robust scalability of routing system (3) this actually gets pretty ominous many believe the routing system will find a state of non-convergence that so disruptive as to bring down large portions of the Internet we talk about malice, but more frightening truth is that we aren't sure a typo couldn't do this we can't even trace back DOS attacks debugging remains black art routing protocols interact with eachother in 'interesting' (nonunderstood, sometimes nondeterministic) ways intelligent routing throws a wrench into the melting pot scalability and robustness require even more 'damage control' complexity perfect 'normal accident' suggested possible by bgp expert tim griffin where no single ISP will be able to identify and debug the problem where it will take days to fix and cost the world economy billions of dollars where the press will learn that the internet engineering community had known about this lurking problem all along.... for front-row seat at melange of fingerpointing, keep an eye on Internet routing system promise you (sysadmins/netadmins) won't be left out in the meantime you have enviable job security (you're welcome) and an excruciating if not impossible job (oops, sorry) 3600 RFCs later and your job gets harder rather than easier each day what is wrong with this picture rfc used to stand for something...