Re: [tlug] What would happen to the Internet if the US fell off the map

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Attila Kinali writes:

 > For reference, see the effect of SQL Slammer on the internet end-to-end
 > connectivity of non-wurm traffic.

But you're missing an important point here.  Suppose the *whole*
U.S. dropped off the world (undoubtedly riding atop a Frisch's Big Boy
statue[1]).  Just how many highpowered PCs with broadband all the way
to the backbone would be left to suffer from Slammer?

While this effect probably doesn't scale all that well from a whole
city in a country doing its best to drag the Internet back into the
60s that drops off the face of the earth, to having the U.S. drop off
the face of the earth, I think that the rest of the world would not
lose its most important connection to third places so much as losing
its largest source and sink of data flows.

I have to wonder, though, if there wouldn't be some dramatic measures
taken to curb spam.

Footnotes: 
[1]  Everybody who thinks that that tune was chosen deliberately
for Shinjo raise your hand; my personal opinion is that it is
heretofore unavailable proof that at least one Japanese has an
American-style sense of humor