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See, that's what I didn't get about the article: DARPA intended the Internet to be built against single points of failure. Where is the Internet's 'off button'

by davedx 15y ago

See, that's what I didn't get about the article: DARPA intended the Internet to be built against single points of failure. Where is the Internet's 'off button'? Sure, there are exchanges and backbones that are more important than others (e.g. LINX in London), but it takes sustained and continuous efforts by a government to even come close to filtering/censoring the Internet effectively.

feral 15y ago
What people generally say is that the net was designed to be robust against things like a nuclear strike taking out some part of the network. That is very different from saying that it can't be turned off, by a government with the power to legally compel infrastructure operators to do things. I'd say that the US government, if it wanted to, could turn off the Internet, for most of its citizens, over the course of a few days. What would stop this happening is the legal framework, and the business and societal infrastructure that depends on the Internet functioning; but not some technological property of the Internet. The ability to knock domains out, at the DNS level, was demonstrated not too long ago - e.g. http://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-pokerstars-full-tilt-poker-and-absolute-poker-domains-110415/ http://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-pokerstars-full-tilt-poke... Theres this meme out there that the Internet cant be turned off, because its designed in a 'decentralised' manner, and its just not true, in pragmatic terms.
- eli 15y ago
  Forget the power of the courts, the US government outright owns some significant pieces of the internet infrastructure.
  - awesomesauce555 15y ago
    Which ones? Aside from a few DNS servers and some nice to have services (time.nist.gov or whatever), I can't think of any offhand.
rmc 15y ago
it takes sustained and continuous efforts by a government to even come close to filtering/censoring the Internet effectively Yes, and they (government) are the sort of people who sometimes want to censor speech & the internet. Some countries have filtered the internet before, this is not an abstract problem.

by davedx 15y ago

feral 15y ago

What people generally say is that the net was designed to be robust against things like a nuclear strike taking out some part of the network. That is very different from saying that it can't be turned off, by a government with the power to legally compel infrastructure operators to do things. I'd say that the US government, if it wanted to, could turn off the Internet, for most of its citizens, over the course of a few days. What would stop this happening is the legal framework, and the business and societal infrastructure that depends on the Internet functioning; but not some technological property of the Internet. The ability to knock domains out, at the DNS level, was demonstrated not too long ago - e.g. http://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-pokerstars-full-tilt-poker-and-absolute-poker-domains-110415/ http://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-pokerstars-full-tilt-poke... Theres this meme out there that the Internet cant be turned off, because its designed in a 'decentralised' manner, and its just not true, in pragmatic terms.

eli 15y ago
Forget the power of the courts, the US government outright owns some significant pieces of the internet infrastructure.
- awesomesauce555 15y ago
  Which ones? Aside from a few DNS servers and some nice to have services (time.nist.gov or whatever), I can't think of any offhand.

rmc 15y ago

it takes sustained and continuous efforts by a government to even come close to filtering/censoring the Internet effectively Yes, and they (government) are the sort of people who sometimes want to censor speech & the internet. Some countries have filtered the internet before, this is not an abstract problem.