Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers
app103:
I was talking to Stephen earlier tonight and we came up with a great idea to make tons of money if the US govt were ever stupid enough to cut off the root servers.
We'd set up out own makeshift internet cafes. He would use his 11 PC's and I would just make it "bring your own laptop", and sell access by the hour to the inept, unprepared, and completely addicted in our neighborhoods that have no idea how to configure their computers or routers to use one of the alternative roots. ;)
JavaJones:
What would likely happen is the ISPs themselves would change the name servers they point to. That would only be sensible for them to best serve their customers.
- Oshyan
40hz:
Remember however that it's not just the DNS servers. It's the backbone routers as well.
If you have no packet routes, it doesn't much matter what you're pointing to. :(
Stoic Joker:
wait, wait, wait...
Nobody said to register a quirky domain name with them. (that would be really stupid)
I was suggesting in case of the kind of temporary emergency that is being suggested in this thread, if the standard 13 root servers were shut down, use the alternative ones to CONNECT. They have a copy of every record the standard ones have and they will help you reach all the .com, .net, .org, .edu, etc. until the standard root servers come back online. (ok, it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing at all, don't you think?)-app103 (July 04, 2010, 06:26 PM)
--- End quote ---
That's not really a safe assumption. DNS is hierarchical, the SOA (Start Of Authority) roots are only going to have full zone data for the TLD's they are authoritative for. While they may have Stub Zones for other TLDs these (stub) zones only contain (NS) records for the SOA for that zone. If the TLD SOA from that NS record is offline ... Your request goes poof!
Remember however that it's not just the DNS servers. It's the backbone routers as well.
If you have no packet routes, it doesn't much matter what you're pointing to. :(
-40hz (July 06, 2010, 05:01 PM)
--- End quote ---
Quite true.
iphigenie:
What puzzles me more is what the rationale behind that idea is?
The only things I can imagine are what Bruce Schneier would call "movie plot threats" - things that cant work but can grab the imagination of the unitiated, such as a general penetration of US systems by ennemi viruses and software agents that requires a cleanup and reboot of everything...
Real scenarios? not so much - i mean if you have to shut down infrastructure the government, business, emergency agencies, health agencies and hospitals etc. rely on, the other guys have kind of already won ;)
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