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Tuesday, February 05, 2008 Analyzing the Internet CollapseContinued from page 1 By John Borland
A map of the fiber-optic cables crossing the Mediterranean, connecting Europe with Egypt, the Middle East, and ultimately India. The Flag Telecom Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 lines were cut last week just north of Alexandria, Egypt. The cause of the cuts in the two main broken cables remains somewhat mysterious. A spokesman for Flag Telecom said on Monday that the company would not speculate on the causes until the broken line has been examined. However, Egyptian telecommunications officials said on Sunday that no ships had crossed the site of the breaks in the 12 hours before or after the incidents on Wednesday. The site is also a "restricted area," further lessening the chances of a ship's responsibility, the ministry said. The unexpected collapse in service forced Internet providers across the region to scramble for alternative connections, most using backup bandwidth sources under contract for just such an emergency. Many ISPs began switching traffic east instead of west. Data from India to Europe might thus first pass through East Asia, across the Pacific, through the United States, and across the Atlantic Ocean before reaching its destination. While slowing traffic, in some cases significantly, this at least allowed data to get through. According to ISP Association of India secretary R. S. Perhar, service providers in his country adapted to the cuts relatively quickly. Traffic from business customers was given a top priority on networks, with consumer traffic taking second place. Three of the country's largest service providers weren't affected at all, since they weren't buying bandwidth from the Flag or Sea-Me-We 4 cables, he says. Many other Indian companies had diversified their network connections following December 2006, when an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severed seven major undersea cables that served India as well as East Asia. But some providers who had not acted as quickly found themselves cut off entirely, Perhar says. "Most have done good network planning and made sure they get bandwidth from several service providers," he says. "But there are people who did not have redundancy in their networks." Outsourcing companies also found themselves facing potential disruption. With so much outsourced work now being performed in India or elsewhere in the region, companies in the United States and Europe are increasingly dependent on these broken lines for their everyday business. But like the ISPs, the biggest outsourcing companies said that they relied on redundant connections to ensure the flow of data. |
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The State of the Global Telecosm
04/22/2008
Comments
jwoodside on 02/05/2008 at 6:10 AM
5
KA9Q on 02/07/2008 at 3:41 AM
2
How well they actually do all this stuff is another question.
jwoodside on 02/07/2008 at 6:25 AM
5
olmon on 02/05/2008 at 10:18 AM
7
kapitan on 02/05/2008 at 11:11 AM
1
jfreitag on 02/05/2008 at 5:04 PM
1
gabrielg01 on 02/06/2008 at 12:45 PM
298
Some people would say that these cable accidents were no accidents at all. Maybe some people have an interest to have communications shift towards satellites. Iran suffered the most outage from these cable cuts, and given all the war rhetoric going around...it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots.
KA9Q on 02/07/2008 at 3:49 AM
2
Satellites also have their own failure mechanisms. The radio links can be jammed. Earth stations and satellites can both fail, and the latter are hard to repair. They also run out of stationkeeping fuel or just plain wear out and have to be periodically replaced.
orgnet on 02/05/2008 at 10:58 AM
2
martinaatayo on 02/05/2008 at 5:09 PM
31
as opposed to fiber lines.
As understandable as bandwith accomodation supports existing fiber application, material alteration,especially in satellite composition and design, could overcome any existing disadvantages, on the reasonableness
that, both risk and economic advantages support
wireless internet investment and eliminates any
long term failures, typical of the one in discussion.
Total wireless internet, replacing landline connection, is a dream that seems most
certain than probable.(martin@mpgatechnology.com)
harishh@hotmail.com on 02/05/2008 at 7:30 PM
1
smithsomian on 02/08/2008 at 2:51 AM
18
That is unless you've found a way to increase the speed of light. Current roundtrip latency from earth to satellites and back is almost 1000 milliseconds.
Imagine your ping times. That would all but destroy telephone/VOIP communications, online gaming, etc. Not to mention the incredibly reduced throughput because of the chatty nature of TCP.
gayathriherath on 04/04/2008 at 11:11 AM
1
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