Shutting down the internet

[blueToy]

Interesting article about a proposed new law now being quickly shuffled thru giving Obama ( or any president ) the power to shut down the net . The reason for the new law ??? National security . No surprise there .


http://www.smh.com.au/technology/tec...0618-yln6.html

Shutting down the net , according to some experts , would create global chaos , which leaves me to wonder , if this law gets passed , would the US use their power to blackmail or extort other countries ?

Personally , I'm not so sure if the net shuts down it would be chaos . But seeing how the US is getting more desperate , and is facing some very difficult times ahead and possibly for many years , makes you wonder .

mod edit: added URL tags to your link. - hampstor

[qcp1]

i wonder how that would even be possible for all the content hosted in other countries? or could they just shut down the .com sites?

[blueToy]

Originally posted by qcp1
i wonder how that would even be possible for all the content hosted in other countries? or could they just shut down the .com sites?

Well , who owns the trademarks or patents behind the technology ? I don't know enough about the system to give you a precise answer , but I do know the net was US Military built . Makes more sense now . Get countries and millions of business around the world hooked on your devices , then if things start going bad pull in the reins under the guise of national security and start threatening to collapse their economies , if that is even possible . Seeing how millions of jobs have been developed around the use of computers and the net , it wouldn't take too much of interruption to create havoc around the world .

Both companies and governments have become too comfortable with the idea that computers and the net makes life easier . It seems to have made everyone more vulnerable in so many more ways . I could be way off base here though as I'm not computer expert , but I wonder how life would be different if the US decided to just start shutting down the system ? I'm sure Beyond has some top level gurus that could chime in .

I personally don't make a living off of computers or the net , but the company I work for relies on the net for their info to be transfered . Are they ready to go back to the days of using paper to keep track of things ? I doubt it .

So is it possible ?

[ZenOps]

Would be impossible.

Too many satellite uplinks, too many wifi networks.

Soon, even singular LED's will be able to talk to each other at Gbit/sec speeds at power levels well below 1 milliwatt.

http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en...ews_1002_1.htm

Even if you cut off access to every commercial fiber in every city - the net would still "find a way" They might disable video traffic and game traffic to reduce congestion, buy more than likely all text emails would be functionally unaffected.

[blueToy]

Originally posted by ZenOps
Would be impossible.

Too many satellite uplinks, too many wifi networks.

Soon, even singular LED's will be able to talk to each other at Gbit/sec speeds at power levels well below 1 milliwatt.

http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en...ews_1002_1.htm

Even if you cut off access to every commercial fiber in every city - the net would still "find a way" They might disable video traffic and game traffic to reduce congestion, buy more than likely all text emails would be functionally unaffected.

For the sake of argument , who owns the rights or patents behind the satellites or the ability to uplink ? or Wifi'ing ? or networking ?

[ZenOps]

Satellites are sometimes country owned, but more often than physically and financially by corporations (TV stations like Fox, etc)

I liken an internet disaster scenario to the shutdown of airports in the US for 9/11. No planes fell out of the sky due to running out of fuel, most were re-routed to Canada.

Even if an entire country like the US were to shut off its internet - the rest of the world and non-aligned corporations, and educational institutions would jump in to fill the gap.

Besides - the US is actually not the main worldwide hub for internet, Al Gore did not invent the internet afterall.

www dot com access is another story - that is somewhat fragile... You might want to write down the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx addresses of your critical servers and websites just as an emergency.

IE: Shaw email server in Calgary is 64.59.128.135

Shaw email server in Vancouver is 24.71.223.43

And of course the most critical is Beyond.ca being http://139.142.153.215

[e31]

This scenario would never happen on purpose.

If it did, you would hear the collective screams of millions of sysadmins, followed by the rapid depletion of world coffee stockpiles, and finally a rapid succession of subversive repairs. Of course this would happen long before the government announcement of a problem.

[A790]

The US doesn't have the capability to shut down the internet by virtue of how the internet operates. There are millions of servers all over the world. The US shutting off theirs would do more damage to themselves over anyone else.

[codetrap]

Originally posted by blueToy




Well , who owns the trademarks or patents behind the technology ? I don't know enough about the system to give you a precise answer , but I do know the net was US Military built . Makes more sense now . Get countries and millions of business around the world hooked on your devices , then if things start going bad pull in the reins under the guise of national security and start threatening to collapse their economies , if that is even possible . Seeing how millions of jobs have been developed around the use of computers and the net , it wouldn't take too much of interruption to create havoc around the world .

Both companies and governments have become too comfortable with the idea that computers and the net makes life easier . It seems to have made everyone more vulnerable in so many more ways . I could be way off base here though as I'm not computer expert , but I wonder how life would be different if the US decided to just start shutting down the system ? I'm sure Beyond has some top level gurus that could chime in .

I personally don't make a living off of computers or the net , but the company I work for relies on the net for their info to be transfered . Are they ready to go back to the days of using paper to keep track of things ? I doubt it .

