Vulnerbilities of Interconnection

Fri Sep 6 14:20:50 UTC 2002

Hi Alex,

alex at yuriev.com wrote:
> 
> > > Is there a general consensus that cyber/internal attacks are more
> > > effective/dangerous than physical attacks.  Anecdotally it seems the
> > > largest Internet downages have been from physical cuts or failures.
> >
> > It depends on what you consider and internet outage. Or how you define
> > that. IMHO.
> 
> Lets bring this discussion to a some common ground -
> 
> What kind of implact on the global internet would we see should we observe
> nearly simultaneous detonation of 500 kilogramms of high explosives at N of the
> major known interconnect facilities?

N? Well, if you define N as the number of interconnect facilities, such
as all the Equinix sites (and I'm not banging on Equinix, it's just
where we started all this) then I think globally, it wouldn't make that
much difference. People in Tokyo would still be able to reach the globe
and both coasts of the US. Maybe some sites in the interior of the US
would be difficult to reach. I'd have to run a model to be sure, but
every one of the major seven have rerouting methodologies that would
recover from the loss. And I don't think they exclusively peer at
Equinix. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that they don't.
However I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

Jane
> 
> Alex