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The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#21

Post by fabianhjr »

paxys wrote: post #13
fredophile wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The internet routes around failure" hasn't been true for a long time. It refers to the original topography which has been replaced with a hub and spoke model. Remove a few hubs and you have disabled a large portion of the internet.

What original topology are you talking about? There was never a time when your end consumer device could be used as even a semi-reliable web server.

More P2P between research centers on the time of ARPANet; though it wasn't widely used or available back then.

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#22

Post by h2odragon »

paxys wrote: post #13
fredophile wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The internet routes around failure" hasn't been true for a long time. It refers to the original topography which has been replaced with a hub and spoke model. Remove a few hubs and you have disabled a large portion of the internet.

What original topology are you talking about? There was never a time when your end consumer device could be used as even a semi-reliable web server.

https://thecrow.uk/A-Gov.uk-site-dedicated-to-porn-Absolutel...

From yesterday. Note the bit about being on a Pi. Stood up quite admirably to an HN hug.

From 1998 to 2004 I served a fairly large amount of traffic out of my homebuilt pentium in a trailer out in the woods with an ISDN line. We stood up to several media mentions OK.

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#23

Post by winternett »

And Google requiring (costly and/or time consuming) SSL certs to be applied on all sites to "ensure security" was also a big industry money making nightmare for many independent (non-income-driven) sites that is still playing out badly, and not providing much more security.

Two factor authentication and account verification is really an elaborate corporate sham to get people's phone numbers and PII for free. It doesn't do anything new or good for consumers in terms of security over time. There, I said it.

I prefer the old Internet. All these new fangled "fixes" are only makin it worse, more expensive, and overly complicated. :/

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#24

Post by cgriswald »

paxys wrote: post #13
fredophile wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The internet routes around failure" hasn't been true for a long time. It refers to the original topography which has been replaced with a hub and spoke model. Remove a few hubs and you have disabled a large portion of the internet.

What original topology are you talking about? There was never a time when your end consumer device could be used as even a semi-reliable web server.

> There was never a time when your end consumer device could be used as even a semi-reliable web server.

Since about 1999 I have never NOT been running a server of some kind off my home connection. I wouldn't run a business off of it that way, but it's reliable enough to count on it which has to meet any sane definition of semi-reliable. The two biggest problems I've had have been essentially unrelated to the internet. The first is when I've been violating TOS of the ISP or the power was unreliable in the place I lived.

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#25

Post by amatecha »

Teever wrote: post #20
paxys wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What original topology are you talking about? There was never a time when your end consumer device could be used as even a semi-reliable web server.

> There was never a time when your end consumer device could be used as even a semi-reliable web server. I dunno man, My used T420 laptop is serving several sites over a residential symmetrical fiber connection just fine.

My first self-hosted web server was running on a 486 and ran for a few years hosting four or so sites, including a php-based forum!

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#26

Post by fulafel »

winternett wrote: post #23

And Google requiring (costly and/or time consuming) SSL certs to be applied on all sites to "ensure security" was also a big industry money making nightmare for many independent (non-income-driven) sites that is still playing out badly, and not providing much more security. Two factor authentication and account verification is really an elaborate corporate sham to get people's phone numbers and PII for free. It doesn…

Deprecating unencrypted HTTP is a big systemic improvement even though some individual sites may not benefit much. It's a network effect. (What's the money grab given free let's encrypt certs?)

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#27

Post by ragingrobot »

zwkrt wrote: post #8
ragingrobot wrote: post #2

O'Brien: I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together - I can't make head nor tails of it. Bashir: Sounds like one of your repair jobs. Seriously though, it seems like every form of infrastructure we rely on is held together in such a fragile manner. I hate hate to think of the chaos should there be a major Internet and physical infra failure in close proximity, time-wise.

Unless you exist in a state of wild over abundance and are very conscientious, most working infrastructure is always at a state of almost-disrepair. If I operate a machine shop and I have 4 partially-stripped screwdrivers, I might get a new one, but inevitably I will use it until it is as stripped as all the rest, and I don’t dare throw away a tool that is currently even in partially working condition since I might n…

Imagine you use that last screwdriver, and a job needs to get done, and your car won't start so you can't get a new one at a hardware store outside of walking or cycling distance. And now you're unable to repair a vital system.

As I was writing that, I was just thinking of the recent Surfside collapse, what would would have happened if the regions data networks had gone down simultaneously (by chance). A major event two decades ago, cellular networks were overwhelmed and calls could not be made. I dare say we're more reliant on those networks today, as well as the Internet.

Not that I would expect it to happen, but it was just a thought.

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#29

Post by ip26 »

fredophile wrote: post #7
h2odragon wrote: post #6

It's Anti-Fragile. If it breaks all the time, everybody is highly experienced at patching together new workarounds, mechanisms for fail over are in place and regularly tested, and there's whole classes of corner case bugs that get flushed out to be stomped (or nurtured as cherished pets) instead of breeding in the dark and jumping out at you all at once. How can the "Internet routes around failure" be trusted without…

"The internet routes around failure" hasn't been true for a long time. It refers to the original topography which has been replaced with a hub and spoke model. Remove a few hubs and you have disabled a large portion of the internet.

If by “remove a few hubs” you mean level a few major colo’s then ok, but as far as I can tell there is not any single strand of glass or single switch or single server that can take everything down with it.

Re: The internet is held together with spit and baling wire

#30

Post by toast0 »

fredophile wrote: post #7
h2odragon wrote: post #6

It's Anti-Fragile. If it breaks all the time, everybody is highly experienced at patching together new workarounds, mechanisms for fail over are in place and regularly tested, and there's whole classes of corner case bugs that get flushed out to be stomped (or nurtured as cherished pets) instead of breeding in the dark and jumping out at you all at once. How can the "Internet routes around failure" be trusted without…

"The internet routes around failure" hasn't been true for a long time. It refers to the original topography which has been replaced with a hub and spoke model. Remove a few hubs and you have disabled a large portion of the internet.

Back in the 90s when I got on, so much of traffic was exchanged at MAE-West or MAE-East, and a backhoe in Iowa could make nearly all the cross-US traffic go through Europe and Asia instead.

These days, there are lively public internet exchanges up and down both coasts, in texas and chicago and elsewhere. A well placed backhoe can still make a big mess, many 'redundant fibers' are in the same strand, and last mile is fragile, but if my ISP network is up to the local internet exchange, there are many distinct routes to the other coast and a fiber cut is unlikely to route my traffic around the world.

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