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

From: NM Research <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 21:33:29 -0700 (PDT)

My answer to your question is that I want IETF, ISO and ITU to set nuclear warfare standards, i.e. if for example you see a web site with a standard ISO NW standard you know that it has dispersed critical manpower, inventories, has an alternative transport system, reliable NW capable suppliers and survival capability for dispersed staff.  Plus cutting edge IETF protocol implementation.  So that I can choose to use the sites the same way I choose ISO 9XXX.
 
Then Central Banks would be the first to practice those standards.
 
I am talking from my own experience of what goes on in a city after a mega-terror attack.  USA is not prepared for one, some of its cell phone masts have no standy batteries and generators, that would be part of ISO/IETF NW.  USA network of mini-nuke detectors may have no power back up.
 
Nyagudi

My question was to the entire list, and it still has not been
answered.

gja

> ATTACHMENT part 2 message/rfc822 
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:00:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: NM Research 
Subject: Re: Emerging Network Usage and Engineering Issues
To: grenville armitage 

At times feel free to insult me privately not on the list.  The internet was not made for e-commerce, its mission was to communicate during nuclear warfare.
 
Meanwhile you can wait for the blast - some says some tactical torpedoes may be missing.
 
Nyagudi

grenville armitage <[email-masked]> wrote:

NM Research wrote:
[..partially coherent blather deleted..]

And this has *what* to do with the IETF?

gja

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From: John Stracke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 07:49:13 -0400

NM Research wrote:

> My answer to your question is that I want IETF, ISO and ITU to set 
> nuclear warfare standards,

It might be useful for someone to produce such standards, but they're 
really not in the IETF's domain of expertise.  Maybe some part of ISO 
would be better.

>     The internet was not made for e-commerce, its mission was to
>     communicate during nuclear warfare.
>
False.

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|John Stracke      [email-masked]                       |
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From: NM Research <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 00:14:33 -0700 (PDT)

Please qualify your false statement I would appreciate - what was A-net all about.  IETF is a powerful mover, just as it spoke against spamming.  Without IETF prodding nothing would ever happen.  Imagine that UK sub crews are told to tune into BBC to check if London has been nuked, before retaliating.  BBC and other internet media orgs should look for such a standard.
 
I do not really think that it is lack of stray nukes that keeps us safe.  It may be that those who have them lack triggering knowledge and transport to target is a problem.  Even if you have nuke detectors, they could use microwave EMP disruptors to get to town. Ok RAND Corp and others would also help.
 
Nyagudi

John Stracke <[email-masked]> wrote:

False.

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From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 13:26:18 +0200

On dinsdag, aug 19, 2003, at 09:14 Europe/Amsterdam, NM Research wrote:

> Please qualify your false statement I would appreciate - what was 
> A-net all about.

The confusion that the ARPAnet supposedly had a military function stems 
from the research done by Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation in the 
early to mid 1960s. He proposed high-availability packet switched 
network for military command and control. The ARPAnet however was about 
logging in on remote computers so that researchers could more easily 
work together.

As for making nuclear-proof standards: the IETF is all about running 
code. How do you propose we test these protocols?

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From: Scott Bradner <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 08:54:39 -0400 (EDT)

Iljitsch wrote:
> network for military command and control. 

in case anyone is interested, Baran's work is on-line at 
http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/baran.list.html

Scott

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 11:16:58 -0400

On Tue, 19 Aug 2003 00:14:33 PDT, NM Research <[email-masked]>  said:

> Please qualify your false statement I would appreciate - what was A-net all
> about.  IETF is a powerful mover, just as it spoke against spamming.  Without
> IETF prodding nothing would ever happen.

As far as I know, the IETF hasn't said anything more helpful than "Spam is
Bad", and most of the anti-spamming work done so far has been totally outside
the IETF (and, in fact, quite often totally contrary to the requirements in
RFC2821/2822). I don't think it's been the IETF speaking about spamming, so
much as the fact that the service providers are tired of having to handle
anywhere from 1M (our mail server) to 2B (MSN/Hotmail) spams inbound per day.

And if the IETF *has* done something substantiative, it certainly hasn't done
anything to the actual amount of spam.  When people have seen even a 10% drop
in spam in-transit per month for 3 months straight, *then* I'll accept that
something is actually working.

And John Strack was right on the nuclear warfare thing too:

http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml  says:

(footnote 5) "It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming
that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear
war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on
secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting
did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to
withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks."

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From: NM Research <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 01:09:14 -0700 (PDT)

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 ?
If so I am very comfortable.

Nyagudi Musandu 

How do you propose we test these protocols?

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From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 11:08:48 +0200

> attack.  Are you, or is the code capable of handle

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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From: NM Research <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 03:20:11 -0700 (PDT)

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 <[email-masked]> wrote:

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 09:01:54 -0400

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 03:20:11 PDT, NM Research <[email-masked]>  said:

> 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??

Given that there isn't any *single* city that has *all* the banks - offhand, I
can think of Boston, NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco as having large financial
districts, it would take multiple hits. Presumably, most of the larger banks
have some sort of off-site disaster recovery plans.

I posit that if enough nukes go off to take out enough banks to matter, the
question of whether the net is moving bits will be of secondary importance.  I
know I'm going to be busy getting my children to someplace the fallout isn't.

And at that point, an OC12 isn't going to matter as much as a box of rifle ammunition.