Asia and Middle East internet service disrupted
By Michael W. Jones
Internet services to a large section of the planet have been disrupted by underwater cable damage. The damage apparently affects three cables that run along the Mediterranean Sea bottom, and may have been caused by a ship’s anchor. International telephone services have been cut along with internet services to parts of southern Asia and the Middle East, from Zambia to India and Taiwan.
The three submarine cables, which are owned by consortia involving France Telecom, were damaged at approximately the same time late on Friday morning, Greenwich Mean Time. There may also be damage to a smaller fourth undersea cable that links Sicily and Malta. A ship equipped with underwater repair equipment, including a remotely operated robot submersible, has been dispatched to the site of the break, said to be between Sicily and Tunisia. Repairs will probably not be complete before the end of the year, according to a Reuters report.
Consortium spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard said, “There are two theories: either the anchor of a ship, which could have displaced them … or an earthquake. We think it’s the first theory. We think we will get [part of the cables] repaired by Dec. 25. For [the rest of the cables], it should be done by the end of the year, or maybe Jan. 1.” The cable ship Raymond Croze was suppposed to reach the scene at 10 p.m. GMT on Sunday. At that time, the remotely operated submersible Hector will begin a search for the cables, which could have been dragged several kilometers.
A number of countries have been affected. Egypt’s services were reduced approximately 80 percent, while Pakistani residents reported that their internet services had been degraded. Attempts are being made to reroute all traffic, but that has proven difficult since the severed cables represent most of the bandwidth to and from the effected areas.
These outages (a similar one occurred about a year ago) serve as reminders of how delicate our internet infrastructures are. They are equally vulnerable to natural disasters, global terrorism, human mistakes, and simple breakdown. The best course would be to build additional capacity, but business does not see that process as efficient. Until extra capacity is put on line, or the current resources are considerably hardened, we will be at the mercy of both man and the fates.
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December 20th, 2008
This is the second time this year that something similar has happened. The global fiber optic cable is not highly available and has extended repair times. Remember this when someone is singing the praises of cloud computing – it won’t work very well if you cannot get to the cloud.
December 20th, 2008
Ridiculous they can’t route around these cuts. NONE of the affected areas are so isolated that they only have a single feed.
December 21st, 2008
If you look at the maps, though, these are the big feeds. It does seem ridiculous that they can’t do redundancy…
December 21st, 2008
Buuroughston Broch –
That’s an excellent point about the cloud. That is true of a lot of off-site services. Most large businesses have fall-backs, but some of the mid-sized firms are undoubtedly exposed.