Public Works Peering

J. Oquendo sil at politrix.org
Thu Oct 6 14:26:47 UTC 2005



On Thu, 6 Oct 2005 Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com wrote:

>
> > /* tip never write e-mail within the first hour of your waking morning
> */
>
> Let me be the first to congratulate you on such
> an excellent idea.
>
> --Michael Dillon
>
>

Now that I had time to marinate weird ideas even further, this is how my
previous idea `could` work for all parties. Of course those making
financial decisions would likely hate this idea since it would somehow
manage to "hurt" their business in their eyes...

States (or countries) would create a massive public NAP which would be
peered in each state. Guaranteed not to go down. Well 99.99999% (snicker)
guaranteed not to falter. This network would be funded by taxpayer dollars
and anyone wanting to peer would pay solely enough to maintain this NAP.

A consortium of companies using this NAP would engineer the network since
most times government officials have little clue on the engineering side
of things, nor would they understand it more than those already in the
industry. This NAP would be unbiased as to "my bgp tables are bigger than
yours" arguments, and would pass traffic unbiased to most destinations
without flaw.

I'm not one for any type of government intervention but at current pace,
how long would it be before the lawsuits start coming out of de-peering
(is that actually a term). In the long run it is not beneficial in my eyes
for companies to start shafting each other via capitalistic methods of who
will pass traffic to whomever else. I know for one as the end user, I
would be highly upset if two separate companies depeered and affected my
company's workflow. I would also be even more upset if somehow de-peering
affected my life/lifestyle or that of my family in some capacity.

Think of something along the lines of dare I say "national security" for
INSERT_YOUR_COUNTRY_HERE. What if two main infrastructures were broken
because someone de-peered from another provider. Far Fetched Scenario:

Lt. Jones "Sir we've lost all connections with $FOOBAR_DEPARTMENT...
People can die if we don't get the proper information..."
Senior Lt. Doe "How did this happen! We have a delivery of medical
supplies... Track them down."
Lt. Jones "We can't sir. We have no connectivity"
Senior Lt. Doe "What do you mean"
Lt. Jones "Well a provider de-peered..."

Sure it's far fetched to a degree, but there are industries outside of
government that could seriously be affected by de-peering actions. Health
industries, say the insurance companies right now helping out natural
disaster victims... I could think of an insane amount of scenarios that
could happen because of actions such as those taken by L3 and Cogent.

Somewhere along this thread is a VOIP thread spinoff... So what about
people who can't dial (e-)911 right now. People can die if you think about
the worst case scenario because of nothing more than greed. So for those
who reply back with some "go to hell" like message I suggest you go back
to your core and read up on ethics and morals before putting a dollar sign
on a life. /* EOF MORAL RAMBLINGS */ Anyhow, I could see a benefit to
having say a public works NAP. Outside of monopolistic reach working
rather well.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
J. Oquendo
GPG Key ID 0x97B43D89
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x97B43D89

"How a man plays the game shows something of his
 character - how he loses shows all" - Mr. Luckey

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
J. Oquendo
GPG Key ID 0x97B43D89
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x97B43D89

"How a man plays the game shows something of his
 character - how he loses shows all" - Mr. Luckey



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