Hi, On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 04:41:31PM +0100, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
what's special about ARIN's or ICANN's network, as opposed to the network that runs google.com? ARIN (or ICANN or AFNIC or DENIC) manage public resources.
I don't claim that ARIN or ICANN or DENIC are not special, or are not important for the functioning of the Internet as a whole. But what's special about *their network*? In which way is their *network* different from any order garden variety customer network? Answer: from a technical point of view, it isn't. It's routing IP packets, it has upstream ISPs, and name resolution is done just fine via DNS. (Root name servers *are* special, because they can't be resolved via DNS (obviously)).
From a user point of view, ICANN, ARIN, DENIC, and whoever are even less special. If any of those networks falls off the earth for a day, the average user won't even notice - but if Google is offline, they *will* notice.
I'd say Google is much more critical to the average network user... May be but it is a private and for-profit company. It does not manage a public resource.
In which way makes "manage a public resource" a network infrastructure "critical"? Why isn't whitehouse.gov a "critical network infrastructure"? (To repeat myself: I have no doubts that all these instutitions are very important for the well-being of the network. But IP being what it is, their network infrastructure is "just any other network"). Gert Doering -- NetMaster -- Total number of prefixes smaller than registry allocations: 57882 (57753) SpaceNet AG Mail: netmaster@Space.Net Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Tel : +49-89-32356-0 80807 Muenchen Fax : +49-89-32356-299