4 ms·

I didn't RTFM but I could see the argument that the SPOFs of the Internet are AWS, Cloudflare and Google, not the cables and routers in an IXP.

throw0101a 5y ago
The article is about BGP and Internet Routing Registry (IRR): routing.
xwolfi 5y ago
You alread listed 3 single points of failure. I get what you mean: the entry point search engine, the global cache and the global backend/storage/compute. But look I live in Hong Kong, I dont feel that way: there are other backends, we could survive without the caching for a while and Google is forbidden for 1.4bn people who get on with it very well... Depends what you call the internet. Yes, facebook and whatsapp are gone the minute one of those 3 companies screwed up.
- rdp36 5y ago
  OK, you think 1.4 billion people without the freedom to search is ok? LOL.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    I wouldn't say Google is search, per se. I haven't used Google for search in a few years.
    - tatersolid 5y ago
      If Google search went away for more than 24 hours, Bing/DDG/others would quickly get overwhelmed as people learned about alternatives and switched. Bing might be able to auto-scale using Azure infrastructure but there might not be enough hardware even there.
betterunix2 5y ago
WWW != Internet Yes, for the majority of users the two may be the same, but "The Internet" is the IPv4 and IPv6 network on which the web runs. The equivalent companies to what you named are the transit network operators, companies like Hurricane Electric, AT&T, CenturyLink, etc. The list of transit networks is very long, much longer than the list of major web hosting companies. Now, that said, it is absolutely true that there are ways where major outages can be the result of just one failure. Last year there was a major outage on the US east cost after a Verizon fiber optic line was severed in NYC; it turns out that this line carried many supposedly redundant links, all bundled into a single cable. The failure of that line then caused a cascade of failures as rerouted traffic began overwhelming other systems, but in the end the outage was contained in a relatively small geographic region, albeit one with many Internet users.
inopinatus 5y ago
Those are not single points.

throw0101a 5y ago

The article is about BGP and Internet Routing Registry (IRR): routing.

xwolfi 5y ago

You alread listed 3 single points of failure. I get what you mean: the entry point search engine, the global cache and the global backend/storage/compute. But look I live in Hong Kong, I dont feel that way: there are other backends, we could survive without the caching for a while and Google is forbidden for 1.4bn people who get on with it very well... Depends what you call the internet. Yes, facebook and whatsapp are gone the minute one of those 3 companies screwed up.

rdp36 5y ago
OK, you think 1.4 billion people without the freedom to search is ok? LOL.
- genewitch 5y ago
  I wouldn't say Google is search, per se. I haven't used Google for search in a few years.
  - tatersolid 5y ago
    If Google search went away for more than 24 hours, Bing/DDG/others would quickly get overwhelmed as people learned about alternatives and switched. Bing might be able to auto-scale using Azure infrastructure but there might not be enough hardware even there.

betterunix2 5y ago

WWW != Internet Yes, for the majority of users the two may be the same, but "The Internet" is the IPv4 and IPv6 network on which the web runs. The equivalent companies to what you named are the transit network operators, companies like Hurricane Electric, AT&T, CenturyLink, etc. The list of transit networks is very long, much longer than the list of major web hosting companies. Now, that said, it is absolutely true that there are ways where major outages can be the result of just one failure. Last year there was a major outage on the US east cost after a Verizon fiber optic line was severed in NYC; it turns out that this line carried many supposedly redundant links, all bundled into a single cable. The failure of that line then caused a cascade of failures as rerouted traffic began overwhelming other systems, but in the end the outage was contained in a relatively small geographic region, albeit one with many Internet users.

inopinatus 5y ago

Those are not single points.