Do you ever think just how important the Internet is these days?  Its reach is enormous.  From our nations power grid to playing PS3 with your friends across the country.  The Internet has quickly integrated into our daily lives; some integration we don’t even realize.  A common tactic to flame the fire is the idea of the Internet literally collapsing.  But, is that even possible?

The Internet is not one giant pipe that can be severed.  The nature of the Internet is that it’s split it a spider web of networks all interconnected.  If your data can’t get from A to B because someone maliciously severed a connection somewhere, the traffic could be routed from A to D to C and then to B. The key point in that sentence is the data still gets from A to B, just in a different manner.

So, could the Internet be taken down?  In terms of logical ways to sabotage it, no.  The Internet is gigantic; it would take a massive attack, and I mean GIGANTIC ATTACK, both of hardware sabotage and network/packet sabotage to Internet backbones around the world.  This coordination would be a huge logistical task and highly improbable.

If an attacker severed an “Internet backbone” as their known, traffic disruption on the Internet would occur.  In 2008, fiber optic cables on the sea floor were being cut with no culprits ever being found.  Some have theorized the attacks were government entities testing the waters on how the public and private sector would respond to disruption.  Cutting large cables on the sea floor is no cheap task, I have no doubt it was some kind of professional operation by someone.

So could your e-mail and Netflix suddenly vanish because of no bandwidth some day?  Surely, but don’t expect the flow of information around the world to cease at the flick of a switch or slice of a giant scissors.  You may be able to slice a chunk of the network out, maybe even a few, but no person or organization could take down the entire Internet.  No one.