[CII] terms and conditions

[Gadi Evron]

bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 02:22:40PM +0200, Gadi Evron wrote:
>> bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
>>> 	I have "everything you need to make this work".  I have no need of 
>>> 	Brazilian or Norwegian infrastructure.  They are not critical to me.
>> What would happen to your connectivity if the Brazilian and Norwegian 
>> localized internet infrastructures were to stop working?
> 
> 	nothing.  zero.  nada.  zilch.
> 	
> 	not critical to me.   the point being, critical has a reference,
> 	usually an end user.
> 
> 	and any given end user is either completely expendable or is the
> 	focus of connectivity.  presume three endusers... Aaron, a homeless
> 	47 year old man living on the streets of Detroit,  Barak, the 
> 	president of the United States, and Marline, project manager fo the
> 	Direct Marketing Assoc.   Are they equally entitled to access to 
> 	Critical Internet Infrastructure?  Do they perceive the reach/scope
> 	of Critical Internet Infrastructure in the same way?  What are the
> 	results of them not having access?
> 
> 
> 	John Ozman raised the (very germane) point of triage.  Who gets 
> 	cut off when and who gets restored first and why?
> 
> 	Critical implies weakness.  A single point of failure, a locus of
> 	control.  Where those things emerge, there is a strong, almost overpowering
> 	drive to capture and monitize that locus or to use it to exploit
> 	the infrastrucuture to impose a given policy framework.
> 
> 	From a strictly engineering POV, the "right" thing to do, to ensure
> 	resilience and robustness is to work at reducing/minimizing/defusing
> 	critical points.  IMHO of course :)

That makes sense. Designing better is always a good idea.

But I also disagree on you not feeling any impact.

If the Internet in Norway and Brazil goes down, that would mean at the 
very least a very very slow internet in north/central Europe and South 
America (in shockwave outwards from these spots, starting from no net at 
all and tricking down). This due to central hubs of communication going 
down.

This will naturally also result in...

The net fixing itself by rerouting around these areas, which can be an 
issue for the entire infrastructure when other areas are over-extended.

Which is one of the reasons why I proselytize that the Internet is in 
fact Global Critical Infrastructure.

	Gadi.


> --bill
> 	
> 


-- 
Gadi Evron,
ge at linuxbox.org.

Blog: http://gevron.livejournal.com/