Internet to Pakistan Goes Down

TwobyTwo writes "According to CNN, a power supply problem on an undersea cable has severed all outside Internet connectivity to Pakistan. Many businesses have been seriously impacted. Repairs will involve some disruption to access from other countries, and are tentatively scheduled for overnight." From the article: "'It's a worst-case scenario. We are literally blank,' said a senior foreign banker who declined to be identified. An official at the Karachi stock exchange said Pakistan's main bourse was unaffected as it had its own internal trading system."

Comments

Get your tinfoil hats here

[BWJones]

Tinfoil hat ON:

OK, so what are the odds that the problem with the link is due to a faulty tap by an *unnamed* government? We have been tapping undersea cables now for years and have specifically developed technology for all types of cables including optical cables. Given Pakistan's role in the last few years, I would not be surprised to find a tap on this cable that *perhaps* has leaked or otherwise failed causing an increase in resistance resulting in the power problems. Come on now, this is a prime cable to look at given that India, Dubai and Oman are using the same link. Look for a deployment out of Groton or Bremerton soon....

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[garcia]

OK, so what are the odds that the problem with the link is due to a faulty tap by an *unnamed* government?

I'd be more worried if *my* Internet pipe went down due to a *unnamed* Government tap or if our Country's Internet pipe went down.

I have no need to put the tinfoil on for Pakistan.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Exodious]

I've read stuff about that sort of thing before. I can't find the exact article but I did find this which is along the same thread. If I recall correctly, the one I had read basically said the main problem with tapping the cables is making sense of the HUGE amount of data you get.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[The Bungi]

Typical slashbot bullshit. Even assuming that the US wanted to do this, why don't they just tap the endpoint(s) instead of spending a billion dollars to send divers down to the bottom of the ocean to connect a pair of headphones to a massive fiber cable that is likely buried in 6 feet of silt?

You've been watching the Discovery channel too much. This is not a copper phone line that services Vladivostok, and James Bond doesn't really order shaken martinis.

I cannot believe this kind of thing gets modded up.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Richie1984]

I have no need to put the tinfoil on for Pakistan.

Why not? Assuming for one moment that it was brought down by an *unnamed* government, surely this is serious enough to warrent serious concern, even if it is only Pakistan. The world relies on the internet in a major way, almost to the point where we are dependent on it. If governments can bring down other government's internet access, this is a major problem

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[StupidHelpDeskGuy]

Although it's not likely that this was a bad tap, afterall, why not capture packets at the ISP, rather than the bottom of the sea?

Carnivore for crabs anyone?

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/carnivore.htm

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[TBone]

Carnivore for crabs anyone?

Wouldn't that be "Shark"?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Mr.Sharpy]

This is the US Government. Since when have they been known to go for the most logical/cheapest approach to solving a problem? I've worked for the government and let me tell you, they can come up with some pretty Rube Goldbergian schemes.

But from another perspective, all the reasons you stated for why it would be crazy to tap an undersea cable are also reasons why it's a good idea. If it takes a lot of resources to implement, it would also likly take a lot of resources for an enemy to undo it / turn it for his own use.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Bendy Chief]

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The USS Jimmy Carter, set to join the nation's submarine fleet Saturday, will have some special capabilities, intelligence experts say: It will be able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them.

The Navy does not acknowledge that the $3.2 billion submarine, the third and last of the Seawolf class of attack subs, has this capability.

"There are limits to what I can say on the sub's capabilities, but let's just say the Jimmy Carter is uniquely capable to perform missions vitally important to the war on terror," said Rep. Rob Simmons, a Republican and former CIA officer whose district includes Groton, Connecticut, where the sub was built.

But intelligence community watchdogs have little doubt: The previous submarine that performed the mission, the USS Parche, was retired last fall. That would happen only if a new one was on the way.

Like the Parche, the Jimmy Carter was extensively modified from its basic design, given a $923 million hull extension that allows it to house technicians and gear to perform the cable-tapping and other secret missions, experts say. The boat's hull, at 453 feet, is 100 feet longer than the other two subs in the Seawolf class.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[ScuzzyTerminator]

...let's just say the Jimmy Carter is uniquely capable to perform missions vitally important to the war on terror...

Thats a statement I thought I'd never see!

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[ottothecow]

That would be a lot of data to sift through. I mean, I know that its not the most "connected" country out there but the underwater telecommunications cable has got to have quite a large amount of data going through it. Unless there was something very specific going through it at a certain time and they know a lot about it, it would be hard to find useful data.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[electrichamster]

I really, really hope that was supposed to be a joke.

Just in case it's not: The term "Tin foil hat" refers to supremely paranoid people believing they stop your mind being read by aliens, and as a result the phrase has now become synonymous with being paranoid. Hence why it was applied in this context.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[ScuzzyTerminator]

Gentlemen do not read each other's email

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[javamann]

I'm thinking the Navy has sailors.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[scisco]

Anybody remember the press blackout for the invasion of Grenada? Some thought that it was an exercise in control of information during wartime. That was pre-web.

