How Dependent Is The Internet On The U.S.? 270
interstar asks: "It's been noted before, but Cringely has an interesting article on Carnivore. The final, big thought is that it might give the U.S. security services the possibility to shut down the Internet. Now, as a UK resident, I'm concerned, but it raised another question in my mind. As of today - July 2000 - how dependent are we in the rest of the world on the U.S. Internet? If all nodes under U.S. jurisdiction shutdown tomorrow, could I still route mail to my girlfriend in Brazil, around the smoking crater? Could a company in Paris hire programmers in India and Russia? Do we still need the U.S. or is the global Internet now independent?"
What about an active failure? (Score:3)
The US and the internet (Score:1)
As far as I can tell the internet is something that the US started and then other countries joined in. However, since the internet is based on nodes of computers, then shutting down those in the US doesn't kill the UK ones. As long as there is a protocol and adress(es), then the internet will live.
what ? (Score:1)
Just kidding.
We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:4)
A lot of the content is also based over there, so the WWW would instantly (if we are talking a big Carnivore-style switch-off) lose a heck of a lot of information. Perhaps enough to severely cripple its use as a tool.
On the other hand, it would lose a sizeable percentage of AOL users as well, so the bandwidth for the rest of the world might increase dramatically
In all, I think the worst problem would be the sudden lack of information.
Regardless of the answer, here is the solution (Score:1)
Lose the nodes, lose the users ... (Score:3)
That e-mail to Brazil would read: (Score:5)
US shutdown (Score:2)
the net will become very slow for the remaining nodes as a large portion of the backbones will go out.
also, the name servers will probably take a beating causing domain names to be useless.
the 'net will probably still move on, though. that is unless useless packets are spewn over the lines causing almost a global denial of service from packet-collisions, line saturation, etc.
kick some CAD [cadfu.com]
I can tell you one thing... (Score:1)
On the other hand, this sort of makes sense. This is, after all, where the Internet was born. And it has only been ten years since it became popular.
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Routing things (Score:3)
Maps of the internet (Score:5)
http://www.cybergeography.com/atlas/ atlas.html [cybergeography.com]
This map [cybergeography.com] seems to suggest that most data does pass through the US.
Two simple points. (Score:2)
Does the US monopolize the technology? No. Could the internet change shape many different ways? Yes.
The Internet is a phenomenon, not a thing.
We must remember the roots.
1) Everyone makes their own private networks, not necessarily hooked up to anything else all the time.
2) People got the address space for their networks assigned by a big plan, so they could hook them together without conflict later. This was not competitive in the beginning. there was more than enough address space to go around, it was only centralized to keep it all unique. (Sort of like radio, eh?)
3) People hook stuff together however they manage.
This will continue, no matter what. THe world is now connected, and will only continue to be more connected.
Hold On (Score:3)
But the world revolves around the US (Score:5)
Of course the Internet would die. If the United States of America were to disappear tomorrow, the entire world would then cease to exist along with it.
For example: If the US was gone, then what would be holding Canada to the planet? Nothing! Canada would float off into space and crash into the sun. Also, since 89.58% of the worlds heavy metals is has been shipped to the United States, then what would be balancing Europe, Africa and Asia where they are today? Nothing! They would sink to the South Pole, and everybody would freeze to death.
Yup. The Eeee-yooo-nited States of America is the glue that keeps this world spinnin'! Now all youse other nations remember that, y'all hear?!
Re:We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:3)
Sometimes traceroutes from sydney to melbourne go through the US. Like I need a few extra hundred ms delays for my packets.
Re:Regardless of the answer, here is the solution (Score:2)
There is already a seriously big communications hub in London's docklands area. Plus the UK academic community has its own network (the original Joint Academic Network [ja.net]). They started out on X.25 links and are currently moving to a UK-wide gigabit ethernet. Bristol University (where I work on the network team) is getting one of the SuperJANet 4 [superjanet4.net] links to provide services to the West of England. The point in bringing this up is that all US links from JANet are carried via 3 trans-atlantic TeleGlobe fibres. When they go down, UK universities have major problems accessing the US, and access to the rest of the world (e.g. Japan) is slowed. It doesn't stop working. People still publish papers and Altavista Europe and other repositories still work. The problem, as I've said above is that sudddenly the information at the end of a hyperlink is not there.
Root servers (Score:5)
Certainly, this wouldn't stop you from setting up your own root server, but I'd venture to guess that most ISP's in other countries use the US ones that come with BIND. It might take a few days before they all got switched over.
