Efficiencies - understanding how vulnerable we are

Understanding how this [failure] happened is critically important. There are four parts to creating the complete meltdown of a network:

1. Create a network by building connections between systems.
2. When a particular part of the network approaches overload (goes red), recognise that this is happening and use the connections you have created to allow you to switch load to another part of the network.
3. Continue doing this until all areas are red.
4. Now add more load.

NVDL: The problem with efficiencies is that they work mercilessly fast in the opposite direction (meaning, they become systems we depend on, and critically, failure is often simple, systemic and distributed.

clipped from anz.theoildrum.com I was reminded that the speed of collapse in a network is often a function of the natural frequency (speed) of the network, while the breadth of failure depends on a number of factors, including load and the degree of interdependence within the network. This raised a question in my mind: The Internet Protocol was originally designed to be a robust, reliable, redundant system. How does one piece of software on one machine bring down a network with thousands of nodes? The answer is easy: Cost efficiencies. Our Intranet network could have been built to be reliable, but instead it was built to be "efficient". I have seen this pattern a lot recently. Last year the power went out in my city. The power transmission system was heavily loaded one afternoon, when a single failure brought the whole system down. Our network operates at electronic speeds, and it failed with the same rapidity.