I believe it was indeed a myth. I wasn't there, but according to someone who was:
<http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2004-April/003940.html> We'll probably never resolve this question entirely, but a simple internetwork (partial mesh, not too big) running RIP does seem to be able to survive in the face of multiple failures. Presumably, the network view of a nuclear war would be multiple failures. In any case, I think that you have to go further back to find the roots of this story. Paul Baran came up with the basic ideas of packet-switching and partial mesh networks which are the foundation of the Internet. There is a nice explanation of this on his bio page here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/baran.html I think Dave Reed should have just said to the reporter that the Internet survived 9/11 so well because it was largely a non-centralized network that does not depend on any kind of central traffic control. It's like a road network where every driver(packet) is free to detour around obstructions. Remember the information highway? --Michael Dillon
I think Dave Reed should have just said to the reporter that the Internet survived 9/11 so well because it was largely a non-centralized network that does not depend on any kind of central traffic control. It's like a road network where every driver(packet) is free to detour around obstructions.
He should have given the the real reason: most of the Internet routers were at the old WUTCO building at 60 Hudson St, a safe distance away from the WTC, while the phone switches were across the street on West St in a building that was severely damaged. Swap those two buildings and the myth would be that the phone system is robust and the Internet is fragile. The phone network reroutes pretty well when the switching equipment that does the routing hasn't been smashed. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "I shook hands with Senators Dole and Inouye," said Tom, disarmingly.
participants (6)
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Joel Jaeggli -
John Kristoff -
John Levine -
Michael.Dillon＠btradianz.com -
Steven Champeon -
Steven M. Bellovin