Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)

Mon Sep 24 19:22:08 UTC 2001

Sean Donelan wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 24 Sep 2001, Bob Bownes wrote:
> > But there was a point in time when taking out a certain parking garage
> > in Va could have caused us a very great deal of difficulty. But I'd say
> > we are past that, for the most part.
> 
> Are we?
> 
> When 25 Broadway failed, approximately 1% of the global Internet
> routing  table also disappeared.  Which I would guess qualifies it
> as a "major" hub.

But does that mean that X number of sites were unreachable, or that
there were simply Y number fewer routes to X sites? (Excluding those
*directly* affected, ie; those *in* 25 Broadway)

> Verizon still has 100,000 lines out of service, and only now
> begun to restore service to "small" businesses.

Yes, but my understanding was that we were referring to IP traffic. POTS
doesn't exactly have a built-in routing protocol.

> A couple of years ago a fiber cut in Ohio disrupted about 20% of
> the Internet routing table.

But again, does this mean that 20% of the Internet was unreachable, or
that there were 20% fewer routes to a given number of (hopefully
multihomed) sites?

No, this question is not rhetorical... I simply don't have any imperical
evidence to look at that could adequately answer this question.

Grant

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