internet Balkanization

TRX
January 10, 2012
227:
>subjects

While corporations still rush to "internet-enable" their businesses, the internet itself is becoming Balkanized and less useful. China and Singapore already firewall network traffic. Australia is talking about it, as is Britain. Badthink, porn, copyright, whatever.

In the USA there are periodic calls for some sort of user authentication system as well as criminalizing encrypted messaging. These are usually from the FBI, though sometimes legislators demand it as part of some ill-thought- out plan to eliminate kiddie porn, stalking, or whatever bee is in their bonnet at the time.

In most countries the international gateways are few in number and under government control. In the USA, the National Security Agency co-locates equipment racks at the NAPs to enable carrying out their mandate of spying on electronic communications. The US Air Force has established a "Cyber Command" which would, if given funding and authorization, assume some sort of control over the US network. ("herding cats" comes to mind...)

Meanwhile, after more than 20 years of mailing lists and heavy email, I gave up on SMTP mail over a year ago. Battling network providers block entire A and B address spaces in mad tit-for-tat "spam control" measures. I'd get every third message in a mailing list, and half of the people in my address list couldn't contact me, vice versa, or both.

Major ISPs often not only prohibit any type of "server", but ban and/or block anything other than http, effectively blocking the unskilled from many services.

A few years ago there was a "network outage" in my area. I never found out exactly what; I suspect something simple, like an errant backhoe or trencher. For half a day I couldn't get on the net... but I couldn't buy gasoline anywhere, since even the small mom&pop stations depended on realtime connections to the mothership to turn on the pumps and dispense gasoline. Various fast food places were shut down; their registers all ran off a central server in Atlanta. The auto parts store was stalled; all its POS terminals connected to a server in Memphis.

When I was a child in the 1960s we crossed the width of the United States several times by car. Not all of the interstate highway system was finished by then. As time moved into the afternoon you made sure to fill up before 5 PM, since most gas stations closed at that time. More than once we ran dry in the evening, and had to find a motel or place to park until the next morning, where we could buy more gas.

As chain businesses continue to replace local business, and so many seem to prefer running their operations off a central system, I could see pulling up into some town sometime, and not being able to buy gas, food, or even a motel room because the internet was down.

(in the local failure I mentioned earlier, no business would accept cash... not only would the POS drawers not open for them, but one manager said policy was not to make any sale without going through the POS system. Period.)

The Federal and state governments are all dependent on the internet now, and the US military, not to mention business. Most of these entities want tighter control and authentication of users. And they own the physical hardware the net runs on.

So, how do you see the future of the internet evolving?