There is a proposal running through the US Senate at the moment which would give the President powers to shut-down critical internet infrastructure, the so called “kill switch”. Apart from any concerns at a distance we might have about free speech and rights, there is an equally big issue which may be more critical to our own homeland security.

In the dawn of time, the internet was a peer network where each organisation with a network they wanted to open up linked, or inter-netted, with others on an equal basis. Since then major providers have moved into a position of some power and the equality of peering has pretty much gone. Small providers often have to club together or pass through multiple hands to get to a universal audience, so a small number of US-based infrastructure items have become critical to us as well as Americans.

Casting your mind back to the Autumn of 2008, you might remember a few days when odd things happened on the internet, where you could Skype some people and not others or reach some websites but not others, while your friends and colleagues experienced the same but it affected completely different sites and services. This was caused by a spat between Sprint and Cogent in the US, where Sprint decided to shut-down its peering relationship with Cogent (see here for a reminder).

Because peering is no longer egalitarian, a significant amount of the UK internet traffic needed to pass through this peering point in order for UK internet users to reach UK services; that’s why you could skype some people and not others, and why some websites disappeared but not others, and depending which way you passed through the peering point determined which services you could access.

I’m quite sure that proposals passing through the US legislature will have more safeguards than they do in Egypt and I’m sure the US President will act more calmly than Mubarak is but surely our national security should be in our hands?

While our diplomats should be ensuring we have assurances and safeguards as the law passes through Capitol Hill, we should also use this time as a moment of reflection, to make sure we have an internet that we can always use and can’t be impacted by the decisions of others far away and beyond our control.

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