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96 Comments
- radison2, on 02/08/2008, -0/+36The fact that we are reading and posting on Digg is testament to the Internet's stability not fragility. It was designed to allow major outages in one area without other areas feeling the effect. The collapse was not total across the middle east and India. In some locations perhaps but in others there were work arounds almost immediately.
- Hodor, on 02/08/2008, -2/+25AHA! So it was gigantic blue scissors that cut the cables!! I knew it!!
- wisam, on 02/08/2008, -0/+20No, that's just an urban legend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#The_ARPANET_a ... - grinchdec23, on 02/08/2008, -3/+20no, it wasnt.
- doshindude, on 02/08/2008, -3/+20TCP/IP protocol is designed to survive a nuclear war. The internet != TCP/IP
- DarkerMaster, on 02/08/2008, -4/+20Wasn't the Internet designed to survive a nuclear war?
- MeMongo, on 02/08/2008, -1/+13Brakes are what a car has
Breaks are what the undersea cables do every few days and what Teamsters are required to take every 60-90 minutes - zimbra, on 02/08/2008, -0/+9Oh no! The internet is collapsing! Everyone grab as much as you can and get to the bunkers! If we're lucky some of us may survive to rebuild the human race!
- mannaran, on 02/08/2008, -0/+8Internet is effectively an application on TCP/IP. There is no benefit by making a protocol survive an attack. It should make the application on top of it survive.
Also Internet, by definition, will be alive even any two networks are alive and connected together. What would fail is accessing the sites that are hosted on the disconnected part of Internet. If TLDs and some DNS servers are busted, still you can access the sites through IP or some other means.
Internet is just too abstract to say it failed. It is very difficult to define such kind of failure. Of course those who are in disconnected areas will feel the pain! - slvrbullet87, on 02/08/2008, -0/+7Spell check wouldnt catch that
- inactive, on 02/08/2008, -1/+7Ummm...anything that can be remembered or recorded by a human or a device is designed to survive a nuclear war, assuming that at least one human or device with the knowledge of TCP/IP survives.
And as someone who helped build the thing---these days? Yeah, TCP/IP pretty much is the internet. - Rikkochet, on 02/08/2008, -1/+7Are you serious? Potential sabotage to create an information blackout across the Middle East and you say things like that?
There's a whole lot more riding on the internet in their political climate that people updating their MySpace pages. Think a little bigger. - bilbus, on 02/08/2008, -3/+8undersea cables brake every few days .. its normal. just a run of bad luck for so many in one area to break at one time. Alcatel has a full time fleet of ships that do nothing but repair cables.
- TomFrost, on 02/08/2008, -1/+6I think what doshin meant was that TCP/IP makes loss of large portions of the internet transparent. If half the world's internet was cut off, it's within the constructs of TCP/IP to be able to look up and route to all IP addresses that are still connected and return an appropriate error when a machine is not. The design of the protocol does not require all major net hubs to be online.
- Mewchu11, on 02/08/2008, -4/+8Since the term internet can refer to any number of connected machines as long as two remain connected somewhere the internet still exists in some form. I think it could survive some nukes.
- gummih, on 02/08/2008, -1/+5Internet, telephone, financial transactions ... BAH no big deal.
- Sporky023, on 02/08/2008, -0/+4The work arounds you speak of are built in a matter of milliseconds; as the routing software detects suddenly increased latency on certain paths and then updates its routing tables. Probably takes about four or five packet send attempts - as in a teensy, tiny, fraction of a second - before the internet has re-optimized for the new topology
- hydroplane, on 02/08/2008, -2/+6Wish it was happening here. There is nothing more satisfying than watching net addicts squirm when the network is down.
- vroom101, on 02/08/2008, -3/+6Article on one page -- cut-and-paste the link:
technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=20152 ( http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_a ... ) - bearpigman, on 02/08/2008, -0/+3Oh crap! I better fill my hard drive with enough porn to see me through the next decade.
- BingoPower, on 02/08/2008, -1/+4"The company said that Egyptian authorities are "expediting the permits" so that work can begin as soon as the ship arrives. "
Now, that's ***** bureaucracy at it's best! (or worst, depending on your point of view) - smackhero, on 02/08/2008, -0/+3only 2 cables were involved in the outages: the Flag Telecom Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 cables. the 3rd cable break was an unrelated event that didn't really result in any network problems since it was part of a regional loop created for redundancy and to allow alternative routes for network traffic.
the problem wasn't so many cables breaking in one area, the problem was primarily due to a break happening in a major choke point where all the internet traffic for an entire region is funneled through a single cable. because this particular route had previously received very little traffic, there wasn't a great need for multiple cables to be laid. so it was this lack of redundancy that directly contributed to the massive outages. - bitspace, on 02/08/2008, -4/+7"When nothing out of the ordinary suddenly happened early last Wednesday across the Middle East and into India, it provided a stark reminder of how Net's collective reason can still be held hostage to hyped-up non-events." And showed "the fragility of diggers' sanity at its joke points."
Summary fixed. - smackhero, on 02/08/2008, -0/+350% of india's outbound traffic is down, and 70% of egypt's connectivity to the outside internet is lost--that isn't a big deal?
the internet is a major part of our global communications infrastructure. this doesn't just include the web, it also includes other data communications. at the very least this will have a huge economic impact on the area. and even the web has become a vital part of modern society. people use the web as much as , or perhaps more than in some cases, they use the telephone.
it might come as a shock to you, but people use the internet/web for more than just accessing MySpace. and this problem is expected to take more than just a few hours to fix. RTFA before making asinine comments. - UGM2099, on 02/08/2008, -0/+3I design websites that will survive nuclear war. In fact, clients demand it.