Kinda OT: You should be using 199.166.24.1 (ns1.vrx.net) as your main DNS server (or setup your named.ca to be a root server). Try it, then visit the.earth or free.tibet.
Paranoia (Score:1)
Spyky
The internet isn't really under threat (Score:2)
Now granted, there are some major corps in the states, who handle a lot of the internet traffic. Shutting down these guys would probably put some of your ISP's out of business, as they may actually have purchased time on say an MCI leased line over to a bigger ISP within the US, but that is something again, quickly routed around.
Another thing to take into consideration is the magnitude of what you're talking about. In order for the US to pull the plug on their internet, they'd basically have to, with certainty, shut down every fiber optic, copper, radio, microwave, and sattelite shot going out of the US. Such a thing has never been done before. The TransAtlantic cable, which was used to carry telephone conversations across the pond, was never taken off line during world war II. In fact, a german sub attempted to cut it on numerous occasions, and failed.
What the US could do is begin to monitor data packets. packet sniffing would slow the internet down a little bit, sure, but it "IS" feasible. The task would be daunting at best, though, since in essence, every single data packet makes it's own way, and quite possibly gets a different route. I don't see it happening any time soon.
And if it does come to that, ARPANET's little baby program will, hopefully prove itself worthy of the money and research put into it, and simply route everyone around that humongous "Dead Spot" that would be the US.
krystal_blade
Transoceanic Links (Score:3)
As far as I can tell, a good deal of the world's traffic is routed in one way or another through the US. Probably most traffic destined for Australia or Latin America passes through the US, either just by the route of the fiber or actually having routers on-shore. If we (the US) wanted to screw the Internet as a whole, I'm sure we could do away with greater than half of the non-US destinations.
You also have to keep in mind that ARIN, based in the US, allocates IPs, both for US-based entities and to overseas folks. Likewise, I'm pretty sure most of the root nameservers are in the US, or at least on this side of the pond. Also, of course, the infrastructure for registering new com/net/org domains would be down until such time as an overseas entity or group took over and started updating the remaining root nameservers, if any, or began to run their own. The real bitch of this, of course, is that just about every resolver in the world is programmed with the current roots in its hints file.
On the other hand, as time goes on there are more and more links being run the other way around the globe. Ones that go through the middle east or Russia, and then on to far Eastern destinations. If this trend continues, of course, the rest of the world will be in a much better situation in case of the US being blackholed for whatever reason. I believe the same sort of trend is beginning for getting links directly to South America, and if that is the case, that would also help immensely. As far as Canada is concerned, there are probably quite a number of trans-Atlantic cables either terminating there already or which run across Newfoundland, and so could, in relatively short order, be used to get Canadian connectivity back to Europe. The big question of course, would be whether the US being gone was because of an internal will, in which case Canada would be unable or more likely unwilling to tap into the US trans-oceanic cables that run across their land, or if the problem was that the US for some reason had a major political breakdown and lost their superpower status, in which case I doubt that they would have much of a problem appropriating needed cables for their own use.
In short, for now, the Internet as a whole would be a less useful place to inhabit if the US was to go away for some reason, but as time goes on, the trend appears to be a less US-centric one. That's not to say that there's not a lot of traffic running through it, but more that later on, more traffic could be routed around it.
-Nathan
Re:We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:2)
Canada's CA-NET-3 [canet3.net] is 60 times faster than the US's backbone. But I guess it's fair when you use the world 'most'.
Designed to Withstand Bombing (Score:1)
Still, U.S. ISP's may own Internet infrastructure outside of the U.S. which could interfere with outside U.S. communications.
My suggestion: end Carnivore now -- it means the end to ANY private communications inside the U.S. -- about the worse thing to derive from the FBI since McCarthy (sp?).
I am very disturbed by this article at The Register http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12117.html [theregister.co.uk], since it seems that the FBI has succeeded in removing the website as of today.
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Re:But the world revolves around the US (Score:5)
Canada is a Commonwealth state - it doesn't need the US to hold it back
Re:The US and the internet (Score:1)
Of course, I speak American so I'll have to learn English...
Re:Lose the nodes, lose the users ... (Score:1)
And while the solution to this problem might be to get everyplace equally connected to every other place, that's a rather expensive solution. Maybe a wireless, fast network, with a range of a few thousand miles would be a solution. (ha!) Everyone's comupter should come with a 100Gb/s wireless world-spanning card.
Seriously - would such a shutdown affect US companies' holdings in other contries? Could the US also force WorldCom (et. al.) to down their backbones and/or services in other countries? The situation might get even more out of control...
-f
The internet would be (for a while) fragmented. (Score:1)
1) Most of the most popular internet sites are located in the US. This content would have to be substituted with content from other countries. Thus much more intra-nonus traffic.
2) Much of the internet conections between two given foriegn countries will be routed though the US. This can largely be attributed to the fact that, one, the US was first, and two, the US is largely in the middle of the highly industrialized nations where internet use prodomites. ie the best route from england to japan may often be through the US.
Re:What about search engines and domain lookups. (Score:1)
The world would keep on turning (Score:3)
now if you asked me about content, well, that's a different matter. most internet content is hosted in US servers due to the fact that most ISPs can get to the US pretty fast and interconnection among US ISPs is excellent compared to the rest of the world. In the case of the ball of fire, we would have to hire that guy that's trying to save the history of the internet. If it's the case of bill gates getting elected, then nothing could ever be done, and all connectivity, caching systems and redundant links would be saturated forever due to direct email marketing campagins from microsoft using the database they've collected for years in secret using the task scheduler and registration forms.
the internet is here to stay.
Mysteries of the Mae East (Score:1)
Can the internet be shut down?
Lets first learn how the internet works here [199.34.53.67]
Now that we know a bit more we can say that they can surely cut off some major roads and create major disruptions by shuting down key relay points.
But you answer is NO, they can't shut it down.
Re: IP addresses (Score:1)
Thinking of which, there is (or was) a class A subnet (that's 4294967296 addresses) on a piece of CoAx in Imperial College, London. I think it's only a few tens of feet long, as well!
Re:We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:1)
Routes and the USA (Score:5)
Living in Sydney Australia, pretty much all of my routes go through the USA, except those to very close neighbours such as Malaysia and Indonesia. My routes to Japan and Taiwan go via the USA. South Africa is closer to Perth, Australia than I am. My packets to South Africa go to Perth, THEN to the US, THEN to
Sometimes it's even worse than that. Back when I was at University, it was so bad that when I did a traceroute between two servers 15 minutes drive apart but on different backbones, the packets were going via California.
There are links between countries that could be used if the USA were to vanish, but these links are usually significantly underpowered. Most of the major content providers are in the USA, most of the packets go to and from the USA, so other countries tend to invest most of their money in fat pipes to North America. And since those fat pipes are already there, they may as well take care of some of the local traffic as well.
Between countries on the same continent, you're probably looking at a continuing stable network. But inter-continental links would most likely fall over and die.
Even if the underpowered inter-continental links could take it, you'd see a routing nightmare. BGP packets would be flying around in circles panicking, and any sane network administrator would lock him or herself in a small room and whimper until it was all over.
There's also other things to think of. How many of the root nameservers are outside the USA? How much traffic can they take? How would they cope with the prolonged absence of a.root-servers?
Charles Miller
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Re:Maps of the internet (Score:3)
See this map [cybergeography.com] and imagine the lines to/from the US cut.
Got PKI? (Score:2)
Re:I can tell you one thing... (Score:1)
More creative uses for Carnivore (Score:2)
I'd already mentioned this in Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org], but it's worth repeating. Given that Carnivore is set up between the ISP's main routers and the rest of the Internet (I'm not sure this is the case, but let's pretend it is...) they can do all sorts of creative things if they weren't restrained by ethics and the Bill of Rights including:
A little bit of law enforcement arm twisting would help make sure the sysadmins didn't try to interfere with these activities. Sleep tight everyone...
I can only think of two things... (Score:2)
Sigh, Cringeley (Score:3)
As for Carnivore, the idea of a co-located snoop box seems reasonable enough technically. (Legally and politically is another matter entirely.) As a means of shutting down the Internet, it doesn't make sense.
We need much tighter legal controls on such snooping. The FBI has been fighting this in the telephony area, where the phone industry has insisted that CALEA only authorizes the FBI to wiretap with telco assistance after the telco receives a court order. Law enforcement doesn't get to select what they want to listen to by themselves; the telco has to physically set that up. The FCC has gone along with the telco industry's position that the telco must check the validity of the court order and keep records on the taps; some vague piece of paper from the FBI isn't enough.
Carnivore needs at least that level of protection. Preferably more.
Re:Designed to Withstand Bombing (Score:1)
Please set up a mirror quickly.
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The US gov't can shut down the internet (Score:2)
At least for a while. Just by hacking and crashing backbone servers, or using Carnivore to shut them down. They would probably need to do both to shut down the gobal internet, but it would certainly be possible.
IIRC, in the flurry of concern after the DDoS attacks last year, Congress held some hearings where, among other famous folks, Mudge (from l0pht) testified that they (l0pht) could probably bring down the US internet in about 30 minutes.
If seven (admittedly smart and resourceful) folks can do this much damage, then the US government can probably do at least as well. Particularly since the government has a lot more muscle to flex on companies exporting technology (just look at crypto up until very recently).On a brighter note, this sort of DoS wouldn't last forever - systems and networks would get cleaned, and lines to the US would get shut down. The US would be an international villan, and would probably by completely cut off from the rest of the world. I don't think the US politicians would profit from this scenario, and I hope that anyone else trying this stunt would promptly get punted into prison.
Re:Maps of the internet (Score:2)
Of course! How else would the NSA [nsa.gov] be able to spy on everyone world wide?
Samizdat Bandwidth? (Score:1)
Re:Maps of the internet (Score:2)
Re:We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:3)
Re:Routes and the USA (Score:2)
Routing from Brazil (Score:2)
Probably not, mostly due to topology. Brazil is closer to US than to Europe. Therefore it's easier to lay a fiber optical cable to there, and take advantage of the already existing cables between US and EU. Not only that, but Brazil communicates more to US than to EU. Therefore it seems to be a logical step.
Brazil has 2 major backbones: Global One [globalone.net] and Embratel [embratel.net.br]. Both route traffic to Europe through the US east coast. For those interested, here are some traceroutes:
From Brazil to sunic.sunet.se via Global One:
1 router.indeca.com.br (200.197.162.2) 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms
2 gip-spo-3-rt02-ser1-1-1-4.br.global-one.net (200.224.226.233) 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms
3 gip-spo-3-rt02-fast0-0-0.br.global-one.net (200.224.224.30) 12 ms 15 ms 12 ms
4 gip-spo-3-rt01-fddi10-0.br.global-one.net (200.30.0.37) 13 ms 33 ms 12 ms
5 gip-spo-3-rt06-fast0-0-0.br.global-one.net (200.30.0.62) 16 ms 21 ms 13 ms
6 gip-stoc-us-bar-2-s6-1-2.gip.net (204.59.129.9) 604 ms 604 ms 603 ms
7 gip-penn-us-bar-1-h0-1-1.gip.net (204.59.136.17) 657 ms 657 ms 657 ms
8 gip-penn-us-bar-3-p1-1.gip.net (204.59.138.9) 657 ms 658 ms 664 ms
9 gip-arch-gb-bar-2-p9-0-0.gip.net (204.59.138.22) 726 ms 727 ms 726 ms
10 gip-stkh-se-bar-2-a0-0-0-744-aal5.gip.net (204.59.5.102) 780 ms 781 ms 781 ms
11 gip-segix-se-ix-1-fe3-0.gip.net (204.59.26.193) 795 ms 787 ms 856 ms
12 Stockholm-DGIX.sunet.se (194.68.128.19) 788 ms 781 ms 781 ms
13 STK-BB-2-POS4-2.sunet.se (130.242.204.65) 784 ms * 783 ms
14 KTHNOC-1-SRP-5-0.sunet.se (130.242.211.4) 786 ms 781 ms 782 ms
15 sunic.sunet.se (192.36.125.2) 785 ms 790 ms 785 ms
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From Brazil to sunic.sunet.se via Embratel:
1 gw-ether1-cisco1.node1.com.br (200.246.122.1) 18.129 ms 18.817 ms 26.504 ms
2 200.182.13.225 (200.182.13.225) 89.953 ms 56.801 ms 38.883 ms
3 ebt-A1-2-1-dist05.spo.embratel.net.br (200.246.244.230) 76.897 ms 48.078 ms 36.505 ms
4 ebt-P10-0-core03.spo.embratel.net.br (200.230.0.138) 30.443 ms 65.064 ms 36.109 ms
5 ebt-P11-1-0-intl01.tang.embratel.net.br (200.230.0.117) 74 ms 83.839 ms 89.661 ms
6 Pos12-0-0.SR2.BLM1.ALTER.NET (157.130.218.133) 604.84 ms 606.939 ms 593.931 ms
7 503.ATM3-0.XR2.EWR1.ALTER.NET (152.63.22.38) 577.339 ms 589.149 ms 561.397 ms
8 192.ATM9-0-0.GW2.NYC2.ALTER.NET (146.188.178.157) 567.07 ms 626.497 ms 558.11 ms
9 teleglobe.ny2-gw.customer.ALTER.NET (157.130.4.166) 583.406 ms 157.130.5.218 (157.130.5.218) 598.425 ms 615.608 ms
10 if-0-0.core1.NewYork.Teleglobe.net (207.45.221.97) 1047.11 ms 751.36 ms 717.436 ms
11 NORDUnet-gw.Teleglobe.net (207.45.202.26) 675.847 ms 786.77 ms 809.703 ms
12 sw-gw.nordu.net (193.10.252.185) 925.529 ms 1059.38 ms 1115.3 ms
13 STK-BB-1.sunet.se (193.10.252.178) 847.593 ms 829.137 ms 785.761 ms
14 KTHNOC-1-SRP-5-0.sunet.se (130.242.211.4) 706.207 ms 701.081 ms 786.604 ms
15 sunic.sunet.se (192.36.125.2) 714.076 ms 699.167 ms 729.571 ms
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So if the US suddenly got disconnected, most international traffic from South America would be out, indeed. But due to topological reasons, this should not affect traffic from Paris to India or Russia.
