Millions in Middle East Lose Internet

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."

redundancy

isn't this why we are supposed to have system redundancy? so a failure in one area won't cause a complete blackout?

isn't this why we are supposed to have system redundancy? so a failure in one area won't cause a complete blackout?

Re:redundancy

There was redundancy there. I was talking with a guy from Bahrain when it happened (already suspected a cable problem since I've experienced that with a cross-Atlantic cable already) and he said his ping just went up like mad, he was still able to connect obviously, just with a ping of two seconds.

Re:redundancy

That's what I thought. This probably isn't a case of "Middle East Loses Internet", more a case of "Millions in Middle East Now Using One Fibre Connection Instead Of Two".

Like when a major motorway gets closed due to an accident, and every road within a hundred mile radius is choked for the rest of the day.

Reading this...

all i could think was "The fools! if only they'd built her with 6001 hulls! when will they ever learn!"

Re:Reading this...

Governor Sio Bibble: "A communications disruption could mean only one thing: invasion."

Or someone forgot to pay the bill...

Re:redundancy

IANADSD (I am not a deep sea diver)

WDYJUAULAAATIEIATDTPOTAESYKIWNBUA? - Why did you just use an unnecessarily long abbreviatory acronym and then immediately expand it and thus defeat the purpose of the abbreviation, especially since you know it will never be used again?

Re:redundancy

I think you underestimate the efficacy of electrical tape in general. Especially when secured with duct tape.

Re:redundancy

Would you pay 2 time the price to prevent a one-day outage once every year ? Military does. Consumers don't. Yet.

You know you're a geek...

..if you read this as "Millions in Middle Earth Lose Internet"

Re:You know you're a geek...

I was relieved when I realized my mistake and that my favorite hobbit porn sites were still accessible.

Re:You know you're a geek...

I believe that Middle East had their servers running. Taking into account the number of people affected, the title of news should be

Internet split into two independent networks due to broken cable

... if not yet

Europe and America cut from the internet

;-)

Re:You know you're a geek...

They should have used a Token Ring... my pwwweeccioussss! ;p

Information warfare?

Russian subs used to employ a cutting device on some of their submarines designed to cut the cables used in undersea sonar nets... I'm thinking it wouldn't take too much to start a war these days given how much we rely on these underwater communication cables. That said, it's more likely that a ship's anchor snagged it.

Unlikely

Cutting cables merely temporarily deprives your opponent of his ability to use that cable. Far better to tap the cable [wikipedia.org] and monitor everything that's being sent across it without your opponent knowing that you're listening in. It also has the added bonus that cable traffic is not typically encrypted as radio transmissions are.

Re:Unlikely

Far better to tap the cable and monitor everything that's being sent across it

Most definitely. In fact, the US has best-of-breed when it comes to this capacity : The USS Jimmy Carter http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001397.html [defensetech.org]

Anchor

That said, it's more likely that a ship's anchor snagged it.

The Guardian article doesn't speculate, but an earlier Register article [theregister.co.uk] suggested that was the cause:

A spokesman for Flag Telecom, the owner of the severed cable, told the Reg: "It is a problem off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt. For some reason ships were asked to anchor in a different place to normal - 8.3km from the beach. One of the ship's anchors cut our cable but there are multiple cuts - we're not the only company having problems."

Re:Information warfare?

Or, it was "salvaged" by fishermen to make a quick buck? Stranger stuff has happened :)

Clicky clicky: http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSHAN1727620070607?feedType=RSS [reuters.com]

Fishermen who were allowed to take unused war-era undersea copper cables have gone too far, "salvaging" fibre-optic lines providing some of Vietnam's Internet and other international communications.

*snip*

State-run newspapers said an 11-km (7-mile) section of stolen TVH fibre-optic cable would be replaced at a cost of $5.8 million. It was part of the line that transmits data from Vietnam to Thailand and Hong Kong.

In all, about 43 km (27 miles) of fibre-optic cable is missing, including about 32 km (20 miles) stolen from a cable operated by a Singaporean company.

