Job Snijders

Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

Job Snijders

2 min read

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Here is a plea to keep Internet services on in these times where we rely on online communications.


Please do NOT terminate anyone's Internet or hosting service for pre-corona reasons such as 'we want money'.

Right now we are facing a pandemic of proportions nobody alive has ever seen. Act responsibly and accordingly: do not shut anything down. Please!

To illustrate, in the Netherlands we are in lockdown, because of the COVID-19 hazard: you are expected to *only* leave your house if it is absolutely critical, such as to pick up food from the food distribution centers, to get meds, to go work in a hospital, etc.

At the same time we have no idea where everyone is and who is using what Interconnect to do what vital work. Maybe I'm fixing some important BGP thingy via my neighbour's wifi? Maybe she didn't pay her bills? Should she be cut off?  Maybe next to her someone was freeloading on that same wifi to look up medical data? Why risk collateral damage by cutting anyone off?

The *safest* thing to do right now is to not terminate anyone's access to information (be it connectivity, storage, compute, whatever).

We'll mop up society's collective bills at a later point in time, after we deal with the immediate urgency at hand. And during this crisis we have to keep this Internet thing running and available to anyone who may need it.

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About the author

Job Snijders Based in Amsterdam, Netherlands

Job Snijders is an Internet Engineer at Fastly where he analyzes and architects global networks for future growth. Job has been actively involved in the Internet community in both operational, engineering, and architectural capacity, as a frequent presenter at network operator events such as NANOG, ITNOG, DKNOG, RIPE, NLNOG & APRICOT, and in a number of community projects for over 15 years. Job is co-chair of the IETF GROW & SSHM working groups, director of the Route Server Support Foundation, and developer for the OpenBSD project. Job's special interests are BGP routing policies, RPKI based routing security, and large Internet scale PKIX-RPKI & BGP deployments. Job helps maintain several software projects such as rpki-client, StayRTR, & bgpq4, and is active in the IETF where he have coauthored and contributed to numerous Internet-Drafts and RFCs. Job has experience with the implementation and operation of RPKI Certificate Authorities, Publication Servers, and Relying Parties.

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