So let's see - islamic nuclear nation, crawling with terrorists, hostile to us, unstable military dictatorship, surrounded by US troops...

No, I can't imagine any reason that we'd want to stop information from coming OUT of Pakistan. Nossir. Nothing to see. Move along.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[BWJones]

So you know nothing about international intelligence or undersea cables, and yet you feel qualified to comment... If you don't understand what you're talking about - don't comment on it.

You should not talk without knowing about people's backgrounds and if you had any balls, you would not post things like that as Anonymous Coward. You might be surprised at the backgrounds of many folks in various careers. How they got there is often a convoluted path.

By the way, even though you are an anonymous coward...... Your IP address is 80.43.97.222. You run Mozilla 5.0 as a browser in X11 on Linux. You run Intel hardware. Your ISP is Tiscali UK Limited out of London England. You are in your mid 20s, unemployed though intelligent and you feel just a little disenfranchised.

P.S. The use of yeah? at the end of sentences is common to those in the south of England, and in particular London. Also common in New Zealand. That helped narrow down the IPs associated with hits on the site. There's more, but I've got work to do. :-)

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Aeiri]

Where in the hell did you get that list?

Most of that doesn't even make any sense, like "site"? "the football" (I know what it is, but I just watched THE FOOTBALL game last night, too)? MP5, AK-47, GIGN... I knew Counter-Strike was bad for you but I didn't know it would make the government watch your ass... "INTELLIGENCE"??? "import"? "rain"? "tiger"? "buzzer"? "explicit"?

I know there are a bunch of tinfoil hat freaks on here, but this list is obviously fake... between CS, Splinter Cell, 24, and the Animal Planet, they would have to sift through a lot of information.

Honestly, where did you get this list? Were you really bored one day?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[MyLongNickName]

Admit it: you only know that from the 'In the Navy' video.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[ssimontis]

Come on guys, lets be realistic. It seems like 90% of the discussion regarding this article has been about forming a conspiray theory. We haven't ruled out any other causes, why don't we look at more normal possible causes first?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[computational super]

Why assume it's a *faulty* tap?

Well, generally speaking, if you completely disable the target's ability to communicate when attempting to tap his communications, the odds that you're going to intercept anything go down significantly. That seems to fall under the generally accepted definition of "faulty" to me.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[BWJones]

You might be surprised at how perceptive the Carter administration was regarding technology related to military hardware and acquisitions. For instance, everybody harps on Carter for canceling the B-1 bomber.....but did you know, that he cancelled it because the B-2 stealth bomber was coming on line. Carter approved the B-2 stealth bomber as a direct replacement for the B-1. There is much more as well you might be interested in. Particularly Carters prescience in issues related to the Middle East and their strategic importance.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[hostyle]

The world relies on the internet in a major way, almost to the point where we are dependent on it.

How so? What can't you do without the internet than with?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[HardCase]

They have these things called boats.

Ships.

Now, the Navies they have these people called soliders.

Sailors.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[hostyle]

Get your filthy hands of my precious packets

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[PriceIke]

> ...let's just say the Jimmy Carter is uniquely capable to perform missions vitally important to the war on terror...

Fortunately, due to it being a submarine, the Jimmy Carter's missions will have nothing to do with helicopters.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[denissmith]

The adminstration was also very strong on technological intel ( satellites and other gathering technologies that paid dividends over the long haul), to the point that hawks accused them of denigrating and wasting human sources.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Tassach]

They have these things called boats.

Ships.

Actually, submarines are properly refered to as "boats" -- at least they are by submariners, who are an entirely different breed than surface sailors.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[denissmith]

But it's so much fun to speculate! What amazes me is that an entire Nation has one pipe in and out of the country. Most companies get nervous about a single point of failure like that, but I guess when the resources aren't there you live with a precarious situation.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[KillShill]

and hence you didn't understand my post.

i'm saying that the tin foil hat bullshit is just a retarded and ignorant cover for things that go on all the time that most people don't have a fucking clue about.

it is ROUTINE.

that most people are ignorant about it, doesn't make it about aliens or UFO's or any such crappy related stuff.

so when i see TINFOIL, it has nothing to do with paranoia. it's just as natural as the sun coming up in the morning or birds singing.

people say TINFOIL as if human behavior would absolutely not allow such a condition.

time and time again, assholes routinely do shit like this. it isn't anything even remotely new.

do you understand now? tinfoil is a way of getting people to relate clandestine operations in such a way that to reveal that these situations in fact go on all the time, makes the whistleblower a looney and hence not credible.

it is a psychological attack. it is a way of downplaying illegal events in the public mind such that they do nothing about it and consider the people who relate information about it as kooks, crazy etc.

seeing as how nobody on /. has been anywhere near the bottom of the ocean or near those cables, one cannot discount the possibility.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[jcr]

he cancelled it because the B-2 stealth bomber was coming on line.

