[AusNOG] NBN must avoid becoming 'failed state'

[Dobbins, Roland]

On Sep 20, 2010, at 4:15 PM, Mark Newton wrote:

> It seems to me that you're drawing some kind of equivalency here between
> violent bloody death and SYN floods.

I didn't draw that equivalency - Jason Bailey did.

And, to be fair, the time when Bad Things happening online can cause Bad Things to happen in the physical world is approaching.

> If it is happening -- if your hyperbole about death-by-DDoS is true --

Again, it was Jason Bailey's hyperbole, not mine.

> then I'll be asking serious questions about the medical operators who
> were foolish and unethical enough to entrust life-critical functions
> to a third-party network they can't control.

It happens every day in hospitals around the world - unpatched and unpatchable machines running Windows which are compromised with malware, entire hospital networks going down due to same.

Please, by all means start asking these questions - they're long overdue.

> Give me another example ANYWHERE in the medical field where that happens.
> Just one case where a doctor will entrust someone's life to something 
> that s/he can't personally, obsessively, control.

Walk into any hospital making use of general-purpose computers running general-purpose operating systems to perform vital functions.  And there you are.

> An NBN may well revolutionize medicine, but it isn't going to turn medical practitioners into foolhardy idiots.

That ship sailed long ago with regards to the use of insecure and unsecureable computer systems for mission-critical medical functions around the world.
 
> NBNCo is, after all, supposed to be a private company.
> 
> (Right?  Or are we talking about a different NBN, one that isn't
> reflected in current Government policy?)

NBNCo seem to think they're a Government Business Enterprise - are they mistaken?

> You now owe NBNCo eleventy million dollars for new keyboards.

Remind us again, who are the majority shareholders of NBNCo?

>From <http://www.nbnco.com.au/about-nbn-co/faqs>:

'The NBN is being funded initially by equity funding from the Commonwealth. So far the Commonwealth has provided $662 million equity funding to NBN Co which covers all of NBN Co’s commitments as well as projected costs into the medium term.'

. . . 

'Why has a publicly-owned body like NBN Co been given the job of building the NBN instead of leaving the investment to the private sector? 

NBN Co was devised to provide high-speed broadband services to all Australian homes and businesses. Its role is to build an integrated national broadband network providing fibre to 93 per cent of premises and wireless and satellite to the remaining seven per cent. Private companies need to make a commercial rate of return for their investors. In other words, private companies will only invest and build a network where they can make sufficient profits to satisfy shareholders. In a  country as big as Australia there are many areas where it is not commercially attractive to build a network. The NBN will have national scale that will allow it to provide services to both profitable and high cost areas. NBN Co has developed a business case which indicates that it can build the network and still make an acceptable return on the government’s investment over the life of the network.

Prior to setting up NBN Co the Government did extend a request for proposals to the private sector to build the NBN but this process was terminated on advice from the independent Panel of Experts that none of the compliant national proposals offered value for money.'

. . . 

'How is it that a Government-controlled monopoly can improve competition?'

. . .

'Who should own the wholesale network? 

An efficiently-run, publicly-owned, wholesale telco can maximise the public interest as one of its objectives.'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

 	       Sell your computer and buy a guitar.