[CII] Advocatus Diaboli

[bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com]

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 06:18:28PM +0100, Felix 'FX' Lindner wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 1 Dec 2009 16:03:19 +0000 bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
> > > > 	i challenge your lema that there exists a global Internet
> > > > that can
> > > > 	-unilaterally- fail, taking out all communications over
> > > > IP.
> > > 
> > > Change the crisis to "major failure of the interconnection
> > > dependencies of the Internet." 
> > > 
> > > It is hard to "take out the Internet." It is feasible to have the
> > > interconnection dependencies massively disrupted. This disruption
> > > would clear the path to continue with FX's thought experiment. 
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > 	ok... willing suspension of disbelief.... for now.
> > 	I'll note - in passing - that if 99.98%  of the global,
> > 	interconnection dependencies of the Internet on a global
> > scale, fail - and in the remaining 0.02% of remaining connectivity,
> > 	I can reach / communicate with everyone I need to - then the
> > 	Internet is not broken - FOR ME.
> 
> that's exactly the point: assume it's broken for you and everyone else.
> 
> Would you be able, with some considerable efforts of creativity, work,
> money and whatnot, to keep functioning as an individual? How about the
> place you work at? 

	so triage is important.  For the critical links for me,
	I have alternate communications paths - occasionally using non-telephony
	transport for my IP datagrams.  They are even exercised on occasion.

	my work places, such as they are, have varying degrees of redundant/alternate
	communications paths.  Some are very good indeed.  Others use a single, lowcost
	provider (bundled services) and then pray the provider has some form of backup.
	(but being the lowcost provider, generally no).

> If you can maintain your life (private and work) in the light of such
> an event, who can you think of any entity that would absolutely not be
> able to? 

	It becomes a question of priority - what is the value proposition
	for maintaining adaquate capacity/alternate routing?  Is there enouhg
	for everyone that depends on your network?  In periods of reduced capability,
	who gets what?  who decides?  

> What I'm after is a list of such entities, so we can later look at them
> and see how "critical" they are. 

	a few for your consideration:

	city governments
	regional governments
	soverigns
	tribal affiliations
	gangs
	intellegence cells
	families
	schools
	work teams
	corporations
	law enforcement operatives
	military units
	health worker teams
	disaster recovery teams
	explorers
	church/religious associations
	clubs

	etc.

> An example of the entities that I think would be absolutely unable to
> recover by other means of communication is Amazon, both their sales
> business and cloud computing business, because they depend on being
> reachable.

	reachable to whom?  i suspect that amazon would survive even 
	if large numbers of potential clients could not reach them
	if that unreachability was short enough.  


> But do we have any governmental entity that would be equally helpless?

	a number of examples come to mind.

	most recently the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
	They were helpless for three days with computer systems being
	inoperative.

	the folks who shut down the power grid in Sau Paulo for a couple
	of days

	and yet, were there health/safty problems or simply inconvience to
	those who had developed a dependency on these programs?

> 
> > 	Lets face it - at any given point in time, some parts of the
> > Internet are not functionally working/connected  to other parts of
> > the Internet. Its -always- partially broken.
> 
> That's what we commonly refer to as the Internet being functional.
> Just because we assume a full black-out for the experiment doesn't mean
> the opposite is a completely connected and working Internet ;)

	well  either case is a chimera... :)

> 
> cheers
> FX
> 
> -- 
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