Posted on 02/02/2008 9:52:15 AM PST by devane617
New cable cut compounds net woes A submarine cable in the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday. The Falcon cable, owned by a firm which operates another damaged cable, led to a "critical" telecom breakdown, according to one local official.
The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom.
The earlier break disrupted service in Egypt, the Middle East and India.
"The situation is critical for us in terms of congestion," Omar Sultan, chief executive of Dubai's ISP DU, told The Associated Press, following the most recent break.
Wednesday's incident caused disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.
Flag Telecom said a repair ship was expected to arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5 February, with repair work expected to take a week.
A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the "next few days", the firm said.
Web returns
The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.
INSIDE A SUBMARINE CABLE 1 Polyethylene cover 2,4 Stranded steel armour wires 3,5 Tar-soaked nylon yarn 6 Polycarbonate insulator 7 Copper sheath 8 Protective core 9 Optical fibres Not to scale
A second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also split.
FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.
SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.
The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.
As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
The cause of the break has still not been confirmed. The third break is unlikely to disrupt commerce in the region as many business are closed on Fridays.
Initial reports suggested that it could have been snapped by a ship's anchor.
Internet service providers said they expected India's to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.
In Egypt Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said he expected to be at the same capacity within two days.
"However, it's not before ten days until the internet service returns to its normal performance," Kamil told the state Al-Ahram newspaper.
Considering most of US companies customer service comes from India, I am amazed that we have not seen problems.
Coincidence of course. /s
Did they ever catch that murderous dolphin?
Could it be a crime spree or a diversion?
These cables are very well protected with a thick coating. I doubt marine life could cut them, and three in three days...I doubt it.
These cables should be listed as one of the wonders of the world. It is amazing how the digital signals have evolved from the first underseas telegraph cables.
I read somewhere that Iran presently has no internet or phone lines. Can anyone confirm this?
We live in interesting times.
That will increase the pucker factor.
When news broke Jan. 31 that an undersea fiber-optic cable owned by India's Reliance Communications had been accidentally sliced by a ship's anchor in Egypt, people feared a possible replay of 2006. That's when an earthquake in Taiwan disrupted Internet traffic in East Asia for nearly two weeks. India, where the Internet is the lifeblood of the outsourcing industry, was considered particularly vulnerable.
Happily for Reliance (which did not respond to phone calls), and for Indian outsourcing giants Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) , Infosys (INFY), Wipro (WIT), and Satyam Computer Services, which use such undersea fiber-optic cables, no serious problems occurred. Neither, it appears, have the global operations of multinational tech players like IBM (IBM) skipped a beat. True, some of India's Internet cafes saw connection speeds slow dramatically, so the time needed to connect to Google increased 60 times—from two seconds to two minutes—but overall the economic impact of the accident has proven minimal for India.
It could have been much, much worse. According to the Internet Service Providers Assn. of India, nearly half of the 25 gigabits of bandwidth India uses relies on cables, of which 60% snake under the Atlantic Ocean. The rest is routed through the Pacific.
Instead, the disruptions gave India's outsourcers the opportunity to prove to their clients how well they're prepared for such emergencies. As soon as the problem with the Reliance cable became known, traffic was rerouted through the alternative network of cables running under the Pacific Ocean. "There are redundancies built into the system. There are multiple pipes, so if one breaks, others work," says Pradipta Bagchi, a spokesman for Tata Consultancy Services.
Bagchi explains the pecking order for Internet traffic priority. Top of the heap is voice—so that calls to Aunt Mathilda in Missouri or cousin Vijay in Bangalore are unaffected. Then come international private leased lines—networks that banks such as JPMorgan (JPM) or tech service providers such as IBM (IBM), TCS, and Infosys use to connect to clients and their other locations across the world. "These links get high priority and get switched automatically to another line," Bagchi says.
For this privilege, the larger companies pay double or triple the cost to telecom providers such as Reliance, AT&T (ATT) , VSNL, and Bharti Airtel. They also have contracts with multiple providers, so if one fails, the other kicks in. So on Jan. 31, as Reliance announced its problems, rival providers picked up the traffic.
However, smaller back-office outsourcers probably didn't fare as well during the Internet outage. Because these companies compete on price, they are unlikely to be able to afford the kind of contingency plans TCS has with Internet service providers. But even their problems are fairly limited. "Though there is a marginally slower access to Internet, this has not disrupted or affected our operations. Our IT team is working closely with our service providers to ensure that operations continue to function seamlessly," says P.V. Kannan, founder and chief executive of 24/7 Customer, a smaller Bangalore outsourcer.
A day later, says Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers Assn. of India, almost 80% of the bandwidth has been restored, as companies made the automatic shift to alternate providers. "The service providers have released more capacity on the Pacific route," he says.
Yup. Iran appears to be in the technological dark ages:
Google Search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iran+cable+cut
Wonder if I should get the popcorn ready? Finished the Calgon already.
“Blind Man’s Bluff”
Sherry Sontag
A couple threads on this.
Something very odd is up. Only question is which side is doing it.
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