[CII] terms and conditions

[James Hess]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 7:24 AM, Gadi Evron <ge at linuxbox.org> wrote:
> bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com wrote:  [snip]
>>        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.

I think the words  "critical infrastructure"   may be understood to be
slightly more  strict than just the combination of the  two words'
possible dicdefs.    Otherwise, the word "critical"  might be
redundant here.

Can you think of anything that would meet the definition of
"Infrastructure"  that wouldn't be critical: is there such a thing as
non-critical infrastructure?
As I see... use of   "critical"   is meant to emphasize  the very most
important infrastructure  required for civilized society to survive,
function, and be secure,
to the exclusion of infrastructure meant to provide convenience.


It would seem there might be multiple  "layers"  of criticality involved.
"Critical Infrastructure"  on the internet could suggest at least 3
distinct things,
that could have different criteria for being "critical on the internet"...

(a)  Critical Infrastructure,  as in, machines that perform important
functions for the public,  that happened to be  connected to the
internet or normally utilize the internet for  convenience, as a
backup, or  'just for management',    where in fact:  they  don't
require the internet  to perform the critical function.

(b)  Critical Infrastructure that   depends  on the internet  to
function,  and is disrupted  or cannot possibly work  without some
form of proper Internet connectivity being available  between
components.      Including systems  that  _could_  have been designed
to use private  telecommunications circuits,  but  for one reason or
another, the technology was designed to use the Internet instead.

(c)  Infrastructure that is required in some manner for the Internet
itself to function,  either to provide for (b),   or that the
Internet itself  is critical.


--
-J