(Business-dispute Inspired Deliberate) Blackout shows Net's fragility

[Tesha]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5890424.html

Blackout shows Net's fragility

By John Borland, CNET News.com

Since early Wednesday, Phil Bradham, the network engineer at
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, has been cut off from the parts
of the Internet he needs the most.

He can't reach his Web hosting company to update his site.
Critical e-mails aren't going through, and some aren't reaching
him. He can't get to some important sites on the Net, such as the
popular Wikipedia encyclopedia.

The source of Bradham's difficulties is a feud between two big
backbone Internet companies--the long-haul networks that most
consumers and even most businesses ordinarily have little to do
with. One of these companies, Level 3 Communications, has cut off
direct communications with rival Cogent Communications, causing
many of each company's customers to lose access to potentially
significant swatches of the Net.

<snip>

In theory, this kind of blackout is precisely the kind of problem
the Internet was designed to withstand. The complicated, inter-
locking nature of networks means that data traffic is supposed
to be able to find an alternate route to its destination, even
if a critical link is broken.

In practice, obscure contract disputes between the big network
companies can make all these redundancies moot.

<more>

[Tesha]

1. So if you think "We'll always be able to use the 'net"...

So if you think "We'll always be able to use the 'net", think again.
While the Internet may have been designed to be a robust, highly-
redundant, disaster and censorship-resistant communications
environment, goof old commercial interests have now rendered it
just like any other communications medium: Subject to the whims
of the people who own the actual medium.

When the excrement hits the ventilator, don't count on the
Internet still working to allow us all to communicate!

Tesha

[DBoon]

5. Get a ham radio license!

Hams specialize in communicating in impossible conditions.

[AndyTiedye]

11. Had One For Years

TCP/IP runs just fine over the radio too.

We'll keep the net going if nobody else does, though that might force it back to its non-commercial roots (since amateur radio is not allowed to pass commercial traffic).

[sendero]

2. I hope..

....there is a class-action suit. This kind of nonsense should be punished.

[KoKo]

3. Has any of the MSM reported on this? It's caused havoc out there for

businesses. Our own small business couldn't communicate with clients. The worst part that crucial e-mails about a convention that's coming up weren't received and we didn't know they weren't received.

No one knew what was going on and the IT people were thinking that it was something in their servers and not that it was Net Related.

Thank Goodness someone posted the C-Net article yesterday so we could alert folks that we knew were having a problem, so they could call the reps instead of sending e-mails that weren't being received.

Why didn't CNN or the others ever talk about this? If it wasn't for DU alert on this we would still be in the dark about what was going on and this means we lose business. How many companies out there were hurt by this?

[Oggy]

4. We're on level 3

but our backup is Tiscalli, which means we're OK, but you are right it should be pubished in the mainstream news.

[Oggy]

6. Arse

Failover isn't working and now I've caused myself loads of work.

[Triana]

7. These corprat cretins should NOT be allowed

to interrupt service to their customers over 'business disputes'. This should simply be illegal. But, with a corprat buttkissing regime in power, it'll never happen.

The corprat 'persons' can sit there and point fingers and fight over whatever they want, and paying customers are caught in the middle of it.

What a crock of sh*t.

[bemildred]

8. Sue 'em. nt

[anotherdrew]

9. they probably will both be, all their customers have contracts too

contracts which call from them not pulling bullshit like this, I can't believe they could be so irresponsible as to pull this level of crap on a "dispute" whim. I'd have to say I'm a little worried that this may be cover for something more sinister.

[bemildred]

10. The point is there is no external cause here, this is done on a whim.

And many have been badly harmed, so they have a real liability
for the damage done.

[anotherdrew]

12. yes, and looking into this a bit more I find...

level3 vs. cogent

if they just took down the peering between the two, that would have not been a big deal, trafic from level3 needing to go to cogent would have just had to go around through another one of the tier-1 providers and vice-versa.

Instead, what's going on is that level3 is activly blackhole-ing trafic on their net bound for the other net. I would expect people stuck going through level 3 are getting "no route to host" packets back from any pings they try into the cogent net.

This is a crazy thing to do and probably wasn't a smart move on their part. Most likely at least someone is going to get their ass fired over this once the right PHB finds out what's going on.

I don't think cogent is blackhole-ing traffic to level3 but I'm not sure of that.