[59601] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Backbone Infrastructure and Secrecy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Kuhnke)
Thu Jul 10 09:59:09 2003
X-Qmail-Scanner-Mail-From: eric@fnordsystems.com via server4.saturnbandwidth.net
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 06:55:28 -0700
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Eric Kuhnke <eric@fnordsystems.com>
Cc: ben Laurie <ben@algroup.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <3F0D4E94.7020304@algroup.co.uk>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
I stand corrected, last I saw any information on the bunker was well over a year ago.
My opinion is that business continuity/disaster recovery customers can save money by using two separate commercial grade facilities in widely spaced cities (for example, London UK and Frankfurt DE), rather than going for a "all the eggs in one basket" approach. Whereas major commercial exchange points will have a large selection of carriers, government and military bunkers are usually far from any major city centre.
Attack-trained guard dogs? Two ton doors? It's all very impressive when showing off to potential clients (or in novels such as Cryptonomicon), but also very useless in the real world. :-)
At 12:31 PM 7/10/2003 +0100, you wrote:
>I'm not subscribed to the list, so I'm not sure if this will make it.
>But, anyway: it has come to my attention that Eric Kuhnke
><eric@fnordsystems.com> made the following post to the nanog list:
>
>> I recall reading, last year, about a "Cyber Bunker" outside London UK
>> which is being offered as colo to major banks. The banks were raving
>> praise about it. This facility is an ex-RAF centralized radar
>> control site, buried dozens of feet underground w/ thick concrete and
>> designed to withstand nuclear weapon overpressure. Blast doors, EMF
>> shielding, dual-redundant air filtered generators, the works.
>>
>> The people who bought it and turned it into a colo neglected to
>> mention one thing: It's in the middle of a farm field with a single
>> homed fiber route to Telehouse Docklands.
>>
>> Anyone have a backhoe? *snip*
>>
>> DIVERSE ROUTES, people!
>
>Being the owners of what we believe to be the only ex-RAF centralized
>radar control site that offers colo in the UK
>(http://www.thebunker.net/), we're a little puzzled.
>
>Our bunker _does_ have diverse fibre which we believe is also armoured
>to a higher standard than usual[1], and certainly buried deeper (since
>it enters the frame room a _long_ way underground). We also have
>multiple providers routed across the diverse fibre, not all terminating
>in Telehouse. In short, about as far as you can get from a "a single
>homed fiber route to Telehouse Docklands".
>
>If indeed you are talking about our bunker, we'd be very interested to
>know where your information comes from, so we can correct it. If you
>aren't, we'd love to hear which bunker you are talking about.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Ben (Technical Director, ALD)
>
>[1] Funnily enough, the military weren't exactly forthcoming about
>details like this.
>
>--
>http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.thebunker.net/
>
>"There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he
>doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff
