3 ms·

> The scarier part is that, while we don’t see capacity issues, we are blind on what would happen if another link would be severed, or worse, if many are severe

> The scarier part is that, while we don’t see capacity issues, we are blind on what would happen if another link would be severed, or worse, if many are severed An actual attack would be capacity based, but xx% of the internet is Netflix, Disney etc. you can DNS block these. Then unless it's a war zone like Yemen quickly fix it. News, Messager, websites, VoIP, Zoom (probably) should all work fine on minimal capacity. Just like we throw out a lot of food because we have redundancy, 4K streaming is our redundancy. It'd be interesting to see a write up by a non-insane person, so not HN users or cyber security 'experts' or military consultants. TikTok is a vital part of the Ukraine war for Ukraine for instance, but mostly the video gets out and then is organized for the external audience. 4K internet might not "Route Around Damage", 720p might?

amelius 2y ago
We'd need an Internet Protocol that would support the opposite of net-neutrality. Basically, only allowing important traffic and blocking or downgrading everything else.
- somat 2y ago
  That was part of the original ip specification, it was modeled after army telecom patterns. where there are priority levels baked in. when the net starts to overload the lower priority traffic gets discarded first. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791 calls it precedence Precedence 111 - Network Control 110 - Internetwork Control 101 - CRITIC/ECP 100 - Flash Override 011 - Flash 010 - Immediate 001 - Priority 000 - Routine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_of_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_of_service The bits ended up being reassigned for service codes. mainly because nobody used them. I also suspect there would be problems with a priority system in a peer network like the internet. It works in a more managed network(like the army) where strict priority control can be enforced. but it would probably be an arms race when one peer starts setting their priority a notch higher so their messages start getting through better on a congested link.

amelius 2y ago

We'd need an Internet Protocol that would support the opposite of net-neutrality. Basically, only allowing important traffic and blocking or downgrading everything else.

somat 2y ago
That was part of the original ip specification, it was modeled after army telecom patterns. where there are priority levels baked in. when the net starts to overload the lower priority traffic gets discarded first. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791 calls it precedence Precedence 111 - Network Control 110 - Internetwork Control 101 - CRITIC/ECP 100 - Flash Override 011 - Flash 010 - Immediate 001 - Priority 000 - Routine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_of_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_of_service The bits ended up being reassigned for service codes. mainly because nobody used them. I also suspect there would be problems with a priority system in a peer network like the internet. It works in a more managed network(like the army) where strict priority control can be enforced. but it would probably be an arms race when one peer starts setting their priority a notch higher so their messages start getting through better on a congested link.