Hi all,
In an article in Interactive Week, available at
<http://www.interactiveweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D605%2526a%253D16678,00
.asp>
(sorry for the wrap), a reporter quotes a former General Counsel to the
US National Security Agency as saying that the FBI is planning to ask
that all Internet traffic be "concentrate[d]... in several key locations
where all packets, not just e-mail, could be wiretapped." According to
the article, ISPs and router manufacturers will be contacted over the
next few months with details of the new architecture.
Ignoring (with some difficulty) the privacy implications of the above
plan, there's also the problem that the presently robust Internet could
be all but brought down by a few well-placed infrastructure attacks,
either physical or electronic.
Currently, there *are* a few bottlenecks for Internet traffic: a fairly
small number of exchanges where major ISP networks are interconnected. An
attack that took these out would result in slower -- perhaps
substantially slower -- Internet access across some paths.
My question, then, is whether anyone has contingency plans in place to
deal with a much slower Internet, and if so, whether and how those plans
get tested. A slowdown would allow more dropped packets (for UDP and ICMP
traffic) and more timeouts and dropped connections (for TCP traffic).
Both of these are issues that need to be dealt with in application
software.
I heard that during the day on September 11, several Internet news
outlets dropped their usual formats and went to simply-formatted all-text
presentations to reduce bandwidth requirements. Was this triggered
automatically? Does anyone (else?) have automatic fallback to
lower-bandwidth presentations based on load levels or response times?
-- Bruce
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Toback Tel: (602) 996-8601| My candle burns at both ends;
OPT, Inc. (800) 858-4507| It will not last the night;
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Phoenix AZ 85028 | It gives a lovely light.
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