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Re: [Fwd: Emerging Network Usage and Engineering Issues]

2003-08-26 03:27:56
Ofcourse I know about EMP.  But what I mean is this, all international credit 
cards, bank transfers, insurance, commerce deals etc. are supported, initiated, 
terminated or developed in a city in USA.    Even if you want to make a bank 
transfer from one street to another in Kenya, you go through the USA/ that 
city.  Do you get the picture??
 
Nyagudi Musandu

Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch(_at_)muada(_dot_)com> wrote:
On dinsdag, aug 26, 2003, at 10:09 Europe/Amsterdam, NM Research wrote:

A scenario where all the ecommerce code and routing
code ( paid traffic ) would fail is if the Financial
Capital City of the World is Struck in a light nuke
attack. Are you, or is the code capable of handle
this ?

This is not a matter of code, but a matter of hardware. You need to 
have all your hardware in a Faraday cage to avoid the electronics from 
being fried by the EM pulse. But even then you're not safe: someone who 
is supposed to know about these things once told me that fiber optic 
cables have the nasty tendency to explode when a nuke goes off. The 
huge EM fields cause induction in the steel mechanical reinforcement in 
the cable, causing it to get incredibly hot incredibly fast. I also 
gather that radioactivity degrades the transparency of fiber, so that 
could lead to trouble even if the cable doesn't explode.

But our current routing protocols will be happy to route around failed 
routers and links. No problems there.


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