The Internet Under Crisis Conditions
Learning from September 11
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group in Data Communication (ACM SIGCOMM); the IBM Corporation; and the Vadasz Family Foundation, a contributor to the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board’s program on information technology and society. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations that provided support for the project.
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COMMITTEE ON THE INTERNET UNDER CRISIS CONDITIONS: LEARNING FROM THE IMPACT OF SEPTEMBER 11
CRAIG PARTRIDGE,
BBN Technologies,
Chair
PAUL BARFORD,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
DAVID D. CLARK,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
SEAN DONELAN,
SBC Communications
VERN PAXSON,
International Computer Science Institute’s Center for Internet Research
JENNIFER REXFORD,
AT&T Labs–Research
MARY K. VERNON,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Staff
JON EISENBERG, Senior Program Officer and Study Director
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
DAVID PADGHAM, Research Associate
KRISTEN BATCH, Research Associate
DAVID DRAKE, Senior Project Assistant
JANET D. BRISCOE, Administrative Officer
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
DAVID D. CLARK,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Chair
ERIC BENHAMOU,
3Com Corporation
DAVID BORTH,
Motorola Labs
JOHN M. CIOFFI,
Stanford University
ELAINE COHEN,
University of Utah
W. BRUCE CROFT,
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
THOMAS (TED) E. DARCIE,
AT&T Labs–Research
JOSEPH FARRELL,
University of California, Berkeley
JOAN FEIGENBAUM,
Yale University
HECTOR GARCIA-MOLINA,
Stanford University
WENDY KELLOGG,
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
BUTLER W. LAMPSON,
Microsoft Corporation
DAVID LIDDLE,
U.S. Venture Partners
TOM M. MITCHELL,
Carnegie Mellon University
DAVID A. PATTERSON,
University of California, Berkeley
HENRY (HANK) PERRITT,
Chicago-Kent College of Law
DANIEL PIKE,
Classic Communications
ERIC SCHMIDT,
Google, Inc.
FRED SCHNEIDER,
Cornell University
BURTON SMITH,
Cray, Inc.
LEE SPROULL,
New York University
WILLIAM STEAD,
Vanderbilt University
JEANNETTE M. WING,
Carnegie Mellon University
Staff
MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director
HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Scientist
ALAN S. INOUYE, Senior Program Officer
JON EISENBERG, Senior Program Officer
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Program Officer
CYNTHIA PATTERSON, Program Officer
STEVEN WOO, Dissemination Officer
DAVID PADGHAM, Research Associate
KRISTEN BATCH, Research Associate
PHIL HILLIARD, Research Associate
JANET D. BRISCOE, Administrative Officer
MARGARET HUYNH, Senior Project Assistant
DAVID C. DRAKE, Senior Project Assistant
Preface
Although secondary to the human tragedy resulting from the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, telecommunications issues were significant that day both in terms of damage (physical as well as functional) and of mounting response and recovery efforts. The Internet has come to be a major component of the nation’s (and the world’s) communications and information infrastructure. People rely on it for business, social, and personal activities of many kinds, and government depends on it for communications and transactions with the media and the public. Thus there is interest in how the Internet performed and was used on September 11.
Unlike the situation with longer-standing telecommunications services (notably the public telephone network), there are few regulations, policies, or practices related to the Internet’s functioning in emergency situations. Nor are there many publicly available data to help policy makers or the industry itself assess the Internet’s performance—either on a continuing basis or in the aftermath of a crisis. No regular system exists for reporting failures and outages, nor is there agreement on metrics of performance.1 Some experiences are shared informally among network
operators or in forums such as the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), but that information is not readily accessible for national planning or research purposes. The decentralized architecture of the Internet—although widely characterized as one of the Internet’s strengths—further confounds the difficulty of collecting comprehensive data about how the Internet is performing.
It is therefore unsurprising that no definitive analyses exist on the impact of September 11 on the Internet, though a few conflicting anecdotal reports about its performance that day—such as several presentations at NANOG indicating relatively little effect2 and press accounts suggesting that the impact was severe3—have appeared.
Responding to an initial request in early 2002 from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group in Data Communication (ACM SIGCOMM), the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) established the Committee on the Internet Under Crisis Conditions: Learning from the Impact of September 11. The committee’s charge was twofold: to organize an exploratory workshop for gathering data and accounts of experiences pertinent to the impact of September 11 on the Internet, and to prepare a report that summarizes the Internet’s performance that day and offers conclusions on better preparing for and responding to future emergencies.
A diverse group of industry representatives and researchers participated in the workshop (see Appendix A). They were invited to share information candidly, with the understanding that the organizing committee would take care not to publish sensitive or proprietary information. Consequently, although the committee has strived to present as much detail as possible, specific figures or names of organizations have been omitted in some instances. Following the workshop, the study committee decided to supplement what was obtained there, so additional information in several areas was gathered from a number of sources.
2 |
North American Network Operators Group 23rd Meeting, October 21-23, 2001, Oakland, Calif. Presentations available online at <http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0110/agenda.html>. |
3 |
According to an article in ComputerWorld: “Extent of cyberinfrastructure devastation on Sept. 11 unprecedented, officials say. For several tense hours on Sept. 11, the nation was deaf, dumb and blind due to the ‘absolutely massive’ loss of communications infrastructure resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center, a senior government official said last week.” The article goes on to focus on consequences of damage to a Verizon central office but implies much wider impact. Dan Verton. 2002. “Digital Destruction Was Worst Imaginable,” ComputerWorld, March 4. Available online at <http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/recovery/story/0,10801,68762,00.html>. |
The overall human and economic costs of the September 11 attacks— which dwarf in significance the attacks’ effects on the Internet—have been widely covered and are not examined here. Instead, this report focuses on three issues related to the Internet: (1) the local, national, and global consequences of the destruction that occurred in New York City; (2) the impact of the crisis, including the actions of users as well as the effects of the physical damage; and (3) how people made use of the Internet in a time of crisis.
The project was small—reflecting its relatively narrow focus and the objective of producing a report quickly—and had limited resources. These considerations, combined with the relative paucity of data, mean that the committee’s assessment was not comprehensive. Instead, the committee examined several sources of data that revealed the overall status of the Internet on September 11 as well as shortly thereafter, and it drew on the detailed experiences of several Internet service providers. This was sufficient to derive a rough sense of that day’s impact on the Internet infrastructure nationwide—and worldwide.
The committee and the CSTB acknowledge the financial support provided for this project by ACM SIGCOMM, the IBM Corporation, and the Vadasz Family Foundation. Their support enabled but did not influence the outcome of the committee’s work.
The committee also wishes to thank the workshop participants for their thoughtful contributions and for their comments on a draft of this report. Responsibility for the report, however, remains with the authoring committee.
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Geoffrey Baehr, U.S. Venture Partners,
Steven Bellovin, AT&T Labs—Research,
Scott Bradner, Harvard University,
Geraldine MacDonald, America Online, Inc.,
Udi Manber, Yahoo! Inc., and
Andrew Odlyzko, University of Minnesota.
Although the reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Robert R. Everett, Honorary Trustee of the MITRE Corporation. Appointed by the National Research Council, he was responsible for making certain that an