Severed cables disrupt internet

[reorg]

Source: BBC News

Internet services have been disrupted in large parts of the Middle East and India following damage to two undersea cables in the Mediterranean.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption. UK firms such as British Airways have told the BBC that call centres have been affected by the outage. Industry experts said it could take up to one week to repair the damaged cables and resume full service.

International telephone calls, which have also been affected, are being rerouted to work around the problem.

(...)

Disruption also occurred in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, reported the Associated Press

...

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7218008.stm

---

Interesting how this is even possible, I thought the net was built in such a way that widespread failures are being ruled out?

So, it seems this spoof was not too far off, after all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4vDClhnJjs

[aquart]

1. Yikes. I thought it had better redundancy, too.

[dipsydoodle]

2. call centres have been affected by the outage

Good - hope they stay down to bring the jobs back where they should be instead of using cheapo overseas labor.

Love that video. I thought they'd get to the point where everyone was using two baked bean cans and a piece of string.....lol.

[Sabriel]

3. Cables? I thought it was a series of tubes.

On a more serious note, this gives me some pause when I think of a day in the future when SOMEONE may need to gain control of or shut down certain areas of the Internet. I didn't realize it was that easy to do.

[Kittycat]

4. Not India! What will all the call centers do, if they can't access the tubes?

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

5. gosh

hope none of us need tech support.

:smirk:

[RamboLiberal]

6. Latest from CNN

Large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.

One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.

India's Internet bandwidth has been sliced in half, The Associated Press reported, leaving its lucrative outsourcing industry trying to reroute traffic to satellites and other cables through Asia.

Reports say that Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain are also experiencing severe problems.

Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel -- whose traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html

[Robbien]

7. They are guessing it was an illegally or improperly anchored ship

which cut the cable.

That sounds plausible.

[Divine Discontent]

8. this is HUGE news...

this shows some extremely major flaws, and is crippling business around the world. amazing story. wonder if it was planned? I doubt NOTHING anymore.

[rodeodance]

9. emptywheel.com has a big discussion going.

[rodeodance]

10. OK, this is interesting:

OK, this is interesting:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iRQi2agl1ORyqre-b3ZTP83Zt_EwD8UH49500

“Most telecom companies have capacity at multiple systems, so if one goes out, they simply reroute to a different system,” said Stephan Beckert, analyst at research firm TeleGeography in Washington. “It’s just that in this case, both the main route and the backup route got cut for a lot of companies.”
The two cables — FLAG Europe Asia and SEA-ME-WE 4 — were cut on the ocean floor just north of Alexandria, Egypt.
By an accident of geography and global politics, Egypt is a choke point in the global communications network, just as it is with global shipping. The reasons are the same: The country touches both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which flows into the India Ocean.
The slim fiber-optic cables that carry the world’s communications are much like ships, in that they’re the cheapest way for carrying things over long distances. Pulling cable overland is much more expensive and requires negotiation with landowners and governments.
So fiber-optic cables that go from Europe to India take the sea route via Egypt’s Suez Canal, just as ships do.
Another Mediterranean cable makes land not far away, in Israel.
But there’s no cable overland from Israel into Jordan and to the Persian Gulf, which could have provided a redundant connection for the Gulf States and India. Going overland would have been more expensive and politically difficult — Israel and Arab countries would have to cooperate.
There is also no route that goes through Russia, Iran and Pakistan to India. The terrain is rugged, Pakistan is politically unstable, and India and Pakistan are not on good terms.
With two of the three cables passing through Suez cut, traffic from the Middle East and India intended for Europe was forced to route eastward, around most of the globe.
The main route goes through Japan and the United States, crossing both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

So the entire Internet traffic of at least “Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India” is now running through the US.

Hmmm.

[Divine Discontent]

11. 'running through the US'

ha... oh yes. that's quite interesting. I'm sorta surprised that there's not even a little more discussion on this, I guess because of the debate and because it's technical and not effecting anyone here, but if this happened to us we'd have



FREAKED!

[Nihil]

12. Kick for an interesting observation indeed!

Well spotted rodeodance.
:toast:

[lonestarnot]

13. Geeze, dress rehearsal.

[Nihil]

14. Guess what chaps?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm

> A third marine cable has been snapped, compounding global net woes
> caused by two broken lines on Wednesday.

:tinfoilhat:

[hunter]

15. Looks like the secret war is heating up.

:scared: