How to destroy the entire Internet?

I believe many people have the super dream of destroying the Earth to save the world, and many people threaten to destroy the Internet. While we are laughing, we would like to know if anyone can really destroy the Internet. In fact, this thing is physically achievable.

There is no doubt that if you do destroy the Internet, it will be a great feat of terrorism in the history of Mankind and a declaration of war against the nations of the world. So, consider the following as a thought experiment.

First of all, let's not think of the internet as invisible things, in fact, it is composed of a large number of metal, plastic and fiber. It's all around the world, like a machine monster clinging to the Earth. So we look for the material base of the web, across oceans and continents, to find out exactly what to do.

The internet does not have a total switch, no self-destruct button, and will not be affected by power outages. Because of its excellent design and constant groping and improvement, the Internet is almost indestructible. Like fiber-optic networks, even if you cut the bulk, the rest will still be transferred, automatically re-confirm the transmission path, ensuring the connectivity between the mainland or the country is unobstructed.

But like everything else on earth, if it is built, it can always be destroyed. In other words, with enough effort, you can destroy the Internet as completely as a tree, as long as you know where to start the hack.

First step: Cut off the optical cable

Submarine Cable Location

The internet is being connected by thousands of meters of heavy, worn-out cables. The long submarine cables connect each continent, making the world a whole. As previously mentioned, cable connections can support each other, and when one is broken, the other will pick up the task. So, what if we cut them all off?

The internet is a network of cables. The computers at home, the equipment in the office, and the servers abroad are connected through these cables. By cutting off these connections, the network cannot cross the ocean communication. The internet will break immediately.

On this page you can find every Internet main cable in the world.

These submarine cables are sometimes disguised or partially buried. But sometimes it's as bare as an abandoned surfboard on the beach. For the cables buried under the sand, you can use such a line tracker to find the exact location.

Although the precise location of many optical cables and their landing sites are not public, they can always be seen in some famous coasts and lively towns.

The following three cable points, if destroyed, will be very serious. The destruction of a point can only lead to deceleration and obstruction, but not complete paralysis. But the sites on the other side of the ocean will not be connected immediately, and many other sites will be too slow to use. The internet will still be chaotic and slow, but it's a good start.

From top to bottom, Long I. mastic Beach, New York State Manahawkin City and New York State Tuckerton

These sites are connected to the East coast of the United States and Western Europe, are some of the world's most dense and important infrastructure points, destroying these links, the global economy will collapse.

In addition to the above 3 sites there are some other places that can most weaken the Internet connection: Singapore/Egypt (Mediterranean and Red Sea)/southwest of England/Tokyo/Hong Kong/South Florida State/Sicilia, I. Di/Mumbai/Chennai, the destruction of these sites, the Internet is no longer a global whole, Every continent and small island is isolated.

Step two: Destroy the root server

The M server is run by wide project and is located in Seoul.

The domain name input is actually the result of converting the IP field, such as "google.com" IP address is 74.125.228.37. But there are thousands of sites, the hard memory of IP addresses makes this conversion process indispensable.

At present, there are 13 root name servers worldwide, named "A" to "M", which is responsible for resolving IP address domain names. To make these machines paralyzed, you can only remember numbers if you want to surf the Internet.

How do you find and destroy these servers? Like the previous cables, these servers are also public secrets.

Global domain Name server map, in addition to 13 root name servers, there are a large number of other domain name servers

For example, we want to destroy the "K" server, which is run by a company called RIPE NCC. Go to the company's website and then use Google Maps to find the location of the server. But to really go in is even more difficult, and its guards can imagine. The location of all 13 root servers is queryable.

Step three: Destroy the data center

Data center

The first step to cut off the optical cable, the information can not be transmitted around the world, all over the island became a block. In addition to destroying the root server, the network address becomes an unresolved IP address. Destroying the internet also leaves a step: Blow up data centers.

The data centers are very humble buildings with servers that allow us to surf the web, send and receive emails, and chat games. These buildings are usually very tall, because they are not designed so they are mostly windowless. The houses with the machines are usually dark and keep the machines running at low temperatures.

60th Hudson Street, New York.

The building at 60th Hudson Street, New York, is an important hub for the world's Internet: the 9th floor of the building is 1394 square meters and is the local, all-American and global multi-layered fiber optic cable. servers, storage data, and network equipment are connected here, and a series of optical interfaces, coaxial cables, etc. are connected to other networks through a series of connecting plates. A data center like this is the physical center of the internet, essentially a huge Ethernet switch.

If this layer can be destroyed, the entire area will be broken, and the Internet connection worldwide will be affected. Not only are some websites erased, but the data that some companies store in the data center will disappear, and any photos or songs you upload may no longer exist.

Data centers like this have a lot of world, currently China has 9 managed data centers, Beijing has 2, Shanghai has 4, Chengdu, Zhejiang, Shenzhen each has one.

Game Over

Now the data has been completely frozen. All roads, bridges and traffic lights are destroyed, and data is nowhere to be seen. The rest is the LAN, they are the network, but no longer the Internet. At this point, the Internet has been successfully destroyed. Game over.

From above we can see the power and fragility of the Internet. Of course, no one can attack all the nodes of the Earth's Internet at the same time, even if thousands of individual teams do, the repair speed is likely to exceed the speed of destruction. Our aim is not to really destroy the internet, but to see the complexity and the fun of the Internet infrastructure.

(article translated from Gizmodo website: How to Destroy the Internet SAM BIDDLE)

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How to destroy the entire Internet?