Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)

Mon Sep 24 18:43:12 UTC 2001

Sean Donelan wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 24 Sep 2001, Alex Bligh wrote:
> > My point being that building a network which doesn't have more
> > than an annoying route flap, if /both/ 60 Hudson and 111 8th
> > avenue are lost, is extremely hard (*) (especially if it has
> > a transatlantic component). And that's true even if you
> > have your own fiber.
> >
> > (*) hard means that it isn't compatible with existing topologies,
> > and building new ones is expensive.
> 
> Which brings me back to my original question.  Are there specific
> locations which are more important to the functioning of the Internet
> than others?  You can't simply say everything is important.  The FAA
> breaks airports down into several catagories, large airports, medium
> airports and small airports.  A large airport has 1% or more of the
> passenger traffic.  Are there specific locations which handle 1% or
> more of the Internet's traffic (assuming we had figures for the total
> amount of traffic).

The national air traffic system makes a poor analogy to the Internet in
this case, IMHO. If O'Hare got nuked tomorrow, we'd have some serious
disruption in passenger traffic. If PAIX fell into the ocean, OTOH,
traffic would simply route around it. Isn't that how we try to engineer
the Internet?

So in other words, yes, everything is important, and yes, nothing is
particularly important. 

Grant

-- 
Grant A. Kirkwood - grant at virtical.net
Chief Technology Officer - Virtical Solutions, Inc.
http://www.virtical.net/