Re:Got PKI? (Score:2)
So what can I use as an email client? elm and pine, however handy they are (pretty handy), only let me work on one thing at a time. And elm's PGP integration has left me underwhelmed. pine strikes me as elm, only with more screen clutter. Kmail, the last time I checked, sucked almost hard enough to turn a sheep into haggis. StarOffice and Netscape don't grok passwords with control characters in them (yeah, my passwords look like line noise). I've been using TkRat, which does decoding okay but doesn't do outgoing signatures or encryption at all well.
So what do y'all use?
Conspiracy Theory (Score:2)
CAIDA is a good place for this kind of info (Score:5)
For example, in their paper Measurements of Internet topology in the Asia-Pacific Region [caida.org], they focus part of their study on which countries provide IP transit for other countries. In other words, they want to know how often certain countries carry traffic that is neither sourced nor destined for that country. They conclude, in part (see Sections 4 and 5):
BTW, never pass up an opportunity to hear kc claffy speak, she's great.That would be good (Score:2)
I'm not saying the US is fantastic, but the UK isn't really that great. Places like Norway or Finland might be a good choice, as long as you're going to learn another language...
It would be really bad... (Score:2)
Just take a look at a map of the net (Score:2)
www.cyborgworkshop.com
...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
how about this then? (Score:3)
If the EU (or say.. Asia) suddenly decided to shut down all nodes of the Internet in their area, would the US companies get their emails to the coders in India? Would they get their emails through to Paris? Why is it that so many Americans cannot think of the world in anything but a US centric way?
I live in Finland but am currently in Singapore, coding the back end for the site of a dot-com startup. You would be amazed how little thought the USA gets here in the daily life. I doubt that many people (normal citizens) would even notice / care if the USA dropped off the Internet. Sure some stock brokers would suffer from lack of fast & good information about Wall Street but in the end of the day, there would be no catastrophy.
Doing a traceroute on servers in Finland, I see that the traffic is currently being routed through the USA (up to 30 hops to many sites!) so I'm gussing I would have a hard time reaching some Finnish servers.. However, I dial up to my Finnish ISP using my GSM cellular phone and a Palm IIIx daily anyway, so I could still get my email and access Finnish sites.. No prob..
The USA is not the beginning, center nor end of the world.
Re: Dated 1993! (Score:3)
The Real Question (Score:2)
Would, or could, the Feds somehow shutdown the internet backbone? What purpose would it serve? There are many ways to get around it...it would simply cause a hell of a lot of trouble, and not accomplish very much.
U.S. vanishes? No such luck, world (Score:2)
As to other types of catastrophic failure, the only thing I can conceive of taking the entire U.S. out is nuclear war, or Network Solutions getting really pissed off. If that happens, the root Domain Name Server is in jeopardy. There are some DNS root overseas backups from what I understand, but without the U.S. lawsuit industry (motto: "Somebody's infringing on our motto!") resolving domain ownership disputes through litigation, they will soon be hopelessly out of date. The world's internet users will be reduced to petitioning Tonga to let them register in the
Easy answer (Score:2)
Every traceroute I've ever done... (Score:3)
The name "world wide web" applies to how the content is linked, not the configuration of the land lines. We have an "all roads lead to Rome" situation, and our cross-paths are few and far between.
Lets update legislation on *all* internet prying (Score:2)
Current laws in place in the US - and probably in most countries - serve to place privacy restrictions on older forms of communication, but are sadly in need of an overhaul to deal with internet communication.
Let's find out (Score:2)
I mean, it's in the cause of science, right?
