The Infrastructure Mess Causing Countless Internet Outages
29 June 2019 • Networking • BGPRoland Dobbins from Netscout Arbor, quoted in this Wired article:
“Nonspecialists kind of view the internet as this high-tech, gleaming thing like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. It’s not like that at all. It’s more like an 18th-century Royal Navy frigate. There’s a lot of running around and screaming and shouting and pulling on ropes to try to get things going in the right direction.”
It’s amazing how fragile some of the technologies that power something the world takes for granted are; BGP is a great example of that. The Internet is everywhere, and it’s becoming increasingly more necessary to be connected in order to be able to just go about our lives.
Regarding the choice of headline, however, I don’t think the word “mess” is fair. That does a disservice to the hundreds of very talented people that design, implement, and maintain the infrastructre that underpins our connected world.