A Closer Look at the ‘Level 3 + Global Crossing’ Union

On Monday, 11 April 2011, Level 3 announced they had entered a definitive agreement to acquire Global Crossing. According to the Renesys Market Intelligence rankings, this merger would bring together the world's #1 and #2 global providers, with over half the Internet market on earth dependent on the combined entity. If the deal gained regulatory approval in the US and elsewhere today, how would the Internet provider landscape change? We'll answer that question in this blog, giving the proposed union a fictional name of Level Crossing for the purposes of our discussion. more

House of Cards

Time flies. Although it was over 18 months ago, it seems just like yesterday that a small Czech provider, SuproNet, caused global Internet mayhem by making a perfectly valid (but extremely long) routing announcement. Since Internet routing is trust-based, within seconds every router in the world saw this announcement and tried to pass it on. Unfortunately, due to the size of this single message, quite a few routers choked -- resulting in widespread Internet instability. Today, over a year later, we were treated to a somewhat different version of the exact same story. more

Accidentally Importing Censorship

With advancements in hardware and software, sophisticated filtering technologies are increasingly being applied to restrict access to the Internet. This happens at the level of both governments and corporations. .. given the open nature of the trust-based Internet, one country's restrictions, if not handled very carefully, can easily foul the global Internet nest we all live in. This blog is about one such story of Internet restrictions in China becoming visible (seemingly at random) from other parts of the world and going undetected for 3 weeks. more

Routing Redundancy: How Much Is Enough?

Internet connectivity is a good thing. Many of us depend on it for everything from our livelihoods to our entertainment. However, the Internet is very fragile and even the The New York Times is worried about it. But they're primarily concerned with overloads that can occur when everyone on the planet does the same thing at roughly the same time, such as surfing for news about Michael Jackson. Unfortunately, we will never avoid all such scenarios. Physical systems are designed around average and typical peak loads, not around extremely high loads associated with very unlikely events. Who would pay for that? more

Internet Vigilantism

Atrivo (aka Intercage), a Concord, California-based Internet hosting service, disappeared from the Internet for around two days recently. They didn't go bankrupt or suffer a physical catastrophe. Their providers simply shut them down by refusing their traffic. This might very well be the first time in history that the Internet community, a cooperative association of networks with no governing body, has collectively put someone out of business, if only briefly. more

Identity Theft of Root Name Servers, Reason Unknown

There have been a number of attacks on the root name servers over the years, and much written on the topic. (A few references are here, here and here.) Even if you don't know exactly what these servers do, you can't help but figure they're important when the US government says it is prepared to launch a military counterattack in response to cyber-attacks on them. more