Is the internet going down?

[ninakat]

Is the internet going down? Undersea sub-cables have just broken...
December 19, 2008

Breaking news: something's happening to the internet, right now. We're just not quite sure what.

Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

These carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America. It's hard to gather what this actually means - is it that the internet is down or (more likely) significantly slower than usual between the Middle East and America? (If you're reading this, let's face it, the internet has not shut down altogether)

But, according to the company, there is a domino effect taking place. Interoute says it is:

hearing that offices have lost their entire private network connectivity. As a result, users are unable to do their daily job over the internet and are turning to their mobile phones to communicate across the globe. This is having a knock on effect on the domestic voice networks, which are getting a surge of calls needing to be routed internationally. These calls need to be routed onto international gateways that pass voice traffic in longer directions around the world to avoid the cable breaks – causing more quality issues and risk more call failures, in turn causing more calls to be placed and increasing the pressure on local voice networks.

What (I think) this means is that companies' private internet services have gone down. So, if they can get access, they have had to go on the public internet and mobile phones, like the rest of us average joes, to get their work done. That results in more strain on mobile phone networks, which means more phone calls go down and the internet becomes slower.

Here's the big problem right now:

Finance companies [are] looking to settle trades on European and American exchanges. This cable outage means there is no real-time access to, for example, trading ticker services. This means branch offices are compromised when trying to place trades. As private networks are being affected, these organisations are forced to rely on public internet services that may have more latency and may not update as quickly. The loss of time even precious seconds is hugely important to trading exchanges. These public internet services are now struggling to cope with peak in demand – leading to increased latency, and further compromising the integrity of the trading data.

I'm told that these major sub-sea cables break once a year. So companies have developed a fall-back plan. If one sub-sea cable is out, traffic is re-routed onto a second cable. In theory, a dual break, where both cables go out at once, is incredibly rare. Prior to January this year, it had not happened before.

The problem with all of this is that it's hard to see the impact, or its significance, until something disastrous happens. So, we're keeping an eye on it and like we said, er, something's happening to the internet.

UPDATE: AP report mass outages in Egypt

UPDATE: India suffers massive internet disruption after undersea cables break

[ninakat]

Severed cable disrupts net access

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.

It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.

A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily.

Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that the effects of the break would be felt for many days.

"This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time," he said "If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised."

"If you think how quickly trades can be placed, if they are suffering from bad latency times, then by the time a trade is placed, the market may well have moved on."

The cause of the break is as yet unknown, although some seismic activity was reported near Malta shortly before the cut was detected.

In a statement released in relation to one of the breaks, France Telecom said: "The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear."

The French firm said it was sending a ship out to fix the line between Italy and Egypt, although it could take until 31 December to fully repair the line.

The main damage is to the four submarine cables running across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal.

It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.

Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area - off the Egyptian coast - although only two lines were snapped then.

"We've lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we're looking at a total blackout in the Middle East," said Mr Wright.

"These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we're going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet," he added.

"Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern."

[ninakat]

Internet Traffic Report

[smiths]

its always a source of relief to read a story on the internet about the internet going down and realise that your connection has not gone down

i am stalked occasionally by the fear that 'the web' is not accidetally named and we are all drawing more and more into it ...

and what is the spider in the middle

[anothershamus]

I want to know who the internet is going down on?

But seriously folks, Iran was cut off of ALL internet as of

http://theuglytruth.wordpress.com/2008/ ... a-warning/

Internet Cables Cut–Prelude to War or Simply A Warning?

A single undersea fiber-optic cable carrying internet traffic accidentally being cut once in a year’s time is believable. 5 of them however within the span of only a few days resulting in most of the Middle East being left in the informational dark ages cannot be mere happenstance. The odds are too extreme to even contemplate it being anything but a deliberate act of sabotage, and particularly when Israel and US-occupied Iraq happen to be unaffected by it.