And look how cost-effective that was! ;-)

-jcr

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Tassach]

Regardless of what you think about the man's politics or the success (or lack thereof) of his administration, there's no denying that Jimmy Carter is one of the smartest and most well-educated men to occupy the Oval Office in recent memory. Jimmy Carter has a master's degree in Nuclear Physics and used to design nuclear submarines. In contrast, GWB can't even pronounce "Nuclear".

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[jrumney]

The use of yeah? at the end of sentences is common to those in the south of England, and in particular London.

You're doing well so far.

Also common in New Zealand.

Not really, unless they've recently returned from a couple of years in London and it rubbed off on them. Kiwi's are more likely to use "eh" at the end of sentences, like Canadians.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[BWJones]

Stop pretending to be a super spy who just for cover has a shitty post-doc at some lesser US school. I know most Slashdotters have delusions of grandeur, but almost all of them, like yourself, have nothing to back it up. Unfortunately, being able to use whois does not count.

You really have me laughing out loud here. I know its you because I am watching you..... The last time you hit my site you got there from 80.43.109.70.

No, I am not a super spy or pretending to be a super spy. For your information, I am no longer a post-doc, but am a simple research assistant professor, but thanks for reminding me to update my C.V. As far as our institution, the Moran Eye Center, we are one of the largest vision research institutes around. So successful that we are now embarking on completing a second building twice the size of our current one due to the number of researchers and clinicians we have working here now. This is almost unheard of in the vision community, two buildings within a ten year time frame. My work here has revolutionized the study of retinal degenerative diseases and refocused the vision rescue communities work on what is really happening with the biology. I am pretty happy with that and am now applying the same techniques we developed for the study of the retina (based off the remote sensing technologies developed by the NRO (often associated with the CIA) and NASA for satellite imagery) to other systems and the study of metabolomics.

As for my background, I did at one time enlist in the USMC with the idea of flying Harriers, but my vision got just bad enough during organic chemistry that it disqualified me from fast jet status. As an undergraduate, I was recruited by a certain federal TLA, but decided not to take that option on advice from my grandfather who was in fact, in the precursor to the CIA, the OSS. He had other suggestions for me and I went back to school.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

Ebay auctions... :)

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

$ is in there hahaha Carnivore must enjoy reading lots of email each day...or perhaps this list is not as accurate as discerning /.'ers might like...

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[MyLongNickName]

That was because he specified it must be a dual fuel source capable plane -- jet fuel and peanut oil. This was before the ethanol crowd got into power.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[electrichamster]

Oh I agree, I know this shit is day-to-day and as a result I'm mildly paranoid anyway.
I just assumed you didn't understand the "tinfoil hat" thing - apologies :)

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[rmallico]

They also have some pretty active undersea activity (can you say tsunami?)

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Ethanol crowd getting into power?

Is that a nice way of saying drunkards are running things?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[weirdwilly]

I just copied the list and emailed it to everyone in my address book so they could be informed, too. Hang on, there's someone at the door...

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[trelanexiph]

Now, the Navies they have these people called soliders.

Sailors.

you meant... SEALs right? the Sailors are back on board ship sodomizing one another while SEALs and Marines do real work.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[darkonc]

| If governments can bring down other government's internet access, this is a major problem.

They go into the water and cut the large cable feeding the country.

The original tin-hat posting seemed to suggest that this was an accidental result of an unnamed country botching up a tap attempt. If you have the kind of signaling intelligence capabilities that the NSA probably does, you might be able to find some very interesting information about Al Quaida and the likes from such a tap.

On the other hand, bringing down the link while (or in the aftermath of) putting in such a tap, just brings attention to your activities, and might upset your superiors.

There's no real use to the US wilfully cutting Pakistan's link. I can only see India gaining from such an action -- and even then, only if they were about to launch an all-out attack against Pakistan, and I've seen no signs of that happening.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Synbiosis]

"If these things had happened to one of the Bush presidents there would have been a bunch of dead Mullahs lieing around."

And hundreds of thousands of civilians, too. And probably one or two thousand dead US soldiers. Wait, that sounds vaguely familiar..

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Lehk228]

if you are so leet what's my IP address and browser?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[kaladorn]

There's no real use to the US wilfully cutting Pakistan's link. I can only see India gaining from such an action -- and even then, only if they were about to launch an all-out attack against Pakistan, and I've seen no signs of that happening.

Hmmm. I'm not a lodge brother in the Order of the Tinfoil Beanie, but you'd think this would have some relatively severe econcomic impacts. Even short term outages could have effects on business and on international customers and on things like banking and such. Any data loss could have consequences too. And the longer it takes to fix, the more it costs.

