Legal Commentary

The Internet is More Fragile Than You May Think

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

The internet may be a packet-switching network, but certain paths are in fact critical as they rely on fragile cables. Which break.

Today it’s a major Mediterranean cable that’s broken.

Egypt, it seems, has pretty much fallen off the Internet, and service to several other countries including Pakistan and India is impacted.

It’s an important reminder that while many routes between A and B may be possible, sometimes there are not so many; and sometimes there’s only one big pipe.

Which makes wiretaps — and full network monitoring — a lot easier.

I recall setting up a panel at CFP years ago on how one would destroy the internet. One guy described evil worms. Another had a nefarious DNS-killer. And then one fellow just said, “give me a backhoe…”.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on January 31, 2008 (boomark / email).