4 ms·

For your first example it's more a matter of architecture than technology.

• DemocracyFTW2 4y ago
  Sure, in so far as you can architecture your signalling network in a more or less centralized fashion. However, the systems that we e.g. in Germany used to have used a lot of different technologies like taught wires that would physically move signals, locally working operators in distributed signal boxes connected with a dedicated pre-digital telephone network and so on. This system simply did not have a single point of failure that you could attack over the internet from thousands of miles away. Even a Carrington-event level CME would not have taken out the entirety of the system, even after much of it went electric, then electromechanical and electronic. What they now do is they rip out all of the old technology and replace everything with digital equipment; Siemens for one will build a single central signal box for the entire Norwegian railway system[1]; they do not say in the linked article whether that system will have a gateway to the public internet, but locally at least it will use ethernet (via fiber in the case of a German pilot) to get rid of heavy 380V copper cables. So yeah, "more a matter of architecture" but still totally what they're aiming for, a single control station for the railway network of an entire (not-so-small) country, a.k.a. single point of failure. [1] https://new.siemens.com/de/de/unternehmen/stories/forschung-technologien/folder-future-living/freie-fahrt-zum-internet-der-eisenbahn.html https://new.siemens.com/de/de/unternehmen/stories/forschung-...