Of course, I think this probably has either a benign (accidental) origin or a stupid one. Usually, when left with a choice between conspiracy and stupidity, the safe bet is on stupidity somewhere along the line.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[zaphod110676]

The Bungi is a government mole spreading disinformation to quiet our suspicons. Don't listen to him.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[dedazo]

The briefcase with the nuclear launch codes that is carried by an Air Force Intelligence officer and always accompanies the president of the US is nicknamed "the football". Maybe that's where that comes from.

Since GWB became president it's been called "the hoky pock" however.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Doc Ruby]

Osama hates the Internet, and he lives in Pakistan. You do the math.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[jrumney]

Maybe it depends on dialect, but where I'm from eh is definitely common, and yeah is unheard of eh bro.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[The Bungi]

James Bamford

Someone mod the parent funny.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[obzidian]

Wow...just how much is the US Government/Military going to justify on 'the war against Terror'...and this is just the documented expenditures...

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[javamann]

What do the rest of them do?

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Aeiri]

You do realize that I said "I know what it is", don't you?

Almost every sentence a terrorist would use to plot against this country would include the word "the", but we don't look through every sentence that has that word. I was pointing out that "the football" is too vague of a term, because it would mark the 60-70% of males that watch football in America as terrorists.

Re:Get your tinfoil hats here

[Thundersnatch]

In contrast, GWB can't even pronounce "Nuclear".

Yeah, so he's from Texas. But at least he had better grades at Yale than John Kerry.

Weird...

[toupsie]

Weird, I didn't notice it at all!

Re:Weird...

[StupidHelpDeskGuy]

I wonder what effect this will have on our connection to India, etc. A lot of companies are going to have a very bad day if they have to take down circuits to India to fix the problem in Pakistan. Too bad we'll never know for sure what happened. How'd you like to be the Navy Seal that slashdotted an entire country?

Re:Weird...

[shmlco]

Then again, disruptive and shakey connections to India might just be suitable punishment for those companies that thought it would be smart to outsource all those jobs there...

Re:Weird...

[bheer]

Or maybe those companies knew that India has multiple redundant links: multiple transatlantic and transpacific cables, and satellite. An Indian telco owns FLAG. I doubt they'll lose much sleep over this.

Re:Weird...

[dodobh]

India has multiple fibre optic links. You wouldn't even notice it.

Re:Weird...

[shmlco]

As Paki indicates, however, take out a critical node or cable or two and you throw all of the traffic back onto the other lines... and a good portion of the flag lines are undersea.

I told them to keep the janitor out

[winkydink]

of the closet with the Cisco 2502!

Re:I told them to keep the janitor out

[zackeller]

Yes, I'm sure the entire country of Pakistan uses a Cisco 2500 series.

Re:I told them to keep the janitor out

[winkydink]

I was told the 1700 failed so they upgraded.

Re:I told them to keep the janitor out

[yotto]

No, the entire country of Pakistan *used* one.

Big diff.

Think of it...

[srmalloy]

An entire country Slashdotted...

Re:Think of it...

[geoaxis]

yes ..first time i see PK on /.

Re:Think of it...

[cashman73]

All Your Internets Are Belong To Us.

Well, there goes all MY scam money

[192939495969798999]

I should've known! The emir of Pakistan just wired me 80 billion dollars too... oh well, I'm sure it will still get here once the connection is restored.

That's pretty stupid

[rabtech]

The whole point of the way internet routing works is to allow traffic to route across alternate links when the "best" link goes down.

Having a single pipe feeding an entire country is pretty damn stupid.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[ScentCone]

Having a single pipe feeding an entire country is pretty damn stupid.

Actually, some of their larger users have been routed around to satellite backups, but the load is way, way too much and it pretty much unusable according to TFA.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[eldawg]

Having a single pipe feeding an entire country is pretty damn stupid.

And anyone outsourcing work that requires Internet access to such a country is even stupider.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[Daxx_61]

It raises interesting questions about warfare though... if you can cut a country off from the outside world that easily, then surely that must have some advantage for any invading forces.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[Stonehand]

Not sure about that.

It's probably not going to disrupt internal communications too much, which means that resistance can still be organized.

If you're going around committing atrocities, word might still get out via satellite links or perhaps the cell phone system of a neighboring country, even if there are no land telephony connections over the borders.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[Sentry21]

The whole point of the way internet routing works is to allow traffic to route across alternate links when the "best" link goes down. Having a single pipe feeding an entire country is pretty damn stupid.

Maybe they accidentally cut off both lines.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[rbarreira]

I have opened RSA's site without problems. I live in Portugal.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[DeepRedux]

One of the first English actions in WWI was cutting the German undersea cables. This did not cut off Germany, but it made English interception of German communications much easier. Eventually the British intercepted, and shared with the US, the "Zimmermn Telegraph" in which Germany proposed to help Mexico attack the US. This was one of the reasons the US entered the war.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[gooogle]

Agreed, it is quite stupid and this should be an eye-opener. Pakistan's infrastructure is lagging behind and in desperate need of an upgrade, however, there aren't many options. There is Iran and Afghanistan to the West which are unstable regions and don't seem like viable options. China in the north but would mean running a cable through the northern regions which are highly unstable (although it seems like the next best option) and then there's India to the right which already has a solid IT infrastructure in place and that's who we are currently routed through.

