Re: Who wants to be in charge of the Internet today?

["Wayne E. Bouchard" <web () typo org>]

Ya know... Personally, I think that it isn't really necessary to have
an "internet disaster plan"

Thats one of the nice things about the 'net. Everyone is responsible
for their own piece of it and whenever there is an event (ala Katrina)
multiple people work to restore their own infrastructure. The end
result is that companies a) have their own disaster recovery plans
with make up large parts of what people are refering to here and b)
the normal processes of service restoration (most notably in the
circuit providers) means that any "wound" to the internet will heal
itself in relatively short order. Sure, it won't be impact free, but
it doesn't really require any special planning either.

Recall that there was a meeting of FAA officials after 9/11 to discuss
wether a procedure (not "what" but "wether") should be put into place
for grounding aircraft if such a thing became necessary again. The end
result of the discussions was that it was determined that such an
event is so out of the scale of ordinary that to implement a specific
procedure would probably harm efforts instead of helping them; that
the experience and knowledge of the individual controllers along with
a little creativity was the most efficient mechanism for accomplishing
such a task.

I think something similar applies to a large scale disruption of the
internet. Picture Kansas City disappearing one morning along with all
the SONET gear and routers therein. That sort of thing is not
something that can be adequately planned for but ultimately other
paths will be found and it won't take altogether long to get to
something like 75% service restoration. The independant efforts of
individuals and individual companies will probably be the best
mechanism for repairing any injury to the 'net.

Just my 2.5 cents.

-Wayne

On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 12:45:04AM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115102893799688389.html
>
> In Event of Big Web Disruption, U.S. Is Ill-Prepared, Study Says
> By VAUHINI VARA
> June 23, 2006; Page B2
>
> The U.S. is poorly prepared for a major disruption of the Internet,
> according to a study that an influential group of chief executives will
> publish today.
>
> The Business Roundtable, composed of the CEOs of 160 large U.S. companies,
> said neither the government nor the private sector has a coordinated plan
> to respond to an attack, natural disaster or other disruption of the
> Internet. While individual government agencies and companies have their
> own emergency plans in place, little coordination exists between the
> groups, according to the study.
>
> "It's a matter of more clearly defining who has responsibility," said
> Edward Rust Jr., CEO of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., who
> leads the Roundtable's Internet-security effort.
>
> [...]

---
Wayne Bouchard
web () typo org
Network Dude
http://www.typo.org/~web/