Re:Information warfare?

*snip*

wow - they even have a recording of the salvage operation taking place!

Really?

I guess now would be the time to say it, then.

Deep breath, Rie.

*inhale*

I think the Danish cartoon controversy was really overblown.

CORRECTION: Two undersea cables not one

Seriously given the magnitude of this, /. could have come up with a more factual and informative writeup.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html?ref=business [nytimes.com]

Two undersea telecommunication cables were cut on Tuesday evening, knocking out Internet access to much of Egypt, disrupting the world's back office in India and slowing down service for some Verizon customers.

One cable was damaged near Alexandria, Egypt, and the other in the waters off Marseille, France, telecommunications operators said. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged within hours of each other. Damage to undersea cables, while rare, can result from movement of geologic faults or possibly from the dragging anchor of a ship. /snip/

One of the affected cables stretches from France through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, then around India to Singapore. Known as Sea Me We 4, the cable is owned by 16 telecommunications companies along its route.

The second cable, known as the Flag (for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe) System, runs from Britain to Japan.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080039928&ch=1/31/2008%208:29:00%20AM [ndtv.com]

Internet service providers in India have put the disruption at 60 per cent of normal services while those in Egypt have been affected up to 70 per cent.

Why not follow this simple precaution?

Every night I back up the internet to my RAID array to protect myself from this and similar eventualities.

Not TCP

That is not TCP, but rather BGP [wikipedia.org] (Border Gateway Protocol). TCP handles data transmission and congestion control. It doesn't do routing.

Re:Old news, but provides a fine example of TCP/IP

Yes, the 'net access was down for an hour, but after that it came back up as before.
Guess TCP was able route the packets through alternate gateways after detecting the problem.

1. TCP has nothing to do with routing packets. 2. IP also has nothing to do with selecting an "alternate gateway" after "detecting a problem". 3. If it was down for an hour, then I don't think this was anything to do with magical routing protocols. Human interaction was required to either repair the broken link or set up an alternate path.

According to the article:

Reports suggested that the lack of alternative routes for internet traffic meant only a small proportion of surfers were managing to get online. Egyptian officials said that around 70% of the country's online traffic was being blocked, while officials in Mumbai said that more than half of India's internet capacity had been erased, which could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country's burgeoning hi-tech industry.

"There has been a 50% to 60% cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Charia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India told Reuters.

So it sounds like not every ISP was able to use the alternate path, and the alternate path didn't have sufficient bandwidth for those that could, anyway.

Mind you, the article then comes out with this astonishing "fact":

The shutdown highlighted the often frail nature of international communications: despite the vast number of individuals who have access to the web, nearly all internet traffic is routed through a small number of cables submerged deep below the oceans. It is then forwarded through an internet backbone consisting of just 13 servers which handle and direct all online requests.

Is this the new version of the Majestik 12 that run the world?

I'm guessing this is a reference to [A-M].root-servers.net, but I'm pretty sure none of those are actually a single server, and several have multiple physical locations. Even so, the vast majority of even remotely popular sites will have their nameserver entries cached at a bazillion ISP DNS caches.

Re:Old news, but provides a fine example of TCP/IP

So it sounds like not every ISP was able to use the alternate path, and the alternate path didn't have sufficient bandwidth for those that could, anyway

I work for a large financial news company. We've had guys up all night whose sole purpose was to persuade the various telcos we lease circuits from that our's should be the one's they re-route first. They must have been pretty persuasive because we're almost back up to normal running now, but it took them a lot longer than an hour.

We're a big outfit that spends many millions on network infrastructure, so we have some clout with the various telcos and ISPs. We're all right Jack. You've got to wonder if any small company is going to be able to do the same thing. Presumably most of them will be relying on their ISPs, and those ISPs are presumably also going to prioritise their biggest customers as well...

Re:SEA-ME-WE 3?

I think it's the SEA-ME-WE4 cable.