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The internet is a weak infrastructure, relying on a few big cables and data centers. And through AWS and Cloudflare it has become worse? Was it ever true, that

The internet is a weak infrastructure, relying on a few big cables and data centers. And through AWS and Cloudflare it has become worse? Was it ever true, that the internet is resilient? I doubt. Resilient systems work autonomously and can synchronize - but don't need to synchronize. * Git is resilient. * Native E-Mail clients - with local storage enabled - are somewhat resilient. * A local package repository is - somewhat resilient. * A local file-sharing app (not Warp/ Magic-Wormhole -> needs relay) is resilient if it uses only local WiFi or Bluetooth. We're building weak infrastructure. A lot of stuff shall work locally and only optionally use the internet.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
The internet seems resilient enough for all intents and purposes, we haven't had a global internet-wide catastrophe impacting the entire internet as far as I know, but we have gotten close to it sometimes (thanks BGP). But the web, that's the fragile, centralized and weak point currently, and seems to be what you're referring to rather. Maybe nitpicky, but I feel like it's important to distinguish between "the web" and "the internet".
- jacquesm 1y ago
  You are absolutely correct but this distinction is getting less and less important, everything is using APIs nowadays, including lots of stuff that is utterly invisible until it goes down.
- ho_schi 1y ago
  Sweden and the “Coop” disaster: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57707530 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57707530 That because people trust and hope blindly. They believe IT is for saving money? It isn’t. They coupled their cash registers onto an American cloud service. The couldn’t even pay in cash. It usually gets worse, when not outages happens for some time. Because that increases blind trust.
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    That a Swedish supermarket gets hit by a ransomware attack doesn't prove/disprove the overall stability of the internet, nor the fragility of the web.
- rjmunro 1y ago
  > The internet seems resilient enough... The word "seems" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
  - CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
    I don't wanna jinx anything, but yeah, seems. I can't remember a single global internet outage for the 30+ years I've been alive. But again, large services gone down, but the internet infrastructure seems to keep on going regardless.
smaudet 1y ago
If you take into account the "the web" vs "the internet" as others have mentioned. Yes the Internet has stayed stable. The Web, as defined by a bunch of servers running complex software, probably much less so. Just the fact that it must necessarily be more complex means that it has more failure modes...
bombcar 1y ago
The Internet was much more resilient when it was just that - an internetwork of connected networks; each of which could and did operate autonomously. Now we have computers that shit themselves if DNS isn’t working, let alone LANs that can operate disconnected from the Internet as a whole. And partially working or indicating this it works (when it doesn’t) is usually even worse.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago

The internet seems resilient enough for all intents and purposes, we haven't had a global internet-wide catastrophe impacting the entire internet as far as I know, but we have gotten close to it sometimes (thanks BGP). But the web, that's the fragile, centralized and weak point currently, and seems to be what you're referring to rather. Maybe nitpicky, but I feel like it's important to distinguish between "the web" and "the internet".

jacquesm 1y ago
You are absolutely correct but this distinction is getting less and less important, everything is using APIs nowadays, including lots of stuff that is utterly invisible until it goes down.
ho_schi 1y ago
Sweden and the “Coop” disaster: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57707530 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57707530 That because people trust and hope blindly. They believe IT is for saving money? It isn’t. They coupled their cash registers onto an American cloud service. The couldn’t even pay in cash. It usually gets worse, when not outages happens for some time. Because that increases blind trust.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  That a Swedish supermarket gets hit by a ransomware attack doesn't prove/disprove the overall stability of the internet, nor the fragility of the web.
rjmunro 1y ago
> The internet seems resilient enough... The word "seems" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  I don't wanna jinx anything, but yeah, seems. I can't remember a single global internet outage for the 30+ years I've been alive. But again, large services gone down, but the internet infrastructure seems to keep on going regardless.

smaudet 1y ago

If you take into account the "the web" vs "the internet" as others have mentioned. Yes the Internet has stayed stable. The Web, as defined by a bunch of servers running complex software, probably much less so. Just the fact that it must necessarily be more complex means that it has more failure modes...

bombcar 1y ago

The Internet was much more resilient when it was just that - an internetwork of connected networks; each of which could and did operate autonomously. Now we have computers that shit themselves if DNS isn’t working, let alone LANs that can operate disconnected from the Internet as a whole. And partially working or indicating this it works (when it doesn’t) is usually even worse.