- Railer, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2Not to be a skeptic on this comment, but I think we are seeing a bit of revisionist history here. I've been using the internet back before it was the internet, (BBS 300 BAUD) and it's Always been taught, its primary goal was a distributed, non centrally controlled distribution and routing system. Designed to be resistant against ANY type of attack.
http://historyoftheinternet.org/wowacademy/timelin ...
Even in your article it only calls it a semi-myth, there is considerable bearing in reality. - noahhoward, on 02/08/2008, -0/+24wardLynesRocker64: Sir, we've sighted the enemy setting up an AA emplacement on the face of hill 13
*****: That will not get lulz from the bomrz
OsamaLuvzHillary: Hey guys found me yet?
OsamaLuvzHillary: My ip is 127.0.0.1 COME GET ME BITCHES!!
*****: You again!? I'm going to set you up the bomb
*** ***** just sent nuked 127.0.0.1 ***
4wardLynesRocker64: :facepalm: noob.
- smackhero, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2because clearly most militaries operate via public civilian communications channels such as the internet when they are at war, and not by secure and specially adapted military satellites or radio.
- inactive, on 02/08/2008, -9/+11Now let's pretend to give a ***** that parts of Dubai couldn't access their MySpace accounts for a few hours. I swear, Diggers will try and make a big deal out of ANYTHING. Yet oddly enough, it's always Diggers that are whining about how the media "blows things out of proportion." Have a nice big cup of STFU, guys.
- TheG2, on 02/08/2008, -1/+3Got some other brilliant plan for transferring data super fast then?
- pdxa4, on 02/08/2008, -4/+6Sea-Me-We, now that's funny....
- kipmartin, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2someone needs decaff!
- inactive, on 02/09/2008, -0/+2OMFG, Y2K...I mean PEAK OIL...Uh...No, GLOBAL WARMING!! Uh...Collapse of the dollar!!! NO DRINKING WATER!! Wait, that's not right either...WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF FOOD!!! No.....Oh, wait that's right...THE INTERNET IS DYING!!!
- osarhan, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2Don't worry it won't be that bad, just a bit like the 80's
- smackhero, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2the article says nothing about jews. and the internet is vital communications infrastructure in modern society, so at the very least it's going to have a huge economic impact. imagine if phone lines were suddenly cut and cellphone towers disabled.
- kipmartin, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2a MacBook could do that? wow. no wonder everyone is moving to Mac! btw, there is a theory that the cables are assuming human characteristics like feelings, reason, and intelligence and that THEY CUT THEMSELVES!!
- Naturalistic, on 02/09/2008, -0/+2This takes "griefing" to another level.
- Sporky023, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2@ aajjcckk, I have two comments for you:
(1) the internet was actually more designed for the CIA's deliberate dismantling of key connections than it was for nuclear war. The system's primary source of resilience is its redundancy, which essentially means it has no "key connections".
(2) MIT Tech Review is like a tenured professor - much more free to report freely because it is not owned by shareholders who demand a profit. Who would you rather trust - news organizations whose raison d'etre is to make money, or news organizations whose raison d'etre is education? Keep in mind that when the decision comes between, on the one hand, reporting the most appropriate news in the most appropriate way and, on the other hand, maximizing profits, privately held news organizations that are businesses will always choose profits.
You have a healthy skepticism of news sources, which is commendable, but it is completely misguided. I'm guessing you're a conservative, which makes you see the "tech/science establishment" (MIT) as part of the liberal elite and hence believe that academics are the most likely to be power-hungry conspirators trying to take over the world. News flash fool: the ruler of the world is a self-proclaimed "bidnessman" - noahhoward, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2It's still there... she misses you too.
- sgoogle, on 02/08/2008, -0/+2"And yes, the internet was designed to survive nuclear war."
No it wasn't
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#The_ARPANET_a ... - Sporky023, on 02/08/2008, -1/+3Dugg UP for providing novel information to the discussion. I don't really care about spelling.
- hydrodev, on 02/08/2008, -1/+3why bother "rebuilding the human race", we will just ***** things up again. Let the ***** roaches have their crack at it.
- Nextrix, on 02/10/2008, -0/+2I wonder if this has anything to do with them pushing out the IPv6...
- osarhan, on 02/08/2008, -0/+1Nah! not that big a deal, I can still watch you tube videos of someone sticking a spoon up their nose, so its grand!!!
p.s. I'm being sarcastic - petecampbell, on 02/08/2008, -0/+1I think 24 has just came up with a new idea for a terrorist plot.
- Sporky023, on 02/08/2008, -0/+1Mesh networks - that's an interesting notion but the construction would probably be two or three orders of magnitude more expensive than laying a cable. A cable is essentially an extruded shape you can mass produce with a single machine, and then simply drop down on the surface by reeling it out. A mesh network would have to consist of a series of indpendent, intelligent machines capable of making real-time routing decisions, able to transmit and receive radio waves underwater, and able to withstand the enormous pressure down there plus maintain a power supply. Where did you read that mesh networks would be better - do you know what a mesh network is?
- F1R3DUP, on 02/08/2008, -1/+2Wow, you're a dolt. This is a huge deal. Especially if you entertain the possible conspiracies behind it.
- painhertz, on 02/08/2008, -0/+1Internet collapse? I'll have another cup of hyperbole, please.
- zimbra, on 02/08/2008, -0/+1I bow to your better judgement, sir.
- noahhoward, on 02/08/2008, -1/+2How do you know about the secret command center????
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