[Outages-discussion] Internet "backbone"

[Robert Brockway]

On Sat, 19 Nov 2011, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

> 2. I cannot stress this point enough especially if you have CTO/CIO
> attendees: the Internet should not be used as a replacement for
> dedicated circuits.  I can tell you factually that there are very large,
> very important Fortune 500 companies who rely on the Internet for
> transit of mission-critical applications/packets.  I cannot name names
> (nor will I off-list -- the repercussions would be drastic), but these
> companies "cannot justify the cost of dedicated circuits"[1].  Many seem
> to think that if you throw a VPN in front of something it suddenly
> becomes reliable, only 3 months later do you find your engineers on
> 3-hour-long bridges trying to explain what happened, the concept of
> asymmetric routing, and how when you use the Internet for transit you
> really are at the mercy of, well, everyone/everything.

Thanks for these excellent points Jeremy.

Re point 2, I remember trying to explain this exact point to medium sized 
organisations 12 years ago.

And we have seen widespread problems of this nature.  SQL Slammer (2003) 
was reported to cause problems with ATM and even phone networks in the US. 
I thought this might have been a bit of a wake up call but no such luck.

> RFC1323 or necessarily the intricacies of BGP.  I wish more people
> would get their hands dirty with tcpdump/snoop/Wireshark too.
> </rant>

Yes I'm a big fan of using Wireshark and friends to get a handle on 
network problems rather than just guessing.  I've introduced a lot of 
system & network admins to Wireshark.

Cheers,

Rob

-- 
Email: robert at timetraveller.org		Linux counter ID #16440
IRC: Solver (OFTC & Freenode)
Web: http://www.practicalsysadmin.com
Director, Software in the Public Interest (http://spi-inc.org/)
Free & Open Source: The revolution that quietly changed the world
"One ought not to believe anything, save that which can be proven by nature and the force of reason" -- Frederick II (26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250)