Nuclear survivability (was: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)

Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com
Fri Oct 7 09:14:14 UTC 2005


> > > While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old 
> > > wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by 
> [...]
> > It's not a myth. If the Internet were running RIP instead of BGP
> 
> For the Internet, I believe it was indeed a myth.  I wasn't there,
> but according to someone who was:
> 
> 
<http://www.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/2004-April/003940.html>

We'll probably never resolve this question entirely,
but a simple internetwork (partial mesh, not too big) 
running RIP does seem to be able to survive in the face
of multiple failures. Presumably, the network view of
a nuclear war would be multiple failures.

In any case, I think that you have to go further back
to find the roots of this story. Paul Baran came up
with the basic ideas of packet-switching and partial
mesh networks which are the foundation of the Internet.
There is a nice explanation of this on his bio page here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/baran.html

I think Dave Reed should have just said to the reporter
that the Internet survived 9/11 so well because it was
largely a non-centralized network that does not depend 
on any kind of central traffic control. It's like a road
network where every driver(packet) is free to detour around
obstructions.

Remember the information highway?

--Michael Dillon




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