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Egypt Calls for Bandwidth Rationing

Posted by Soulskill on Fri Feb 01, 2008 03:03 AM
from the stay-away-from-youtube dept.
The Internet Communications
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has called upon its citizens to ration their internet usage. This comes after two of its three undersea fiber optic links were recently severed. The cut cables have caused communication difficulties for millions of people throughout the Middle East. Ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur was quoted as saying, 'People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.'"
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[+] Millions in Middle East Lose Internet 304 comments
Shipwack writes "Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections. The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online. Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with Egypt's communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe."
Submission: Egypt Calls for Bandwidth Rationing by Anonymous Coward
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  • These cables were cut on purpose (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2008, @03:10AM (#22258696)
    The cables in the mideast have all been cut on purpose. When they were first laid out, we did not have as good interception equipment as is now available. However, going down and installing equipment capable of intercepting, duplicating, and analyzing their traffic without increasing latency in the slightest would require an unexplained interruption in service while it was being installed. While the lines are being repaired, further up in a difficult-to-reach location or hub, the NSA is now installing this equipment. Afterwards, they can copy all data sent through the cable without raising any eyebrows. There will be no proof.
  • Like read Slashdot :).

  • Business more important than my porn? NO! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by node159 (636992) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:12AM (#22258706)
    One would think that those businesses affected who depend on their network connection would see its value and have the appropriate SLA. Otherwise they should fall under the rest who need to fight over the limited data cause by a lack of investment of inferstructure. I have no sympathy, if line failure means a reduced capacity, that isn't a backup.

    God talking heads piss me off some times. Get a clue.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by klingens (147173)
      The (possible) SLAs are exactly the point: chances are, the telecommunications company, and probably the cable too, is directly owned by the government. This is a usual arrangement in most islamic countries so any payout or loss of revenue due SLAs is directly hurting the government of which this minister is an officer.
  • It seems that Internet is now making its way up with water food and shelter for human necessities :P
    • I can just imagine the ads we are going to see on TV... images of fat Egyptians sitting at their computer screens with 'taking too long to respond' messages on their browsers. A voice-over asking us to please donate all our unused bandwidth to these poor unfortunately souls... cut to one of the previously shown Egyptian kid, in a cold sweat with a crazed look in his eyes, talking about how much he has suffered in the 48 hours that he's been unable to update his facebook site.

      Seriously though, are any of the

  • I see it already... (Score:5, Funny)

    by thrill12 (711899) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:27AM (#22258768)
    ... next thing they do is giving away "bandwidth-stamps".
    I am sorry sir, your bandwidth-card is full ; you will have to wait until next month to renew your bandwidth.
    Here you go ma'm, one bandwidth stamp for 100 MB worth of data.
    Sir, you are hereby under arrest for trying to fraud with bandwidth-cards, you sir are a "bandwidth pirate", a "megabyte thief", a "bit ripper" !

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mikael (484)
      With French Pay-As-You-go 3G Sim cards for mobile internet (Mobicarte), you top up your account by purchasing scratch cards from your local supermarket. Scratch the card to reveal a security code, then use SMS to send the code to the account managers. No need to use or disclose your credit card details.

  • Adding to the problem... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Statecraftsman (718862) * on Friday February 01 2008, @03:30AM (#22258798) Homepage
    Though I've never looked for an Egyptian site before, my curiousity may have added a little to the problem:

    The server at www.egypt.gov.eg is taking too long to respond.
  • ...they'll be asking road users to give way to trucks and business executives on the roads.

    Thier concern over how this could impact thier commerce is understandable, but this is not the answer.

    • Re:Next up... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zorque (894011) <zorqueozwald AT gmail DOT com> on Friday February 01 2008, @04:00AM (#22258918)
      All it's asking is that people try and refrain from heavy downloading (music, movies, etc) for a little while until the lines are fixed. They're not asking people to give up the internet entirely. It would be pretty stupid of them to have a large portion of their economy collapse just so people could torrent.

