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An alternative to the Internet Kill switch With a certain amount of sadness I've just read this article. Obama internet 'kill switch' bill approved it is sad but it has got me thinking. The internet is based on what is known as TCP/IP you don't have to be on the internet to run TCP/IP it's just a set of rules - protocols built into just about all modern computer operating systems. The very interesting thing about the internet is that it was designed to withstand a nuclear war! So we could in theory use some of that open source intellectual property to protect the local Australian networks (read our hunks of the internet). Although I'm not quite sure on the exact technical detail of how the US would turn off the internet. I'll make an educated guess and say that it would involve pulling the plug on all incoming traffic routes (that includes undersea cables and satellite links) and also denying access to the top level DNS servers. Considering the above it wouldn't be that difficult for countries to set up there own fail safe mechanisms to support their existing infrastructure. After all we do control our internal networks and it's not that difficult to set up a DNS server (heck if I can do it I'm sure a few boffins form the major telcos or some one form the government can!). First off you would need a Data center with high speed access and a number of standby servers and routers - Secondly you would need to cache all Australian IP address and and work out what to do with traffic that you know would not be able to get out to the rest of the world. Finally you would need to be able to turn the thing on at a moments notice. The up shot of this would be that although much of the US and international connectivity would be lost we would still have our banking sites (as long as they used Australian assigned IP address) and lot of other important infrastructure. It wouldn't be perfect and much of the internet would be broken but we would have preserved a large amount of functionality and saved our selves a lot of trouble. You could also take this to the next step and have various international agreements with other countries with regard linking connectivity and DNS management (For example New Zeland might like to fork in for a bit of it's DNS management and have an agreed method of connecting to Australia should the US pull the plug!) So - I propose that we the Australian people put on our technical thinking caps - We find a few million and a few boffins to consider the above and we progress towards a technically more secure and stable Australia! 
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