[LINK] DNS outage?

[Adrian Chadd]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009, Kim Holburn 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.
> 
> 
> I have wondered for a long time why it's called a "net".  The  
> underlying topology of the "net" for a very long time has been a star  
> or galactic topology with the main centre in the US.  I think that's  
> gradually changing but for a long time most packets from or to  
> Australia went through the US.  If you have a topology like that it's  
> not going to be able to reroute if something near the centre goes wrong.
> 
> 2008 and still most of our traffic goes through the US hmmm:
> http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

That is a very AU and English Centric view of the internet "world."

Which part of the network is the "hub" and which are "spokes" really does
depend on what is important to you.

I think you may be viewing your internet topology based on the sites you access
frequently. For people in Western Europe, China, Japan and Korea - and increasing
chunks of Eastern Europe - the United States could quite happily drop off the
internet without affecting connectivity to a lot of the content and sites they wish
to talk to.


I'll hazard a guess that the bulk of non-Australian "English" content is coming out
of the United States purely because that is where the large concentration of English
speaking content is coming from. :)

(ObNote: this is a wide, sweeping generalisation. Various current generation technology
is throwing spanners in the above statements - eg "CDN" distribution.)


2c,



Adrian