[102325] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tomas L. Byrnes)
Mon Feb 4 20:25:51 2008
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 17:03:49 -0800
In-Reply-To: <20080204115717.N36012@sprockets.gibbard.org>
From: "Tomas L. Byrnes" <tomb@byrneit.net>
To: "Steve Gibbard" <scg@gibbard.org>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
My experience is that a lot of the BB providers route through NAPs/MAEs
when they have local peering. The Internet IS more brittle than it needs
to be, because routing seems to be a lot more static than it should be.
=20
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On=20
> Behalf Of Steve Gibbard
> Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 12:39 PM
> To: nanog@merit.edu
> Subject: Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest=20
> (Qatar to UAE)
>=20
>=20
> On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Kee Hinckley wrote:
>=20
> > Which leads me to my operational question.
> >
> > If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do=20
> > you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect=20
> an oceanic=20
> > cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less=20
> > discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A=20
> non-physical solution=20
> > involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq?
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> The other answer is to be less dependent on the cables.
>=20
> Some communications need to be long distance -- talking to a=20
> specific person in a far away place, setting up import/export=20
> deals, calling tech support -- but a lot don't. E-mailing or=20
> VOIP calling your neighbors, looking at web sites for local=20
> businesses, reading your local newspaper or accessing other=20
> local content, or telecommuting across town, all ought to be=20
> able to be done locally, without dependence on international=20
> infrastructure. Yet we keep seeing articles about outages of=20
> "Internet and long distance telephone" networks, implying=20
> that this Internet thing we've all been working on is pretty=20
> fragile compared to the old fashioned phone networks we've=20
> been trying to replace.
>=20
> The report from Renesys
> (http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break
> _part.shtml)
> looks at outages in connectivity to India, Pakistan, Saudi=20
> Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt. I'll assume that those areas=20
> probably did keep some local connectivity. India has its=20
> NIXI exchanges, although my understanding is that they're not=20
> as well used as one might hope. Saudi Arabia has a monopoly=20
> international transit provider, which should have the effect=20
> of keeping local traffic local. Egypt has an exchange point.=20
> I don't know about Pakistan or Kuwait. Unfortunately,=20
> little else works without DNS.=20
> Pakistan and India have DNS root servers, but Pakistan's .PK=20
> ccTLD is served entirely from the US. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,=20
> and Egypt all have servers for their local ccTLDs, but do not=20
> have local root DNS servers.=20
> Of that list, only India has both the root and their ccTLD=20
> hosted locally.
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> And then there's the rest of the services people use. Being=20
> able to get to DNS doesn't help people talk to their=20
> neighbors if both they and their neighbors are using mail=20
> services in far away places, for instance.
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> -Steve
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