Re: C&W Peering

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

The loss of one or two (or as someone once calculated up to 40%) of the
root servers has no or little effect.  DNS is relatively robust, but not
indestructible.

However, no one outside of Cable & Wireless knows just how many networks
or even which networks they eventually will cut-off.  If C&W continues
down the road of "de-peering", they may eventually cut off too much and
cease to be a useful Internet provider.  They may be a fine private network,
but if you eliminate enough interconnectivity you aren't in the Internet
any more.

PSI was simply the most public case.  But it doesn't appear that even
Cable&Wireless's own sales force knows how bad C&W's network connectivity
is going to get until after C&W finishes cutting off all the networks.
There have been private reports that C&W sent out letters to several other
providers.

Will C&W still be a viable network after its management finishes?  I don't
know, I don't know if they know.  They didn't seem to understand the effect
cutting PSI would have.



On Wed, 06 June 2001, Rafi Sadowsky wrote:
> > Combine the loss of C.ROOT and the loss to E.ROOT for their loss of
> > peering to NASA that happened last week and will happen again in a few
> > weeks and they may have many issues related to this decision.
>
>  Maybe I'm missing something obvious but I can't help wondering why given
> the redundancy of the DNS system the loss of connectivity to 2 or 3
> root-servers should have a significant effect on an ISP who is otherwise
> well connected and probably has a low latency/loss link to at least 2-3 of
> the remaining root DNS servers
>
>  Anyone care to enlighten me ?