Thus spake "Mahadevan Iyer" <miyer(_at_)eng(_dot_)uci(_dot_)edu>
At first glance, it seems sheer idiocy to use an open network like the
Internet to control critical matter-of-life-and-death public
infrastructure like power systems. What do you think?
Public power systems are not life-and-death. Anywhere that AC service
is even moderately important, the people responsible (assuming they're
competent) will have contingencies for power loss. Consider the ISPs
that *voluntarily* go off-grid when there's a power crisis in the SF
Bay. Hospitals also make an interesting study.
Additionally, just because two IP hosts are both connected to the Net
doesn't mean that they must use the Net to communicate. Not all IP
networks are public.
Or do you think, it is possible to build ultra-reliable secure
real-time
communication channels in the Internet? Maybe..
A reasonable degree of cynicism tells us that this will be impossible;
"secure" and "real-time" I might buy, but the state of inter-provider
cooperation will need to advance significantly before I'll believe any
Net-based service will even approach "reliable".
S
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