[LINK] DNS outage?

[Paul Brooks]

Stilgherrian wrote:
> "The Internet" isn't one thing that's of equal reliability or  
> redundancy. It's a patchwork of many, many disparate networks held  
> together with string and Blu-Tak. It's a wonder the damn thing works  
> at all.
>   
Not really a wonder - it works because the initial assumptions were so 
pessimistic that string and Blu-Tak forms a good enough foundation.
The 'founding fathers' started with the assumption that the underlying 
networks were unreliable, and would spontaneously drop, re-order, delay 
and duplicate packets, and designed the protocols accordingly to 
tolerate and work (almost) regardless.

Unfortunately it is a different design assumption that is biting us now. 
An initial assumption that the primary goal was to get the information 
delivered irrespective of time - within seconds/minutes/hours/days 
didn't matter, as long as it got through. With the rise of audio/video 
streaming and other real-time requirements, today timeliness matters also.

Paul.