[59583] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Re: Backbone Infrastructure and Secrecy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (frank@dticonsulting.com)
Wed Jul 9 13:18:38 2003
From: frank@dticonsulting.com
To: Michael.Dillon@radianz.com, nanog@merit.edu
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 13:17:18 -0400
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Backbone routes cannot be concealed. How could they be? Prior to any
plow ever hitting the ground or strand strung between poles there are
(sometimes very lengthy) environmental impact assessments, permits
issued, RFPs/RFQs and awards to have the work done, USGS surveys, ROW
franchises issued, and more, that are all a matter of public record.
Not to mention the hoards of gawkers lined up along roadsides
supervising trenchers as they tear apart the countryside laying down conduit.
The routes themselves cannot be concealed, but the tenants who reside
in the conduits, and those who piggy-back atop primary providers,
often can.
---------
This tidbit concerning Sean's work and other documents regarding
location was posted to my forum on Silicon Investor. You may find it
of interest:
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg.gsp?msgid=19094753
Frank Coluccio
DTI Consulting Inc.
frank@fttx.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael.Dillon@radianz.com
Sent: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 10:13:40 +0100
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Backbone Infrastructure and Secrecy
>Are we going to throw a burlap sack over 60 Hudson, the Westin Building,
One Wilshire,
>or similar buildings and disavow knowledge of their existence? You can't
hide major infrastructure.
Yes.
However we can work to spread out the infrastructure more so that it is
harder for terrorists to find a single point of failure to attack. If they
have to coordinate an attack on 3 or 4 locations, there is an increased
probability that something will go wrong (as on 9/11) and one or more of
their targets will escape total destruction.
We all need to find ways to make our networks more resilient even if that
means moving away from "comfortable" vendors like Cisco and Juniper. The
costs of resilience are not immovable objects. Those costs arise because
the routers and circuits we would use to implement resilience are the same
things we use to carry paying traffic and the vendors price their products
based on the expectation that we use them for paying traffic. Since the
vendors can't tell whether or not the router/circuit earns revenue for us,
they won't give up their margin on the sale. In both cases, the underlying
components of the product are virtual commodities (fiber, wavelengths,
circuit boards, chips) and are continually dropping in price.
Perhaps it will require government regulations regarding diversity and
resilience to change this but wouldn't it be nice if the industry could
get together and solve this problem in a self-regulatory fashion?
--Michael Dillon