Re:Root servers (Score:3)
- I - NORDUNet (Stockholm, Sweden)
- K - RIPE-NCC (London, UK)
- M - WIDE (Tokyo, Japan)
Check out the Root Nameserver Y2K Statement [icann.org], Appendix A.Re:Maps of the internet (Score:5)
1. There are more links to/from the US
2. The links to/from the US are the fastest route
3. The links to/from the US are the shortest route
In a pinch the global internet would survive without the US, it would just get slower.
-- iCEBaLM
Bandwidth == #lines * bits/second/line (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if your fiber can handle 10x the number of bits, if I have 1000x amount of fiber.
This is why many of the routes go through the US, the individual global networks tend to cross-connect with each other within the US. Within the US, it's at least an approximately tight mesh. Outside of the US, most of the lines look like parallel spider-webs that only interconnect within the US.
Carnivore Hearings just concluded (Score:2)
Well, aparently on like 15 hour tape delay, but they just ended on CSPAN. From what I gather, congress isn't going to do a damn thing right now (because the session is over too soon to do it right), but revising all the law on wiretaps will be on the agenda for the next congress. Only one of the committee members seemed in the least sympathetic to the FBI witnesses. Most of the committee members were already on the "they're the FBI, of course we can't trust them" bandwagon.
So congress will probably get around to updating these laws, the updates will be pretty much along the lines we would like them to be, and they will, of course, be buried under riders making it a capital offense to link to a website that makes mention of the existance of drugs or child pornography.
The question is Redundant. (Score:2)
The question we should be asking is how long it would take the rest of the world to route around the US?
At the moment, everything goes through the US, because they have the greatest infrastructure in place and its the path of least resistance for most of the major telcos worldwide.
You remove the US from the Internet - everything that was old becomes new again - and suddenly Intramuros is the centre of the universe online.
M@T
signal to noise might improve a bit too...ok...sounds worthwhile...all in favour say AYE!!
Re:Easy answer (Score:2)
Heiße Körner!
Re:Transoceanic Links (Score:3)
Err
RIPE [ripe.net] allocate IPs for Europe and Africa, whilst APNIC [apnic.net] allocate addresses for the Asia Pacific regions, so the reliance on ARIN is not international. Obviously a proportion of root nameservers are located outside of the US too.
High priority (Score:2)
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Fool me once, shame on you... (Score:2)
And you know that the FBI knows that, and therefore wouldn't do that except in extreme cases.
So, yeah, it's a trump card right now, that would play once for maybe a week, and never again.
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Re: (Score:2)
That's what the thing was designed for (Score:2)
Now, in the real world, it's not that simple. America definitely has more bandwidth than any other nation in the world as far as I know. Killing all the American connections would cause horrendous slowdowns through the web as all that traffic was suddenly routed through pipes that weren't built to handle it. Not to mention the fact that all American-run websites would be down, of which there are many. So, the bottom line is yes, there would still be a self-sufficient Internet, but whether it actually performed in a timely fashion is a matter open to discussion.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:What about an active failure? (Score:2)
At a guess, any US entity that started doing that on a regular basis would be fairly swiftly cut off by the rest of the world, and life would carry on as normal.
Ydrk... Are You guys mad ?!? (Score:4)
As pertaining to Your "maps". Please bear this in mind. I've NEVER seen a US citizen (netizien or "real") who actually believed that the US was not the hub of the world, and as such did not base their concept of ANYHTING on the US. If You REALLY want to know if the world can survive without the US on the internet, don't look at the traffic generated BY the US. Look at the traffic routed THROUGH the US. Take a small country like... Say Portugal, and look at how much traffic they send THROUGH the US, not counting traffic that ends there (that would be senseless if the node was cut away). Also ask Yourself this: Would Portugal have alternate routes in place ?
I'm sure that some minor countries might largely depend on bigger countries to sustain their internet access and routing information. And certainly if this pathway was lost, a lot of "damage" (logically, not phisically) would be done. Sure the routerinfo might even take a long while to recover. BUT I seriously doubt that most of us (even those of us working in the ISP business) ofhand can think of a single coutry or larger area that is wholly dependend on another (single point of failure). This is actually the POINT of the internet. Even though You might cut away pieces, the ramins should still work. I'm not saying that there are not stupid poeple out there who just say to themselves: "We'll just depend on someone else to make sure this works". But they are also the ones who get the virus in the office, they are also the ones stuck in traffic and generally the ones who are dumb enough not to think for themselves. To plan for the future.
