How relable does the Internet need to be? (Was: Re: Converged Network Threat)

Thu Feb 26 11:48:17 UTC 2004

>> I think the Internet is doing pretty well save some IOS code problems 
>> from time to time, and the typical root server hicups.

>I'm interested to know what you mean by "typical root server hicups". 
>I'm trying to think of an incident which left the Internet generally 
>unable to receive answers to queries on the root zone, but I can't 
>think of one.

There have been several incidents in which some root servers
have hiccuped, sometimes being down for several days. But since
the service they provide has N+12 resiliency, the service itself
has never been unavailable. 

Similarly, the Internet has always had N+1 or better vendor resiliency 
so IOS can have problems while the non-IOS vendor (or vendors) keep on
running. In fact, I would argue that N+1 vendor resiliency is a good 
thing for you to implement in your network and N+2 vendor resiliency is 
a good thing for the Internet as a whole. Let's hope that vendor P manages 

to get some critical mass in the market along with J and C.

--Michael Dillon