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Forum: Half of the Traffic on the Internet Goes Through Fairfax County VA

20 October 2006

senegal1 – at 23:40

I wanted to share this comment before I forgot it — I don`t know how true it is. This evening I was chatting with a gentleman who works with computers in a major way. He made the comment that half of the traffic on the internet comes through Fairfax County Virginia (and possibly now Lounden County) as so many of the big internet companies have their headquarters here. I immediately thought of Flu Wiki and pandemic flu and what would happen if… Does anyone know if the comment above is actually true and would there be any web links about that? If so it would seem important to consider this in a pandemic flu situation.

senegal1 – at 23:45

Sorry for those of you who don`t know… Fairfax County, VA is in the Washington, DC metro area.

21 October 2006

Pixie – at 05:32

senegal1:

That’s where Al Gore invented the internet, right?

Ok, no nevermind - it is early and I need some caffeine. I was wondering, though, if there were in fact any choke-points for the internet - actual physical locations where some human somebody would have to be manning a desk, making sure the circuit breakers didn’t get turned off all at once, whatever. I would think that these do in fact exist, and that there are probably several of them that are critical, but I’ve never seen any write-ups on this anywhere. The big financial institutions that have issued warnings about infrastructure failure like Booze Allen or Nesbit Burns have not addressed this issue, to my knowledge, either.

lugon – at 05:39

Those places do exist, or did exist when the was written. There’s something called “the power law”, which apparently is in effect in this situation, and which in practice means a small percentage of routers take care of a high percentage of communications. Don’t know if that has been solved.

lugon – at 05:50

Linked, the book

senegal1 – at 09:49

Thanks maybe I will do an internet search to see what I come up with and get back in touch with the person I was chatting with. Any other information that anyone has would be welcomed.

lugon – at 09:54

Senegal1 - it’s a good idea to look for the weakest + most important link. Definitely!

This may be seen as military-important stuff. Which it probably is. National security … for all nations.

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