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Internet: growth over the decades

The Internet is omnipresent today and has become essential to almost all areas. It becomes particularly apparent how key this infrastructure is to our lives when cyberattacks and large-scale failures occur. Some such problems are facilitated by the fundamental architecture of the Internet, which it inherited from the early days of its 50-year history.

Certain areas have higher requirements in terms of reliability and security of their central communication infrastructure, in particular e.g. the financial and health sectors. SCION was developed with these sectors in mind at ETH Zurich. The full name of the routing protocol "Scalability, Control, and Isolation On Next-generation networks" already shows how it differs from the conventional Internet.

Control and isolation with SCION

The Internet, as a "combination" of many individual networks, really is a net: there are countless possible data transport paths between two communication partners A and B. The path the data actually take arises from a number of influencing factors and decisions by the providers involved, with A and B having little impact.

This is where SCION is completely different. Based on a variety of parameters, such as latency, jitter, packet loss and available bandwidth, network participants can prioritize or exclude certain paths. Thanks to constantly updated metrics, optimal routing can thus be ensured. Complete path control also allows the exclusion of certain path segments and specific providers.

If a network hub fails, data traffic within the Internet automatically finds a new path. This adaptation, however, requires time and in some cases, it may take several minutes for the affected data to flow again. SCION consistently relies on modern concepts to virtually avoid interruptions of this kind. If the currently preferred route fails, immediate diversion to a different route based on the defined specifications takes place.

Authentication of network participants is a further important feature of SCION. In completely separate "isolation domains" (ISDs), participants can rely on the fact that they only receive data traffic from legitimate, verified sources.

SCION at cloudscale.ch

Thanks to its focus on reliability and trust, SCION is ideal for the financial sector. SIX, for example, is currently replacing its "Finance IPNet" with the SCION-based "Secure Swiss Finance Network" (SSFN). SCION is also already in use in the health and energy sectors.

At cloudscale.ch, we are in the process of putting two SCION core routers into operation. This means that in future our customers will be able to participate in these secure networks directly with their cloud setups. If you are interested in SCION access, please contact us to discuss the next steps.

SCION was developed for applications with requirements that can only be partially fulfilled by today's Internet. Complete path control and the available metrics mean that participants regain the upper hand in terms of data flow. They also benefit from minimal down time and authentication of all communication partners. This is why we will soon also be enabling our customers to participate in various SCION-based networks or ISDs.

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Your cloudscale.ch team