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Transatlantic Cable Fault Disrupts Internet In UK
An anonymous reader submits "Web traffic between the U.S. and Europe has been hit after an undersea cable developed a major fault on Tuesday. Because the TAT-14 cable network is shaped like a ring, it should be able to cope with one such failure -- but unfortunately the consortium that owns it hadn't fixed an earlier problem, just off the U.S. coast. Just shows how systems with build-in redundancy can still go badly wrong...."
the article, but here's the link to the linx (badum tsh) website, with another news site for the article.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
this was all over the service provider lists yesterday...
l es .html
.. i heard days ... not hours :-(
The latest from the rumor mill....
FYI, for some history on the TAT's
http://davidw.home.cern.ch/davidw/public/SubCab
still seeing decent ping times. anyone detect an actual outage or issue? Best info we have is that there are two outages. One has existed
for the last 3 weeks or so between Tuckerton (New Jersey) and Bude (UK). It takes out the "southern path" across the atlantic.
There is a second outage between Bude (UK) and Katwijk (NL). For circuits that landed in London or France this (should have) taken out the redundant path for those circuits.
Circuits from Tuckerton (New Jersey) or Manasquan (New Jersey) to Katwijk (NL), Norden >(DE), or some city in Denmark who's name I
forget should still be up on the northern path.
> So, if you're in London or France your circuits are likely to be down, however some people in those locations used Contentinal capacity to link up to Katwijk, in which case they might still be operational.
I confirm that France is having some problem with TAT14.
France Telecom International Backbone (Opentransit) is currently running with
non TAT14 capacity (10G) and one oc48 direct to Copenhagen (that is ok).
We (Opentransit) are currently not experiencing any congestion but are implementing a new 10G circuit to secure our topology until TAT14 is back to life (one leg at least).
Both problems are undersea issues, so don't expect speedy resolution if you are down.
Yep
-Opentransit (France Telecom)
It was definitly noticable as our customer reported
1) Website traffic down at least 30%
2) Around 75% packet loss from the EU -> US
3) Slow delivery of email
Basically it caused a massive amount of headaches and you have to wondered WTF didn't they fix the first problem when it came up. Its like running a RAID Array on one disk.
Well least things seem to sort of be getting back to normal
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
The sit on the ocean floor. In low water areas, they are cladded in steel, to prevent anchors, etc. from ripping them up. Recent ones are apparently treated to prevent sharks from chewing on them, which was an old problem. Fixing them involves sending out a big ship that hauls up cable from the ocean floor (they have a lot of slack so that this is possible), hanging the cable across the deck, fixing it, and lowering it back into the water.
Yes, I'm a WAN administrator, why do you ask?
Remember that fixing faults in undersea cables isn't exactly an activity that you can do in 30 seconds. You've got to get a ship out to the location of the fault, hook the cable, and get it to the surface, and then fix it. There are going to be a limited number of cable ships which have the capability, and they might be busy elsewhere. Even once they start acting on the repair, they are going to take time to get to where the fault is (14 knots cruise speed isn't exactly the fastest ship around the QE2 cruises at 28 knots, and still takes a week to cross the atlantic. Remember a cable ship might be off in the other side of the pacific when it becomes free), and then time to get the cable and repair it. Therefore 'earlier this month' not being repaired is perfectly reasonable.
One failure, occured on Oct 30, 2003, has existed for the last 3 weeks or so between Tuckerton (New Jersey) and Bude (UK). It takes out the "southern path" across the atlantic.
/.s since yesterday actually
http://davidw.home.cern.ch/davidw/public/SubCables .html
The new failure is between Bude (UK) and Katwijk (NL). For circuits that landed in London or France this (should have) taken out the redundant path for those circuits.
more info at
www.tat-14.com
http://www.kddiscs.co.jp/e/business/02_15.html
You gotta wonder who makes those things and how, exactly, they're maintained.
Check out Global Marine Systems the company that laid it, and some of their cool toys (er, if you're into big assed boats).
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
About the TAT-14 Cable Network
This transatlantic cable system is in full service, connecting the United States to the United Kingdom, France, The Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.
The cable system is a dual, bi-directional ring configuration using DWDM multiplexing with 16 wavelengths of STM-64 per fiber pair. The system also utilizes reverse direction protection switching in the event of failure of the service fiber.