As of the moment of this writing, 5 internet cables–buried deep beneath the ocean floor to prevent them being accidentally dredged up by a ships’ anchor–have been cut, preventing most of the Middle East from internet access. The cables provide 90% of the region’s internet service and the countries affected most by this are Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. They have since re-routed to older, slower lines and satellites, but overall internet service is slow and in some cases–particularly Iran, there is no internet service whatsoever

.

[AlicetheKurious]

We had no internet at all between Thursday and Monday morning. Through Monday and Tuesday morning, it worked intermittently. It's back now, but I for one am sick of seeing 'experts' repeating how 'odd' and 'suspicious' it is, that 3 out of 4 cables would be cut all at once, especially since it's the second time it has happened this year.

The cutting of these cables makes me think of an electrician switching off various fuses in a home, to see what each fuse is connected to. Internet access is an urgent matter of national security, and that goes double for countries that are being openly threatened by foreign aggressors, or the target of foreign ambitions, like India and Pakistan. Early this year, as anothershamus mentioned, Iran, Egypt and the Arab Gulf countries were hardest hit, while Israel and U.S.-occupied Iraq were unaffected. If this same pattern is being repeated now, clearly a very serious investigation is warranted, and these countries need to make it their highest priority to protect this vital link to the outside world. No doubt the government of Iran gets it, but I'm a lot less sure about "our" Arab governments.

I want to know who the internet is going down on?

Good question.

[ninakat]

Alice, thanks for your posting. I was wondering if you'd lost access, since Egypt was cited above. So that's confirmed, and this is indeed very serious.

[IanEye]

The cutting of these cables makes me think of an electrician switching off various fuses in a home, to see what each fuse is connected to.

this is a good analogy.

here in the States we have something called "HughesNet" which is internet access via satellite. I have friends that live in the sticks of Western Mass that have it. Is there anything similar in Egypt?

[Pele'sDaughter]

Cable Repairs Set Back by Second Undersea Break

Monday, December 29, 2008 5:00 AM PST
Efforts to restore normal communications between Europe and Asia have suffered a setback after an important undersea cable broke for a second time, this time at a much greater depth.

Engineers from France Télécom had just finished repairing the Sea Me We 4 cable on Dec. 25 when the same cable broke again in a different place, this time 388 kilometers (241 miles) off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt, a France Télécom spokesman said Monday.

The repair ship the "Raymond Croz," which had just finished repairing the first break, was on its way to Sicily on Monday to pick up more cable to repair the second break, which happened more than 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) under the sea, the spokesman said.

The ship is expected to arrive at the site of the latest incident on Dec. 31 and the repairs now won't be completed until Jan. 4 or 5, the spokesman said, which would be 10 days later than originally expected.

Sea Me We 4 is one of four undersea cables that were cut on Dec. 19, disrupting voice and Internet traffic between Europe and several countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, including Egypt, India and Singapore.

Much of the traffic has been diverted across the Pacific and through North America, but this has slowed connection speeds from Europe and Asia and places an additional burden on the other cables used for rerouting.

France Télécom, which is part of a consortium that operates the Sea Me We cables, has made Sea Me We 4 its priority and is not saying now when it expects Sea Me We 3 to be repaired.

Reliance Globalcom, which operates the Flag Telecom Europe-Asia and Go-1 cables, which were also cut Dec. 19, said Sunday it expected those cables to be repaired Monday.

The first cable breaks were blamed on trawler fishing nets, a ship's anchor or an undersea earthquake. They occurred in a shallow part of the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and Tunisia, at a depth of only a few hundred meters.

The latest incident occurred 1,400 km away off the coast of Egypt. The cause was likely an undersea landslide or earthquake, the France Télécom spokesman said.

The incidents highlight the fragility of the submarine cables that carry voice and Internet traffic thousands of miles between continents. The Flag and Sea Me We cables were also cut in February this year.

Asked if it was common for the same cable to break twice in two weeks, the France Telecom spokesman said: "It is not lucky, but it can happen."

Sea Me We 4 runs from Marseilles in the south of France to Singapore, connecting Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India and several other countries on the way. The Flag Europe-Asia cable stretches from the U.K. to Japan.

http://tinyurl.com/8vxybd