A secondary fibre-optic connection is being planned, also through India.

Some indigenous efforts are also underway but the costs are too high.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[mplex]

That is pretty bad, but sometimes people forget about the physical aspects of running cable too. I once read that all transatlantic cables for North America follow the same path off the shore of New Jersey or somewhere close to that. Just imagine if someone dragged their anchor through that trough. Also, many times people will setup what they think are redundant internet connections from different ISPs, when in reality, they all terminate on the same switch somewhere.

Also, when you think about internet consolidation points such as in LA or Atlanta, pretty much everything within 200 miles goes through the same building or building complex. That makes peering easier, but just imagine if something catostrophic happened.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[h4rm0ny]

I remember my first history teacher discussing with us whether or not the Zimmerman Telegraph was a fake, generated to nudge the American people towards going to war.

He was a good teacher who did his best to equip his young pupils with the paranoia, mistrust and suspicion that we would need to survive in the adult world.

On a related note about the Zimmerman Telegram which the US got so antsy about, the gist of it was that they wanted Mexico to help them if they became at war with the US. It wasn't a declaration of aggression, more one of defensiveness.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[mplex]

Just to give everyone and idea of how many ISPs can connect in a single building, check out this list:

http://www.telx.com/carriers.cfm

I think 60 Hudson is the biggest telco hotel in the world and 56 Marietta is around number 3. If the internet was to lose either of those two buildings, it would be a lot worse than losing Pakistan for sure. Though they are highly redundant:

http://www.telx.com/products.cfm?id=10

Re:That's pretty stupid

[AuMatar]

We did eventually find a copy int he German archives after WWII. Although yes, it always seemed one of the most suspicious causes for a war ever.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you post this if the story is about you being offline? :)

Re:That's pretty stupid

[shmlco]

Cause? No. But perhaps the straw...

Re:That's pretty stupid

[mrjackson2000]

56 Marietta says they havent needed the backup generators in over 8 years. i assume they are deisel generators. diesel has a storage life of no more than 2 years. i hope there is someone that keeps an eye on that stuff.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[gooogle]

Risky yes, but in terms of uptime, two connections through India are more reliable than one (which is down at the moment).

Lahore and Amritrar are quite close to each other, so for short-term expansion this solution seems most feasible.

Re:That's pretty stupid

[SeventyBang]

Having a single pipe feeding an entire country is pretty damn stupid.


How long ago do you think it was that there were some small, single pipes going into some major areas of the world, let alone no pipes?

It's one way to find out who hasn't been on very long (relatively speaking).

;)

Re:That's pretty stupid

[eldawg]

I never made that assertion.

No effect on Stock Market? One could hope.

[dfsiii]

There may be an internal trading system, but how can they say that there would be no effect on the local stock market/trading system?

Pakistan is getting an infusion of capital and interest after being the focus of outsourcing efforts, just like India and China - so if people can't get in via the internet, would that not have a negative impact on their internet?

However, if they fix the cable before the bell rings again in the morning in Karachi, then more props to the Pakistani government for quick action - and see more companies rely on them. Just what we need, right, in this time where the US government doesn't want to give certain countries any leverage in international barganing?

Good thing

[Anne_Nonymous]

Good thing I don't need to do any telephone banking!

For all the Pakistani Geeks and Nerds

[aliens]

We heard your collective screams and offer our prayers. I can only imagine in my nightmares if we lost our internets.

*shudder*

Re:For all the Pakistani Geeks and Nerds

[jaysones]

This is exactly why we have more than one internets.

Re:Dammit

[DrMrLordX]

They're a crabby lot.

whew

[WormholeFiend]

thank god I still have access to Tech Support services in India...

Re:whew

[ScentCone]

thank god I still have access to Tech Support services in India

Actually, according to TFA, they will have to take down one of India's major pipes for a couple of hours in order to fix the power supply problem.

Re:whew

[StupidHelpDeskGuy]

Don't you mean thank Ganesh, or maybe Vishnu?

Re:whew

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to bet on Ganesh to remove this obstacle. Vishnu must not have been looking when Shiva trashed the cable.

Anon to, um, protect my karma...

*ducks, runs away*

Re:whew

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Still, the tech support is as helpful as they ever are..

The stars are right...

[Sabaki]

This is what you get for laying your cable over ancient R'lyeh.

Re:The stars are right...

[alschroeder]

Maybe that's what happened to Osama. Maybe Cthulhu ate him...---Al

Language Barrier

[OctoberSky]

Apparently "Dont put all your eggs in one basket" doesn't translate well.

