2009/4/27 Michuki Mwangi <michuki@swiftkenya.com>:
Hi Wash,
Odhiambo ワシントン wrote:
Mich,
I still think that shutting down the DNS ROOT Servers will take down the Internet, no? Though not instantly.
As i had mentioned, it will require the consent of the US Government amongst and the individual and independent Root-Server operators who are NOT under USG.
It will take a while if that would potentially happen. Also please note that there are over 100 instances of Root-Servers globally those would need to be shutdown too. locations www.root-servers.org
If the root-server failed am sure a good number of people would revive the Alternative roots - this were seemingly alternative solutions for the Root that have died with time as some realities have come to pass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
Bottom line, shutting down the DNS Root servers will break down the resolution process. P2P and other applications that are non-dns dependent will continue to function.
Hence it will cripple users ability to access content that they access through names. But everything else will remain intact.
Regards,
Michuki.
What if you just let DNS work it's magic but did the following: Take down the 10 largest internet exchange points. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_Exchange_Points_by_size BGP would go crazy on most routers, most major web/content hosting datacenters would be unreachable, effectively the Internet would be either completely down or very slow. Bring down major satellite teleports (which would have been used as backups). That and a few well placed fiber cuts would do wonders. There is a study done on the effect of fiber cuts around Egypt early last year. http://www.apnic.net/meetings/25/program/apops1/earl-fiber-cut-analysis.pdf. You can go further and target terrestrial links in Europe and US. A few days ago AT&T suffered sabotage in some city that affected thousands.. http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/04/09/fiber-cuts-slash-silicon-valleys-... Pockets of the internet might still function but it would no longer be the Internet. Ken