It has a dual route, transatlantic capacity of 640 Gbits on 2 service fiber pairs backed up by 2 protection fiber pairs. This configuration provides a capability of transporting 4,096 STM-1's or approximately 9,700,000 circuits across the ocean.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
The USNS Zeus (ARC-7) is the Navy's cable laying and repair ship. The cable is laid mostly on the surface of the bottom, but at vulnerable points and at both ends (near shore) is its ploughed in to the mud/sand on the bottom. When a cut or fault occurs, the location of the fault is determined with a TDR or O-TDR, the same way it works with a land based cable. They know the cable length to the fault and have a survey map of where the cable was layed. It is physicaly located with side-scanning sonar and robotic submersibles, then hooked and brought on deck for repair (each end in case of a break). Once repairs are complete, the cable is unceremoniously shoved over the side, or re-ploughed depending on the location and mission of the cable.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Here's a map that I found which shows the "ring" of TAT-14...
TAT-14 Cable Route
Finding where the fault occured is actually pretty easy. Each repeater can be remotely interregated for diagnostics, and they have a TDR built into them to detect exactly where the fault is. So you know it's say 1500m west of repeater #17. Go to that location, and pull it up.
In case anyone was wondering, TDR=Time Domain Reflectometry.
http://www.tscm.com/tdr.html
Basically you just send a pulse using the cable which has a fault. At the point of the fault, the signal reverses its path. By timing how long it takes for a pulse to return, and by knowing the speed of the pulse in the cable, you can figure out how far along the cable the fault is.
Of course, it can suck if your cable doesn't travel in a straight line...
Yes you need a big hold and run the cable over the stern. These ships tend to have grapples to latch on to cables and haul it aboard for maintenance.
The first successful TransAtlantic cable was laid by Great Eastern designed by Slashdot's patron saint - Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
She was the biggest ship in the World for almost fifty years, and SIX times larger than any ship afloat (that was Brunel's Great Britain which was itself TWICE the size of any other ship).
Bearing in mind she was launched in 1857 here are the statistics:
She had a single screw, twin paddle wheels and six masts (her steam engines which were the biggest in the World (naturally) were still novel technology), a complete double bottom and double hull which was internally compartmentalised. She could have carried 4000 people from Britain to Australia and returned without refuelling.
What happened to her? Brunel could barely launch the ship, she had to be slid sideways into the Thames, rather than float her from a dry dock. It took three months to get her into the water. When she was afloat she had cost more than three times the original budget and the Eastern Steamship Company who commissioned her was on the edge of bankruptcy.
When she was fitted out, she was put to sea on trials. Brunel was aboard, but the effort of constructing Great Eastern had almost killed him. He suffered a massive stroke and was taken ashore. Shortly afterwards, off of the South Coast, Great Eastern suffered a massive explosion in one of the water jackets surrounding a funnel. Five men died and the ship had to be put in for repair. Brunel was told the news, and almost immediately lapsed into a coma, dying a few days later.
Finally she was put into service, not on the Australia run which had proved unprofitable, but on the North Atlantic. She never carried more than a tiny fraction of her passengers and was reknowned for rolling in heavy weather. One story does stand out, she hit a reef whilst travelling at full speed on the approach to New York. Her bottom was cut open along a greater length than that of Titanic, not only did she not sink, she continued her voyage without loss of life and arrived safely in New York where she was repaired.
Eventually the cost of running Great Eastern became too great and in 1864 she was sold to the Telegraph Construction Company for the purpose of laying the TransAtlantic cable. She was the only ship in the World capable of holding the entire cable - it took more than 5 months just to load the cable into her holds. The first attempt in 1865 was almost successful, but the cable broke in Mid Atlantic in more than 6000 feet of water.
So what did they do? They went back to Britain, picked up another cable and laid the first truly successful cable in 1866. Better than that, Great Eastern found the broken cable (no I have no idea how), spliced it and got that working as well.
Great Eastern's importance to the British Empire can't be underestimated. She laid the cables that joined Britain to the African colonies, the Eastern part of the Mediterranean, India and Australia. Without them, the British Empire could not have been governed.
And the ship? Well she was replaced by a custom built cable carrier Faraday in 1874 and laid up in Milford Haven, South Wales. She hung around there for twelve years before being t
The thing is that he tended to run the projects himself, including getting funding. The strain was immense, solving technical issues, managing the projects as well as the finance.