> How? They can't. I'm a private business. If I wanted to null route
> the entire net my network its my purgative. Verisign on the other hand
> is a public company that is providing government contracted services.
> The suits will swing the other way.
It is an interesting point to make, that the Internet operates solely through
voluntary cooperation and agreements of private parties. The Internet
is by definition simply an "Interconnection of networks" -- each of which
are the propriety of those respective network operators.
There is no obligation for any network of the Internet to route traffic to
any other parts of the Internet. In the history of the Internet, there have
been many instances were such "disconnects".
For example Sprint (who at the time operated a huge percentage of the
backbone filtered many routing announcements, that made many of these
networks unaccessible from Sprint and any sprint transit customers.
0/8 - 126/8, deny subnets of historical A's
127/8 - 191/8, deny anything smaller than /16
192/8 - 205/8, deny anything smaller than /24
206/8 - 223/8, dney anything smaller than /19
192/8 [RIPE], deny anything smaller than /19
There is no obligation for any network to use the de facto root DNS servers.
Witness the "alternative root servers" starting with AlterNIC (defunct since
they hacked the global DNS system?) and the latest VC-funded New.NET.
There is no obligation for a network not to descriminate against particular
domain names and websites. Witness the popularity if network filtering to
block objectionable material, especially in many foreign countries.
As a network operator, you can pretty much do whatever you want, your
responsibility is only to your users.
Adam