Up untill a few years ago it was actually fairly common for us in Denmark to "loose" the connection to the US, and what came of that You might ask ? Absolutely nothing. The internet worked just fine. Only the US sites were responding DAMNED slow as we had to route the other way around the world to get to them. So in essence: These maps are bogus, and provides no real insight into the US's "central role" in the internet.
cut away the spider, and the web will still be there....
Alternatives would be found ... (Score:5)
a) big parts of the net would be missing
b) maybe some countries/continents become either isolated or are badly (small bandwith) connected to the rest of the world
but this is very shortterm, after a few days/weeks alternative lines would be found, (phonelines etc.) and bandwith previously routed via USA would be routed elsewhere, and future projects for transatlantic lines are more likely to avoid USA.
The reason is, that the internet is a driving factor for too many countries economies by now, it's no longer the toy of some university geeks. If the net fails bigscale because the FBI wants to flex it's muscles this will be taken into account in the future, measures will be taken to reduce the dependency of the internet on the USA backbones.
The FBI knows this too, and even if their Carnivore toys have some builtin facility to shut down the whole trafic this will be used very carefully, and probably not nationwide. But theres a different aspect: Carnivore could be used to work selectively this makes a lot of sense: shut down that annoying website at ISP level with a commandline, put pressure on an ISP by just threatening to shut down it's services, put diplomatic pressure on other countries (one at a time) threatening to isolate their part of the internet (at least what is routed through US), simply drop any packets encrypted in a way the FBI doesn't like. The thing is, that Carnivore works as the big Hammer (shut down the net) only once, but much better and more effectively as a scalpel, to push some policies and generally make the internet behave the way the FBI wants it to.
The best thing that could happen to the internet is that some cracker found out now, how to shut down these boxes and do it to the 20 or so that are already in place, then the project would die pretty fast after some very bad publicity for the FBI.
Some thoughts on feasibility (Score:2)
I think we can rule out natural disaster or nuclear strike. Anything big enough to wipe the entire US off the map is big enough to make an unholy mess of the entire world: the fact that we're suddenly unable to get through to eBay will be the least of our problems.
As to political action, we're talking about something very, very extreme indeed. It so happens that submarine cables are very, very vulnerable indeed. One depth-charge in the right spot and the thing is done. The reason submarine cables get left alone these days is that no-one wants to start that kind of fight - a couple of thousand kilometres of cable is an impossible proposition to defend and about a week of tit-for-tat would put most of the world's comms out of action.
A carrier battle group has a power projection radius of somewhere over a thousand kilometres, which means you'd need two to defend a transatlantic link very, very badly indeed - that thousand kilometre radius is covered by a couple of hundred aircraft trying to detect an attacker that tactically need not come anywhere near the surface.The dependence of the entire world on those links means that no-one has an interest in knocking them out, simply for fear of retaliation.
About the only thing that would take the US out without taking the rest of the world with it would be the Nehemiah Scudder situation - a mad theocratic coup that insisted on isolationism and total suppression of external communication. And at that, satellite links would allow some communication in and out for the brave.
Why shutting down internet (Score:2)
Enemies of the USA will support the FBI action as their digging their own grave.
Re:I don't believe this!! (Score:2)
So... (Score:4)
*duck*
--
It depends where you are... (Score:2)
I'm told Southeast Asia is pretty self-sufficient as well, they'd only have a problem if someone nuked Singapore.
Africa and Latin America I'm not too sure of, however. From what I know about Africa, they don't even have normal cross-continent telephone lines, let alone optical fiber. I'm guessing Latin America is only slightly better: have you ever tried to wire up a rainforest?
The point is that the world is divided up into relatively independent subnetworks, which are connected to each other with only a limited number of intercontinental cables. So if the US breaks down, it's too bad the rest of the world can't connect to slashdot anymore, but e-mails to your auntie next door are no problem whatsoever.
This is not a
Re: IP addresses (Score:2)
How many of the problems with going to IPv6 disappear with the US though?
Re:I don't believe this!! (Score:2)
Re:Maps of the internet (Score:2)
I wonder about this, if the load that the US puts on the Internet is also removed, then maybe the status-quo would be maintained, or at least the slowdown would not be so extreme. Also remember that lots of p0rn and Napster traffic would disappear, so that's another huge saving
EZ
-'Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on..'
Interesting rumour (Score:2)
One scenario: (Score:2)
Re:The US and the internet (Score:2)
Speaking English lesson 1: :)
If you spill your drink down you while you are in a pub do not proclaim that you have 'wet your pants'
On the topic in hand, wasn't the internet designed by DARPA to provide a network of computers that would .com, .org, etc. - loads of non-US websites use
survive through a nuclear war? If you thoroughly nuke the US, the majority of the Internet will probably work
fine. The only thing I can think of is the TLD nameservers for
those.