      • Hey, Ibrahim, how's our bandwidth demand? Sharply down, you say? So, our expenditure is down as well, right? And our revenue? Still constant. Hmm.

        Say, Ibrahim, about those cables. If you felt like taking some vacation time before fixing them, that'd be OK with me. See you in April.

    • they'll be asking road users to give way to trucks

      I can't remember who told me this but apparently they were in Egypt and asked the hotel people where they could go to rent a car and look around for a bit in the evening and they were told no way to you do that because big trucks drive around at night and nobody makes them use lights.

      Closer to home (for me) I was in Tasmania, which is the most redneck state in Australia. They have signs on logging roads saying that this is a public road but if you get hit by a logging truck then the onus is on you.

    • This has nothing to do with trucks; it's a series of tubes!

  • Why not? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Misanthrope (49269) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:40AM (#22258844)
    Aziz Bandwidth!
    • Ah, this is exactly the kind of situation that demonstrate how the network neutrality dogma is hurting. To have a per packet fair policy is just fine when existing infrastructure can wistand the load.

      Now with the wonderfull IP / TCP whatever protocol, not beeing able to diffenciate traffic per user and per session end to end in the network lead the following situation: When the capacity is reduced (such incidents, maintenance, etc) or if traffic increases (chrismas, special events, etc.) where everybody get

  • Ah, good times (Score:3, Interesting)

    by istartedi (132515) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:41AM (#22258852) Journal

    When I was in dial-up tech support in the late 90s, we would occasionally get customers who were furious because "my business depends on the internet". Of course we couldn't tell customers what we really thought, so we would all stand outside on break, and be like "your business ha-hah, depends on ha-ha, the INTERNET???". "Well then, you should not have depended on a single provider, if it was really that critical".

    It's one thing for some idiot pre-bubble day trader who fancied himself a "business man" to not understand that. In this case, it's a whole region. OK, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. Maybe they're where we were in the 90s. It seems like the whole network would go dark every few weeks or so back then. In the call center they would put up a big sign that said something like "MAE East is down". I haven't seen anything like that for a while. Maybe they'll put in some redundant routes after this, which is probably what happened here.

    • Re:Ah, good times (Score:5, Informative)

      by MrMickS (568778) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:12AM (#22258960) Homepage Journal

      Maybe they'll put in some redundant routes after this, which is probably what happened here.
      Erm ... there are redundant routes. Two of them, 2km apart, have both been severed the result being that they are down to a single route. Given the political nature of the area it wouldn't be a surprise for the redunancy to not be as high as possible with inter-country connects.

    • Re:Ah, good times (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2008, @04:17AM (#22258986)
      Not every country can afford the redundancy mate. It's called being poor.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by darthflo (1095225)
        First of all, "poor" applies to people. Natural people, you see? Businesses are legal people. Just like there's no welfare for businesses, there's no "poor" businesses. (Obvious exemption: Gov't-subsidized public services. They're not poor, they're simply not competitive but the government deems them to be important enough not to die.) Either a business makes money, is using up stockpiles (including credits) of money or it's bankrupt. An internet-dependent business unable to afford basic redundancy is, howe

  • This just in! (Score:4, Funny)

    by CCFreak2K (930973) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:47AM (#22258868) Homepage Journal
    Cut cable causes communication catastrophe! Dismal disaster dooms denizens!

      • Re:Who is it more important to? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by hoojus (935220) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:47AM (#22258870)

        appealed to the public's common sense
        Never heard of this what is it? Even so just because the public are using it for entertainment purposes this is no less important than business use. If these people are paying the same amount then they should have equal use. If business are paying more and the contracts (to ISPs) specify selective throttling then I have no problem. But I know that my ISP has no signed contract with me that allows them to put other customer's needs before mine. Make no mistake whether big business or home user they are both customers and should be treated equally.

        • Re:Who is it more important to? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by QuickFox (311231) on Friday February 01 2008, @04:36AM (#22259080)

          appealed to the public's common sense
          Never heard of this what is it?
          Why are Americans so parochial? Just because the public in the US has no common sense doesn't mean it's the the same in the rest of the world.