Re:Language Barrier

[hostyle]

Apparently "American asshole" translates well worldwide.

Outsource This!

[B11]

Methinks some disgruntled IT professionals are behind it.

Look who there neighbors are ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Iran. India. Afghanistan.
They are either enemies with their neighbors or the their neighbors are, for whatever reason, less than trustworthy.
Just one of the cost of living in a tough neighborhood.

Re:Look who there neighbors are ...

[m50d]

Iran's pretty stable, also Muslim, you'd have thought they could route a 'net pipe through there.

Internet crashes in Pakistan

[Worm5er]

Thousands of packets dead!!!

Film at 11...

Not Again...

[__aaclcg7560]

At least, they can't blame the rats this time. I wonder if they have the same provider.

Re:Not Again...

[nettdata]

It wasn't the rats...

It was the sharks... with fricken laser beams...

Apparantly...

[Robotron23]

Apparantly total shutdown of the Internet in Pakistan is common, but the article doesn't mention a timeframe, using the word brief. Its fairly surprising that one of the Indian subcontinents largest nations has just one line to support its Internet connections. In 10, 20, 30 years the amount of outsourced work and IT related industry located there will need a much more dependable connection, not to mention the rising home use.

Furthermore, the article mentions disruption to cities as far afield as Dubai, in India. Heres hoping upgrades in the form of more lines happen as soon as possible.

Re:Apparantly...

[tarp]

Since when is Dubai located in India?
It's in U.A.E.

Re:Apparantly...

[Robotron23]

Sorry, I meant Dubai and India, not Dubai in India.

internal trading system ...

[ignatus]

Pakistan's main bourse was unaffected as it had its own internal trading system.

Pigeons!

Re:internal trading system ...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Pakistan's main bourse was unaffected as it had its own internal trading system. Pigeons!

Mules actually. And they're more than sufficient to carry up to AFA 50,000 in used afghani banknotes on each trip.

Re:internal trading system ...

[cazbar]

Never doubt the power of RFC 1149 or well-aimed droppings may occur.

Re:A lesson?

[Shadow Wrought]

imagine the chaos this will cause in the Western world!

I know. How would we read slashdot during lunch?

So...

[mcho]

...outsourcing is still good, right?

Undersea cable?

[St. Arbirix]

I'm a little curious about why the single point of entry into a nation's internet is through the ocean when the country is bordered on most sides by land. Was it a political decision or economic? I can see it going both ways.

Re:Undersea cable?

[Chris Mattern]

Bit of both. To the east is India. No connections through there thanks to political considerations. To the west is Afghanistan and Iran. No connections through there thanks to economic considerations.

Chris Mattern

Re:Undersea cable?

[sampson7]

Well, I don't really see them as having many choices. They are on-again off-again at war with India. Afghanistan can't keep its lights on, never mind provide internet connections.

Iran? China? Wow. Who other sets of political issues. (See pretty map here.)

Not to mention that a large part of Pakistan's borders are extremely inhospitable mountain regions. The Arabian Sea actually makes sense.

Re:Undersea cable?

[gooogle]

Actually, Pakistan's best political ties are probably with China and I would assume China has good bandwidth capacity which is why that option doesn't sound so bad.

If the cables can be strategically routed through the unstable regions in the north (Gilgit?) with a hub in the capital city of Islamabad it would work out very nicely.

1) The cities in the north are currently linked through Karachi so routing through China would balance the northern and southern parts of Pakistan in terms of capacity and infrastructure.

2) The silicon valley equivalent in Pakistan is in Islamabad so this makes total sense. They could use a direct connection through China and branch out to other regions.

3) At the same time the infrastructure would be very solid in terms of backup and capacity planning: existing cable running through the Arabian Sea, Karachi; One from Lahore to Amritsar, India which is under development; And one through Islamabad into China. It would cover all the three major metropolitan cities.

4) It also makes sense from a defense standpoint since China poses no threat (economic or otherwise) to Pakistan as does India.

WTF?

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

So their only point of connection was through the arabian sea? Maybe this will get them to improve relations with their neighbors so they can get a second link that runs through China or India, maybe Iran. Afghanistan seems like a dry hole for that sort of thing. A single point of failure for the entire country's networking... amazing.

Re:WTF?

[HardCase]

PedanticSpellingTrol (746300)

You spelled "Troll" incorrectly.

Re:WTF?

[PedanticSpellingTrol]

20 character limit + unintentional irony = owned

Really strange.

[NGutman]

Power cuts and connectivity "blackouts" seem to all come from the same source, one power line, one internet cable. I mean why countries relay on just 1-2 cables?. Because of the expenses?, How much did that power failure cost them?.

What's wrong?

[NeoPotato]

I felt a great disturbance in the Internet, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

Reminds me...

[taskforce]

Reminds me of the classic bash.org quote:

Mike doesn't like it when I ban whole countries.
Subnetmasks and ISPs are fine.

