The Internet -- a fragile system threatened by natural disaster

[Rich Parsons]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061231/tc_afp/asiaquakeinternet

The Internet -- a fragile system threatened by natural disaster

PARIS (AFP) - The earthquake off Taiwan last Tuesday that shattered Internet connections for millions in Asia demonstrated starkly how vulnerable the vital network is to interruptions.

Only a comprehensive backup system in the infrastructure could prevent total paralysis, specialists warn.

"We don't yet know how best to protect ourselves against infrastructure breakdowns," said Eric Domage, a senior executive with the information technology consultancy group IDC.

Given the "Information Age" should we be more concerned with a back up system?

 

[MA-Caver]

Well the real question is to ask... can I survive without the internet?

Even if it's just for a little while until the system gets back up and running again?

Now I'm talking about on a personal level. Can you survive without it?

But if you're in a business/agency that requires the internet to function... well :idunno: might want to think of a quick back up system.

 

[Kacey]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061231/tc_afp/asiaquakeinternet

The Internet -- a fragile system threatened by natural disaster



Given the "Information Age" should we be more concerned with a back up system?

Well, to my understanding, the internet is located so many locations, and has so many disconnected parts, that backing it up would be virtually impossible; likewise, while servers may come and go, get connected and disconnected, it would take a world-wide catastrophe to drop the entire internet - at which point books would be much more useful than anything requiring electricity. According to this news report, the internet now has over 100 million sites:

There may be a reason. Netcraft, an Internet monitoring company that has tracked Web growth since 1995, says a mammoth milestone was reached during the month of October."There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them," said Netcraft's Rich Miller.
.....................
There were just 18,000 Web sites when Netcraft, based in Bath, England, began keeping track in August of 1995. It took until May of 2004 to reach the 50 million milestone; then only 30 more months to hit 100 million, late in the month of October 2006.

How would you back that up? Where would you put the server? How would you decide how often to create a new backup, and how long would it take each time? I just don't think it's realistic.

Also, I read the article you quoted - it was discussing hardware access backups, such as alternate wiring routing for major information trunks - not a backup of the actual data - which is, I think, a different issue than backing up the information, which was my first thought when I read your post, until I read the article.

 

[Rich Parsons]

Well, to my understanding, the internet is located so many locations, and has so many disconnected parts, that backing it up would be virtually impossible; likewise, while servers may come and go, get connected and disconnected, it would take a world-wide catastrophe to drop the entire internet - at which point books would be much more useful than anything requiring electricity. According to this news report, the internet now has over 100 million sites:

How would you back that up? Where would you put the server? How would you decide how often to create a new backup, and how long would it take each time? I just don't think it's realistic.

Also, I read the article you quoted - it was discussing hardware access backups, such as alternate wiring routing for major information trunks - not a backup of the actual data - which is, I think, a different issue than backing up the information, which was my first thought when I read your post, until I read the article.

Kacey et al,

Yes to try to back up a Distributed system is not a bad idea depending upon the size of the system. Given the size of the internet it would not be feasible.

I just thought it would be interesting to see what people thought or if it was an issue to be without the internet.


Yes back up links and connection points and major trunks might be somethign to discuss.

I do apologize for the confusion of the original post.