Vulnerbilities of Interconnection

Thu Sep 5 20:36:00 UTC 2002

On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 sgorman1 at gmu.edu wrote:

:I completely agree with statement.  It is not a matter of wanting to 
:know where the importants hubs are - we have a pretty good handle on 
:that, but what the impacts would be of a hub loss from an operational 
:stand point.  Maybe this is a discussion that needs to be off-line.  
:My goal is to provide some context and validation for the research 
:that is being carried out.  

The vulnerability is relative to the priority and value of the asset
being protected. Without definition of those assets from the government, 
or whatever stakeholder needs to know, it is difficult to explain.  

Operationally, you can talk about various meet-me points, hubs, exchanges
and routes as being critical, but the sites those links service will be 
the metric by which their importance is measured. 

Until our various political masters decide what sites they think are 
truely critical, any assessment will be relative to shifting priorities
of participants in the discussion. 

Who is more critical; Nasdaq, Google, WCOM or the GSA? You can see
how this becomes relative pretty quickly. 

--
batz