So is it possible ?

You're right. You don't know how the internet works. ARPA net hasn't been part of the internet for oh.. 20 years now? The worst that they could do is shut down all their external ties at their borders.

[dexlargo]

I think this is either a case of journalists not understanding the internet, or deliberately blowing the issue out of proportion to get the attention of their readers. I looked on Lieberman's site and read his description of the bill - its purpose looks to mainly be the protection of critical federal networks from terrorist attacks, whether by viruses, DDOS attacks, or good old fashioned password theft. Basically just a co-ordinated network security program for the federal government.

The bits that the Australian newspaper were making so much of had to do with emergency powers that the bill proposes for the president's office, which are only a small part of the bill. Here's the description of those powers:

Creation of a responsible framework, developed in coordination with the private sector, for the President to authorize emergency measures to protect the nation’s most critical infrastructure if a cyber vulnerability is being exploited or is about to be exploited. The President must notify Congress in advance before exercising these emergency powers. Any emergency measures imposed must be the least disruptive necessary to respond to the threat and will expire after 30 days unless the President extends them. The bill authorizes no new surveillance authorities and does not authorize the government to “take over” private networks.

These are fairly broad powers, but I don't see how 'shutting down the internet' would advance the purpose of the bill.

ETA: LINK to Lieberman's press release.

[hampstor]

Anyone remember the single rogue root DNS server in China incident? It was causing some US traffic to be re-routed thru the great firewall of China (and thus censored). That was a single rogue root DNS server.

You can't shut down the internet per say, however the US does have a large # of root DNS servers. If the US was wanting to be really malicious about it they probably could cause some serious disruptions across the globe...

[Mibz]

Originally posted by hampstor
Anyone remember the single rogue root DNS server in China incident? It was causing some US traffic to be re-routed thru the great firewall of China (and thus censored). That was a single rogue root DNS server.

You can't shut down the internet per say, however the US does have a large # of root DNS servers. If the US was wanting to be really malicious about it they probably could cause some serious disruptions across the globe...

Absolutely, but they'd be disrupting legitimate traffic that requires DNS, not the malicious stuff they're trying to prevent which would probably bypass it altogether.

[Zephyr]

According to South Park, America can shut down the Internets

[Sorrik]

Oh SHI....

http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/

[codetrap]

Originally posted by ZenOps
Would be impossible.

Too many satellite uplinks, too many wifi networks.

Soon, even singular LED's will be able to talk to each other at Gbit/sec speeds at power levels well below 1 milliwatt.

http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en...ews_1002_1.htm

Even if you cut off access to every commercial fiber in every city - the net would still "find a way" They might disable video traffic and game traffic to reduce congestion, buy more than likely all text emails would be functionally unaffected.

Way to misrepresent the facts, and show you really don't understand how the internet works.

If you cut every single commercial fiber in the city, then you're totally screwed. Regardless of if siemens little LED network link is running. If you read your own article, it has to be perfect line of sight, and it's only good for about 5 meters. The theory behind this tech is no different than how your IR remote control works.

[codetrap]

Originally posted by blueToy



For the sake of argument , who owns the rights or patents behind the satellites or the ability to uplink ? or Wifi'ing ? or networking ?

Private enterprise owns the satellite uplinks. Wifi isn't a patent, it's a standard. 802.11xx.

No single company could shut down the internet, just like no single gov't could shut it down the internet.

However, that being said, if the city of calgary somehow decided they wanted to pull calgary off the map. All they'd have to do is to cut the power to 5 or 6 colo-pop sites, and everyone is tits up. That would take out external access for probably 99.9% of the people. The one ones who would have access anymore would be satellite, of which there are probably *very* few since it's more expensive than cable or local wireless. This of course would take out most of alberta as well, since most of the aggregation for the internet comes through calgary.

A lot of the fibre is in shared facilities, because it's expensive to trench.

[hampstor]

Originally posted by Mibz
Absolutely, but they'd be disrupting legitimate traffic that requires DNS, not the malicious stuff they're trying to prevent which would probably bypass it altogether.

My example was more to show that despite the distributed nature of the internet, the US as a whole can still impose control over it.

[HondaKid]

Impossible as this video from The IT Crowd proves:

[derran.m]

glad i'm on the expensive satellite internets ... nobody cuttin me off LOL

[UndrgroundRider]

Originally posted by hampstor


My example was more to show that despite the distributed nature of the internet, the US as a whole can still impose control over it.

That may have been true in the past, but in recent times a lot of the name servers have moved to a geographically diverse cluster platform. 9/13 root name server clusters operate across the world using anycast.

I agree that the US could temporarily disrupt the internet, but it doesn't have the capability to render it indefinitely useless. Assuming they did shut down all links in the US, the rest of the world would be up and running after a quick update of the root hints file on all DNS servers.

And of course, direct IP communication would work just fine to.