Internet y2k Readiness: A Leap of Faith
msnbc.com
Fair Use/yaddah, yaddah, yaddah
Internet is Y2K ready… maybe
White House, Net experts seek to deter millennium bug fears
By Brock N. Meeks
MSNBC
>>>WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 — The Internet's core structure is expected to remain operational during the transition to the new year, unaffected by the infamous Year 2000 technology problem, a White House official said Tuesday after meeting with a group of Internet experts. That optimistic outlook, however, contains a soft-white underbelly: uncertainty. All assessments of Internet readiness addressing the Y2K problem are merely taken for granted; there are no independent audits to confirm the Internet's readiness, the official admitted to MSNBC.<<<
>>>The Internet really comes down to 13 machines, called “root servers.” These are the major “data traffic cops” for the entire Internet. If those puppies blow, the entire global network grinds to halt.
Network Solutions Inc., which runs the database handling all the .COM, .ORG and .NET domain names, also runs two of the world's 13 root servers. NSI, a publicly traded company, makes some foreboding statements in its required filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
NSI warned that if proper precautions aren't taken, “a failure of or interruption to normal business” would occur. NSI's visibility, owing to its fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, makes it accountable. Not so with the other 11 root servers; those are run by volunteers, computer grad students at universities and other non-governmental organizations around the world.
>>>NSI put the world on notice with its SEC filing, stating that it has “no responsibility for, nor control over, other Internet domain name server operators that are critical to the efficient operation of the Internet… We do not know whether such domain name server operators have hardware, software or firmware that is Year 2000 compliant.”
On Tuesday, CIX's Dooley sought to belay such hyperbole, saying that the “root servers are Y2K-ready, according to their operators.” However, no one has independently verified the statements of the root server operators.<<<
|
