Global Internet Infrastructure

(that stability thing….)

What is it?

• First thing I asked myself when I was asked to talk on this subject was… “What exactly is “Global Internet Infrastructure”?”

• If in doubt make up a new Acronym….– LMGTFY

http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Global+Internet+Infrastructure

• Funnily enough…

• When people talk about the “Global Internet Infrastructure” the “Internet” is itself the most global of Infrastructures.

• “The Internet is truly a global infrastructure for the 21st century -- the first really new infrastructure to develop in nearly a century” V. Cerf 1995

• The Internet is probably the most important communications enabler that has been invented since the telegraph.

• Global Instability in that system would have very dramatic effects…

Data on Stability of Internet

• Finding measurement of this is not as easy as you would think– Firstly we don’t have a good definition of what

this “Stability” means.– Secondly there have been very few scientific

publications on the matter in the last 10 years

LMGTFY……

Recent major outages

• Issues with physical infrastructure….– Data centers disappearing, fiber cuts etc..

• Issues with identifier systems..– Names, IP addresses (routing) etc…

Earthquakes, Storms and….

• 2006 Taiwan Earthquake– A cable break– Natural causes

– The damage was serious locally– New on this Internet outage could be followed on

the Internet… (unless you were in Taiwan)

• 2008 Fiber cuts…– 5 (or was it 3 or 9?) undersea cables were

accidently damaged. (reported to be by ship anchors)• This caused outages for millions of people.• You could follow the minute by minute updates of this

on the …. Erm…. Internet..• It was a major outage but it’s affect was Local.

• 2010 Haiti Earthquake– Cables were damaged.. – This caused some communications issues inside

and with Haiti.• My own communication with those inside Haiti was

mainly conducted using the Internet...• For those going to IGF come see the .HT talk on this at

the CENTR panel.

The identifier systems

• These may be expected to be more global in reach as the protocols are globally deployed.

• 2002 Attack on Root servers.– Great headlines “Massive DDoS Attack Hit DNS

Root Servers!”– Was followed and reported widely on the

Internet.

– In reality everything kept working..

• 2007 Attack against Root Servers

– Very large attack… affected a few of the root server systems

– Reported heavily on the …erm.. Internet

– Everything kept working….

• 2010 RIPE NCC experiment

– Triggered a bug in Cisco IOS code (Routers)– Reported (on the Internet) to have affected about

1% of “Internet”• http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cisco

-bug-behind-small-scale-internet-outage?source=nww_rss• Very short term outage.. Did cause some short term

discomfort

– Although the Internet is “Global Infrastructure” the way it is designed and implemented means that “outages” or “instability” is localized.

– In the history of the Internet it is hard to find one example of a truly global outage.

– Local outages happen all the time… • You can read about them on the Internet!

• We should not be complacent….– The fact that we discuss and act on such issues at

length and that a lot of actions have taken place to improve stability and resiliency is testimony to the fact that as industry we are not…

– but so far we have done a pretty good job…

Thank you!