Also - isn't there also a domain '.' (to get you to the TLDs) - if so, where are the nameservers for that
physically located?
Re:We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:2)
Oh, that's easy... (Score:4)
Re:Maps of the internet (Score:2)
Heck no, man, it would get faster! Imagine not having a bazillion AOL users hitting the net every day at 5:30, and the associated loss of a bazillion AIM messages. More than 90% of the spammers in the world would be cut off. Etc etc etc. There would be tremendous bandwidth savings.
Nuke the US. It's best for the net.
Re:The US and the internet (Score:2)
Re:We don't *need* the US, but... (Score:2)
(The assumption is that the US uses Internet resources like it uses other global natural resources - using an amount of resources totally out of proportion to their small percentage of the world population, all to maintain their God-Given-Right to indulge to excess).
(Before anyone comments, yes I am an whitish, overweight American citizen.
Re:Maps of the internet (Score:2)
Re:Interesting rumour - LoadALL (Score:2)
What you put there is up to you, but you better know exactly what the CPU will do with it, and how the machine will respond. Not impossible, but difficult.
The even greater difficulty is getting around the millions of combinations of OS, hardware, and chip revisions to do anything useful. So even though a single opcode exists in all intel CPUs, nobody has ever been able to make a general purpose exploit.
the AC
Re:Yep, pretty much. (Score:2)
> because they had to whitewash it to hide the burn marks. No lie.
Nope, it started white, just like all of the other similar buildings
of its era. But wasn't it Aaron Burr who wanted to paint it black?
>It could be argued that the British won the war of 1812,
For a very strange version of "win"
(at least nominally
the Royal Navy to impress sailors into naval service. Seems they
weren't recognizing US citizenship . . .
The war ended with a treaty in Paris just in time to save the British--before word of the treaty got back, the only remaining significant british force in North America was obliterated at New Orleans, with its remnants scattered across three or four states. General (previously Colonel, later President) Jackson sent the commanding british general home in a rum barrel. . .
oh, and as for the stuff several pages up--as a matter of economic reality, the US *is* the center of the world. That's likely to change over the next fifty years, just as it has become less so in the past fifty, and just as the US was of minor importance prior to WWI.
hawk
Re:Root servers (Score:2)
So, IP addresses anyone who can? Or descriptions?
Thanks,
Re:Alternatives would be found ... (Score:2)
There is no "US Backbone". (Score:2)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
You misunderstand the question. (Score:2)
The question is more than that.
You need to ask whether there are any network services in the US that are necessary to the operation of the net. For instance: Root servers for the domain naming system that aren't adequately mirrored - or adequately maintainable in the absense of live US-hosted services - outside the country.
You also need to ask whether the routing can automatically recover from the loss of the connections in the US (or can be manually tweaked back into operation in a reasonable time).
The original routing protocols were designed to withstand atomic attack and "find a way" if one existed. But with the expansion of the net the routing tables became too big to store in all the routers, issues of router spoofing attacks came up, and the rise of the ISPs created sections of the net with more tree-like and fixed connectivity. So the Internet is now routed very differently from the original ARPANet, and the original "work during and after a nuclear war" scenarios no longer apply.
Designed to Withstand Bombing - not anymore (Score:2)
The "work during and after nuclear attack" network functionality no longer exists.
Among the things that took it down:
- The router tables became too large, and other solutions had to be found. They're more tree-like.
- Router table update methods were modified to be more robust against deliberate attack - at a cost in automatic flexibility.
- The rise of ISPs changed the network topology from a net of co-operating sites with total routing flexibility to a set of leaf sites with single feeds, attached to ISP networks that tend toward inflexible tree structures with limited (if any) routing flexibility, attached to a backbone network.
Why shut them down when you can SPY on them? (Score:2)
But given that over 70% of the rest of the world's inter-country traffic goes through the US, why should the FBI ever turn the faucet off, and start people re-routing around the US?
Given their intelligence-collection function, it makes more sense for them to tap the communication as it comes through the US.
And that gives them a big incentive to avoid using a shutdown feature even if they have one.
They're also noted for "dirty tricks" tactics, forging communications to disrupt people and groups they don't like. Carnivore would be a great platform for that feature, since it could inject forged traffic in reasonable-looking places, defeating some attempts to detect such forgeries from delivery-path analysis.
And imagine trying to track down a DDS hosted by Carnivore boxes!