Re: wikileaks - Web Architecture and Robustness

Talk of P2P DNS is in the news. E.g.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/211969/p2pbased_alternative_to_dns_hopes_to_challenge_icann.html

http://dot-p2p.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

For me, the architectural question is how to deal with the ICANN
single point of failure without 'dividing the web' or sacrificing the
technical equivalent of 'rule of law'. I think this can be done, but
it would need a new web architecture.

Jonathan


On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Karl Dubost <karld@opera.com> wrote:
> There's a recent blog post from Ethan Zuckerman about Amazon and wikileaks.
>
> Summary: I will not introduce wikileaks, you should know what is happenning, except if you have lived under a rock these last few weeks. Wikileaks in the last few days had a few massive DDOS. They decided to switch the hosting of their assets from their servers in Sweeden to the cloud service provided by Amazon. But Amazon decided to unplug wikileaks. They had to go back to their own servers.
>
> Why I'm talking about this:
> It is important to see the interaction of the Web architecture and its strengths and weaknesses when the stakes are very high. There are a few things into play:
>
> * Political
> * Law
> * Technical robustness
> * Information flow
>
> As Ethan mentionned, the documents themselves are distributed through bittorrent and were then not really affected by the DDOS. But the Web presence was definitely. I was then wondering what would be the part of Web architecture that would to be improved or modified to be as robust as bittorrent in such circumstances without losing the benefits of URI.
>
>    In …My heart’s in Accra » If Amazon has silenced Wikileaks…
>    At http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2010/12/01/if-amazon-has-silenced-wikileaks/
>
>    Update: It’s worth mentioning that Wikileaks is
>    using peer to peer networks to distribute the
>    actual cables. DDoS may be effective in removing
>    their web presence, but it’s going to have a much
>    harder time removing the sensitive material from
>    the internet. The DDoS attacks are actually a
>    useful reminder that we still don’t have a good
>    way to serve web sites on a purely peer to peer
>    architecture. That would be one response to the
>    problems of consolidation I’m talking about here…
>
>
> --
> Karl Dubost - http://dev.opera.com/
> Developer Relations & Tools, Opera Software
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 3 December 2010 17:30:13 UTC