The terrorists at it again.

[TioBlack]

Osama Bin Lobster did it!

Re:The terrorists at it again.

[MrPink2U]

Hahahaha. Sorry no mod points. +1 more Funny please.

Reversal of Circumstances?

[MaineCoon]

The rats chewed through the backup!

Civilization...

[Shadow Wrought]

I know that we are becoming mroe dependent on the internet, but I can't help but think that if it dissappeared overnight we ought to some how manage to survive. I mean the human race developed civilizations what, 8,000 years ago? The masses have only been using the internet for a decade, the ubergeeks for two or three. If we are so dependent on it that its failure would lead to such wide spread damage than aren't we pretty much already screwed?

I would think that anything that has become irreplaceable to 8,000 years of progress after only 30 odd years is bound to doom us, regardless of its guise.

Re:Civilization...

[Shadow Wrought]

I guess it depends on how you define Civilization. Maybe "thousands of years" would have been vague enough to be accurate;-)

Re:Civilization...

[EpsCylonB]

Pen, Paper and a telephone, everthing would still get done, just slower.

Re:Civilization...

[rbarreira]

Thanks for that link, surfing from there gave me what may have been my most interesting reads on wikipedia ever :)

Some interesting articles I read in the process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singula rity

Re:Civilization...

[Shadow Wrought]

Those are both very cool. My personal theory about the singularity is that progress, technological or otherwise, can only move forward so far before the pull of those left behind pulls it back. In essence, I think we are far more likely to enter the second "Dark Ages" than to jump into hyperspace. Not that I'm not pulling for the hyperspace option;-)

No landlines?

[m50d]

Does Pakistan really only have one link to the Internet, and an undersea one at that? I can understand there wouldn't be links to India, or perhaps China, but aren't there reasonably friendly countries to the west? Heck, can't someone lay a fiber cable (one of the 10km ones) to another country for the moment?

Re:No landlines?

[Chris Mattern]

> aren't there reasonably friendly countries to the west?

To the west are Iran and Afghanistan. Not exactly the most wired of countries.

Chris Mattern

Re:No landlines?

[Darth_brooks]

You try running a land line through here

Pakistan isn't exactly known for having hospitable terrain. Or being well developed in outlying areas. Packets can route around "damage" only if there's actually a route there to use. The infrastructure just isn't there. Hell, according to the factbook, 40% of the "highways" aren't paved. I'd wager that high speed data lines aren't exactly a high priority.

As for links through China...the Chinese don't seem to like having their own citizens using their links to the net, let alone another country. And there's the little problem of trying to run a landline through the same mountain range that K2 calls home.

Re:No landlines?

[sheepoo]

Pakistan isn't exactly known for having hospitable terrain.

Have you been there? Or are you just believing the same media which hyped up the Iraq war?

Re:No landlines?

[HardCase]

Pakistan isn't exactly known for having hospitable terrain.

Have you been there? Or are you just believing the same media which hyped up the Iraq war?

You mean that the rugged terrain and nearly impassable mountain peaks are a media fabrication? That damned National Geographic and their lying maps anyway. I'll bet that K2 is just a little hump of a hill.

Re:No landlines?

[sheepoo]

Kindly tell us the EXACT figure for the area which is covered by the rugged terrians and nearly impassable mountains ?

Re:No landlines?

[m50d]

No, but you'd have thought they'd have some connectivity, at least enough for a slow backup line.

Re:No landlines?

[Chris Mattern]

No, not really. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth and is having to cope with a continuing Taliban insurgency on top of that. Iran is a theocracy that has ideological problems with being connected to the rest of the world. I'm not sure either nation has *any* real net connectivity aside from isolated satellite uplinks (which are actually not terribly uncommon among wealthier Iranians, but not something you can build a trunk networking line out of, particularly when they're technically illegal).

Chris Mattern

well, you can kiss off

[pair-a-noyd]

Road Runner (TW) tech support now..

In other news

[kc0re]

"...Internet Attacks from the Middle East seemed to grind to a halt today..."

Re:In other news

[geoff43230]

Yeah! ; I tried heading over to www.weaponsofmassdestruction.com , and nothing was even found ;)

Re:In Other news

[djh101010]

(posting anonymously)

Don't look now, halo8, but you forgot to click the "post anonymously" button...

Cut to scene

[AtariAmarok]

Cut to scene of Gilligan walking out to the lagoon the morning after a huge storm. He sees end of an undersea cable washed up on the beach.

Not long afterwards, the Professor has managed to build a contraption out of bamboo and coconut fibers, connected into the wires and terminating into a speaker made of palm-leaves. The castaways hear out of it: "Osama? Osama? Why don't you call anymore? After that night in Tora Bora, you said you would never forsake me!". After a while, the castaways grow tired of it. The Professor than proceeds to connect his bamboo internet terminal to some of the wires, hoping to pick up dial-up modem traffic. The messages soon come across, printing on dried banana-peels: "Please help me. I am on desert island. Help me to leave, and I will give you $30,000,000. All you have to do is send me $10,000.".

