Tromboning. That's a word I've been looking for.
Tromboning is what happens when I send packets between the Cable
Wireless DSL line and the Caribbean Cable cablemodem on the other side
of the living room in Seafeathers Bay -- via New York (and
Washington), and/or Miami (and Washington), and/or Atlanta (and
Washington), not to mention Washington.
Too bad little countries like Anguilla don't permit third-party
peering between competing internet service providers. After all, that
kind of latency is just... unacceptable. ;-)
A geodesic internetwork sees um, latency, as damage, c.
Evidently not just anyone can stick two links together using one box
and three ethernet cards, or whatever, or the Internet Gets Broken.
Geeze, to paraphrase Grace Slick, I wish I knew BGP.
(Though, like Grace was at the time, I'm too burned-out a dog these
days to learn those new tricks. Easier to doze off on the veranda
watching the weather go by.)
Cheers,
RAH
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/business/30pipes.html?_r=1oref=sloginpartner=rssuserlandemc=rsspagewanted=print
New York Times
August 30, 2008
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO — The era of the American Internet is ending.
Invented by American computer scientists during the 1970s, the
Internet has been embraced around the globe. During the network’s
first three decades, most Internet traffic flowed through the United
States. In many cases, data sent between two locations within a given
country also passed through the United States.
Engineers who help run the Internet said that it would have been
impossible for the United States to maintain its hegemony over the
long run because of the very nature of the Internet; it has no central
point of control.
And now, the balance of power is shifting. Data is increasingly
flowing around the United States, which may have intelligence — and
conceivably military — consequences.
American intelligence officials have warned about this shift. “Because
of the nature of global telecommunications, we are playing with a
tremendous home-field advantage, and we need to exploit that edge,”
Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency,
testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. “We also need
to protect that edge, and we need to protect those who provide it to
us.”
Indeed, Internet industry executives and government officials have
acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching
equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a
distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December
2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency
had established a program with the cooperation of American
telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign
Internet communications.
Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions
and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian
and European traffic away from the United States.
“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the
United States have been reluctant to store client information in the
U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic
Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern
that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without
legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to
financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic
that goes through U.S. switches.”
But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks
as essential to economic development. “It’s no different than any
other infrastructure that a country needs,” said K C Claffy, a
research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data
Analysis in San Diego.
“You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads either.”
Indeed, more countries are becoming aware of how their dependence on
other countries for their Internet traffic makes them vulnerable.
Because of tariffs, pricing anomalies and even corporate cultures,
Internet providers will often not exchange data with their local
competitors. They prefer instead to send and receive traffic with
larger international Internet service providers.
This leads to odd routing arrangements, referred to as tromboning, in
which traffic between two cites in one country will flow through other
nations. In January, when a cable was cut in the Mediterranean,
Egyptian Internet traffic was nearly paralyzed because it was not
being shared by local I.S.P.’s but instead was routed through European
operators.
The issue was driven home this month when hackers attacked and
immobilized several Georgian government Web sites during the country’s
fighting with Russia. Most of Georgia’s access to the global network
flowed through Russia and Turkey. A
