From: John Brothers <johnbr@atl.mindspring.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 03:40:36 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Metcalf and Other Net.Fogies
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19960907164630.006d211c@pop.atl.mindspring.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:17 AM 9/7/96 -0400, perry@piermont.com wrote:
>
>  <snip discussion of internet collapse>
>
>I'm "involved with the problems" too, you know. Don't teach granpaw to
>suck eggs. OF COURSE there are problems. None of them, however, are
>signs of "collapse".

This whole thing makes me ill - maybe I'm just an idiot.   What could
possibly cause a collapse?   More usage??  No - that would just mean that
everyone's access would be slower.  Do routers fail because they can't talk
to other routers?  no - they route around it.  I consider myself reasonably
educated when it comes to the layout of the internet, and I have never heard
_anyone_ ever say what constitutes a collapse, and, if it means
'catastrophic permanent failure of the Internet', what could possibly cause
that.

These people are acting like one day, something is going to blow up, and
the entire internet will follow, and stay down for a long long time.

If all the DNS servers died, the internet would stop working for non-local
access until they recovered.  If there was a bug in Cisco routers that
was set to go off on Thursday, September 12th, that would render them
inoperable until power cycled, that would cause a major failure.  If
every building in MCI and Sprint's data network blew up, that would cause
a major failure.

If the usage increased so that the Internet was 'saturated', that doesn't
qualify as a collapse.  It qualifies as 'rush hour'.  If the internet was
in 'rush hour' 24 hours a day, it would be unfun to use, but unlike the
highway system, we can add more lanes pretty much at will. (within reason).

Will someone please explain to me what I'm missing?

Thanks
  John


---
John Brothers 
   Do you have a right not to be offended?