Subj : Re: BBSing opportunties
To   : Avon
From : JoE DooM
Date : Sun Dec 19 2021 08:45 pm

 > How best to get packets around a country or between countries without
 > an Internet to carry them? <-- open question for anyone really...

The internet was designed to be resilient, and in a way it still is. When
you speak of cities being DDoS'd or cables being cut, and cities or
countries (usually only small ones) being taken offline, well, they're
only a twig on a tree.

The tree is still standing and if you can swing across and grab another
branch, you'll still be online. This might be an alternate route, such as
a satellite link as a fallback. 

But what risk are you trying to mitigate? A satellite link from an
external vendor is a good fallback if your country is cut off using
regular connectivity like southern cross cable in NZ. 

A secondary fibre circuit is a good fallback if you're mitigating "spade
fade".

A second ISP and modem is a good mitigation if your risk is your ISP
falling over.

Most networks, however, are not designed to be resilient in all cases
because it's too costly for low-risk scenarios. Just like buildings are
made to a code to withstand certain level of quakes because anything
higher is too costly for outlier risk. And quakes are an interesting one
because we have different types of quakes that shake the ground in
different ways.

When an event happens that is outside the normal expected risk profile,
and things fall over (networks, buildings, nuclear reactors, roads,
whatever), then everyone jumps up and down demanding to know why the
thing wasn't perfectly able to withstand every single disaster scenario. 

I'm sure nobody builds buildings to account for meteor strikes, but they
remain a possibility. Not likely, but certainly possible. :D

Not to mention vaccine efficacy percentages and the people who think that
anything less than 100% is the same as 0%. haha

So what are you trying to build a network for? What risk(s) are you
trying to mitigate, and how much are you prepared to spend on diminishing
risk profiles?

The internet will always be there even if all the ISPs and telcos aren't.
Because TCP/IP can be spun up by anyone on any computer over a variety of
media, both terrestrial and non-terrestrial. 

But you might need to get an alternate way to connect and change some IP
addresses to make it happen. And that won't be automatic if your budget
is fish'n'chip money. :)



--- Talisman v0.35-dev (Linux/x86_64)
 * Origin: Lost Underground BBS (21:1/230)

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