          • Re:Who is it more important to? (Score:4, Funny)

            by notnAP (846325) on Friday February 01 2008, @08:55AM (#22260152)

            appealed to the public's common sense
            Never heard of this what is it?
            Why are Americans so parochial? Just because the public in the US has no common sense doesn't mean it's the the same in the rest of the world.
            This "rest of the world" you refer to...

            Never heard of this what is it?

        • Re:Who is it more important to? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by 1u3hr (530656) on Friday February 01 2008, @05:47AM (#22259372)
          But I know that my ISP has no signed contract with me that allows them to put other customer's needs before mine. Make no mistake whether big business or home user they are both customers and should be treated equally.

          Good luck with that.

          A year ago some cables running south of Taiwan were cut by an earthquake. In Hong Kong the immediate effect was to slow down access. But a few hours later, they had reconfigured it so that domestic users, like myself, working at home, got ZERO connectivity, as they gave almost all the capacity to their business clients. I couldn't even check my email, on Yahoo, for a week. And you know that businesses were just sending the same bloated powerpoint files and videos to each other.

          IMHO, they should give a minimum connectivity to everyone so you can use email, the most vital of all services. But when they have their big customers screaming at them about how slow their service is, they'll cheerfully cut off home users completely, knowing most have no alternative.

    • Re:Same Story (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Actually, I do RTFA (1058596) on Friday February 01 2008, @03:55AM (#22258908)

      Here's the oft repeated story again, instead of trying to improve infrastructure and services (like backup lines for instance) the consumers are the ones left holding the bag. In fact they're already using the word 'rationing'. Why is it that almost always its the consumers who bear the burden of whatever boo boo's made by the service providers ?

      This isn't a private company, it's the entire country's connection to the rest of the world. As in, the government. And there are redundancies, that's why they can still connect. Two of the three main cables (each over a mile apart) failed simultanously.

      On the other hand though the statement is worded unsurprisingly inept, i guess the sentiment here might be to take stock of the usage and avoiding unnecessary bandwidth hogging for a while. Though what's unnecessary should be left to the consumers to define for themselves. A simple request for 'help' and 'understanding' would have been more useful without generating all the negative publicity that I'm sure this will generate.

      That's pretty much what they did. They said there was limited bandwidth, and asked people not to download music and movies because it would eat up bandwidth that might be needed for contining business purposes.

      If you read all his comments, it is quite polite and understanding of individuals' rights. You might not think it was polite because it was translated from Arabic. Egypt is a different country than the United States. Many other countries speak languages besides English.

    • If they start telling everyone there is a shortage then they will start hording, soon they'll have old ladys with 323 gigs of Murder She Wrote and Matlock.
      But if they start telling everyone "No, there is absolutely no shortage, that's unpossible" it will be much worse.

    • Re:Compromise (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ps236 (965675) on Friday February 01 2008, @08:34AM (#22260012)
      Oh come on. How many companies anywhere in the world have a satellite link 'just in case'? Never mind the problem of being able to afford to actually use it.

      Most companies will have one DSL connection. Possibly they'll have an ISDN or second DSL available as backup - but that wouldn't help in this case. All that WOULD help would be a satellite link.

      The businesses could well be paying more for their Internet link than individuals anyway - we pay about 6 times more for our DSL than a 'home user' account costs. That gives us a lower contention ratio, plus a basic SLA.

      Even in the UK, if two of our transatlantic links were severed at the same time, things would slow to a crawl as data gets routed through Germany etc instead. I remember one failing not too long ago and it was very noticeable.

      Two out of three failing at the same time is an exceptional event so you can't really expect a developing country to have more than one redundant link available for their two normal ones. How would your region handle the case where **all** their 'normal' Internet links out of the region were severed and they had to fall back to their redundant links???

      They're not asking individuals to stop using the Internet at all, just to cut back on all the movie downloads. One movie download is a few hundred thousand emails after all (most of which will be spam..). Also, using the Internet within the country itself would not be a problem

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