This way sir, left at Kashmir.
Feb. 26th, 2008 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI presume all you cybergeeks are aware of the fact that YouTube went down the tubes on Sunday for a few hours, for 67% of the globe, as a result of Pakistan banning it for domestic use.
The complexities of global access control on the web continue to be too complicated for any non-cyber-geek (such as myself). The madness seemed to occur because PCCW, in Hong Kong, which routes international traffic to Pakistan, took Pakistan’s blocking action to be a global signal, and (somehow) managed to turn YouTube into the global equivalent of www.hitlerisgreat.com (and I dread to think what google auto searches that will bring to this site).
The thing which is of concern here is that a nation state — one which holds some fairly dodgy principles — managed to block global acess to a web address. OK, Pakistan says that “it didn’t mean it” (surely the favourite excuse of the stupid and incompetent).
Pakistan’s block was meant to be domestic, but some kind of routing cock-up (this is what happens when you leave the geeks in charge) seemed to identify a route via Pakistan as the “quickest” way to get to YouTube. Except, of course, that it didn’t get you to YouTube at all, because there was an automatic redirect in place if you tried to access YouTube from Pakistan.
No user of the web thinks about routing, but basically you can’t really choose what way your packets get from sender to receiver. That’s what makes the web so efficient. But if you get a detour like this, you (the punter) have no override.
Todd Underwood, vice-president and general manager of Internet community services at Renesys, said that "to be honest, there's not a single thing preventing this from happening to E-Trade, or Bank of America, or the FBI, or the White House, or the Clinton campaign”.
Worrying, or what?
The complexities of global access control on the web continue to be too complicated for any non-cyber-geek (such as myself). The madness seemed to occur because PCCW, in Hong Kong, which routes international traffic to Pakistan, took Pakistan’s blocking action to be a global signal, and (somehow) managed to turn YouTube into the global equivalent of www.hitlerisgreat.com (and I dread to think what google auto searches that will bring to this site).
The thing which is of concern here is that a nation state — one which holds some fairly dodgy principles — managed to block global acess to a web address. OK, Pakistan says that “it didn’t mean it” (surely the favourite excuse of the stupid and incompetent).
Pakistan’s block was meant to be domestic, but some kind of routing cock-up (this is what happens when you leave the geeks in charge) seemed to identify a route via Pakistan as the “quickest” way to get to YouTube. Except, of course, that it didn’t get you to YouTube at all, because there was an automatic redirect in place if you tried to access YouTube from Pakistan.
No user of the web thinks about routing, but basically you can’t really choose what way your packets get from sender to receiver. That’s what makes the web so efficient. But if you get a detour like this, you (the punter) have no override.
Todd Underwood, vice-president and general manager of Internet community services at Renesys, said that "to be honest, there's not a single thing preventing this from happening to E-Trade, or Bank of America, or the FBI, or the White House, or the Clinton campaign”.
Worrying, or what?
