COVID-19 vs. our Networks

Sat Mar 21 02:42:51 UTC 2020

On 20/Mar/20 19:38, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

> +100.
>
> In all the decades that I've been here (on the 'nets), the saddest change
> I've seen is the lack of responsibility on the part of people who have,
> by virtue of their positions, been given incredible power.  This is the
> time for those people to step up and (try to) do the right thing.
>
> None of us know what's going to be needed.  How could we?  We could guess,
> and we *are* guessing, but we don't really know because we're sailing
> off the edge of the map now.
>
> In those circumstances, the virtue of frugality -- a sensible thing
> at any time -- now becomes a necessity.  Every single one of us should
> be doing whatever we can to prepare for the unknown, and conserving
> resources is one part of that.
>
> 	"Everything we do before a pandemic will seem alarmist.
> 	Everything we do after will seem inadequate."
> 		--- Michael Leavitt, former HHS Secretary
>
> As I write this, doctors and nurses are working without PPE, risking
> their own wellbeing to try to save patients.  We're not being asked
> to do anything like that.  Hopefully we still have enough left to rise
> to the comparatively minor challenge in front of us.

All I'm saying is at the moment, there is no empirical information to
suggest that Netflix will break what's left of the Internet. Nor is
there any empirical information suggesting that singling them out will
help keep it going.

If we go down this path, who's to say which service provider will or
won't be "targeted" next at the whim of some command & control policy
maker? Is it a rabbit hole whose top-soil we want to uncover?

If/when the network starts to take a hit, network operators will
respond. But if there is any operator on this list who is willing to
raise their hands and say, "Netflix is breaking my network",
uncongested, free-flowing beer on me when we all come out from the bunkers.

Mark.