Everyone turns to look at Thurston Howell the Third. Lovey hits him on the shoulder. "And I thought you were doing daytrading! Shame on you, Thurston!".

Re:Cut to scene

[Thrakkerzog]

You have it all wrong. The network interface would only be able to receive data. Coconuts only go so far, you know.

Colombia and Ecuador

[Micah]

This has happened before. Last November, a boat dropped an anchor, breaking the underseas cable that feeds Colombia with Internet. Colombia feeds Ecuador (and maybe Venezuela, not sure on that one). So most ISPs in Colombia and Ecuador were out of service for about 24 hours.

I live in Ecuador and would have been pretty ticked. Fortunately, I was vacationing in Peru at the time, happily accessing the Net from cybercafes on Lake Titicaca. :)

Re:Colombia and Ecuador

[HardCase]

Did you just say "Titi.." ? That would be a fine lake !!

Except for the "caca".

Indeed, we have no more Internet

[MonkeyCookie]

I'm currently in Pakistan, and I have to say that not having any Internet really sucks.

How am I going to read Slashdot now?

Re:Indeed, we have no more Internet

[supe]

packet radio would be my guess.

Re:Indeed, we have no more Internet

[Ingolfke]

My friend, it is good to see that you too have found a way to connect to the outside world while our Internet connection is down.
--
This message brought to you by the good people at Practical Modern Solutions, the only IP over Camelback (IPoC) solution provider in the Islamabad area. Our service is only exceeded by our latency.

wait, Pakistan?

[JVert]

Damnit! I was trying to cut the India line but it was all jibber this jabber that and being underwater didn't help my vision.

Re:wait, Pakistan?

[EpsCylonB]

"Oh no not the green one, anyone but the green one"

This happened to the wrong country

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if this happened to Nigeria...

According to CNN, a power supply problem on an undersea cable has severed all outside Internet connectivity to Nigeria. Many businesses have been seriously impacted. Repairs will involve some disruption to access from other countries, and are tentatively scheduled for overnight." From the article: "'IT"S A WORSE CASE SCENARIO, NO MORE WIRE TRANSFERS' said BIBI LUCKY, A SENIOR BANKER SEEKING TO TRANSFER MONEY. An official at the Lagos stock exchange said Nigeria's main main mail server was unable to send hundreds of mails queued to be sent to the outside world.

Re:A lesson?

[skarphace]

>I know. How would we read slashdot during lunch?

Durning Lunch? Then what do you do during the rest of the day?

Re:Dammit

[m50d]

You wouldn't have thought they could hold a backhoe with them claws

Re:MSN Support? Hello? *Nudge*

[DroopyStonx]

MSN support? You were on the phone with... *MSN* support?

*ahem*

'scuse me?

I think I speak for all of slashdot when I say: please leave and never come back... ever. ;)

Adwords clicks drops by 90%

[Anonymous Coward]

Adwords clicks have dropped by 90%. Suddenly clickthrough vs purchase ratios are up 500%.

Appropriate Quote

[Jck_Strw]

"I felt a great disturbance in the Internet, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

Apologies to Obi-Wan.

Re:Dammit

[h4rm0ny]

Hold on a second - how hard would it be for Al Quaeda to send down a diver with a charge? You'd need some diving equipment and a boat with some sonar. Diving to depth is a skilled task, but so is flying a plane.

And it would be a target that cost billions of dollars without any loss of life. That would really be targeting the interests of US power-brokers.

Does the US have any major undersea pipes?

Re:A lesson?

[ArsonSmith]

"during lunch?"

You read slashdot during lunch? You should be out eating something and getting away from the office. Save the slashdot reading for when you're suppose to be working.

What would happen

[bigberk]

If North America or Europe lost most of its internet one day? Can the economy survive without IP?

Re:What would happen

[gellenburg]

According to Hollywood, no.

Re:Science needs to find a cure for stupid.

[GecKo213]

Prior to this Incident.
Proudly admiring their work setting up the Pakistany Internet Infrastructure.

Guy1: "Don't you think we should have more than one pipe into the country?"

Guy2: "Nah, there's not enough people using the internet over here, and besides, what's going to happen here!?"

Guy1: "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Not too much later... *Cowering in the shadows*

Guy2: "Ummm, how far do you think we can get before anyone relizes what happened?

Slashdotters Screwed Up

[Hoi Polloi]

The Slashdot crowd finally went through with their threats and went after outsourcing. Only problem is that they got the wrong cable.

Joking aside, what would it mean if most connectivity to a large company's outsourced IT force was suddenly cut off? Does it look like such a great idea after all?

But what's the effect on zombie networks?

[0star]

And in another related story, the amount of zombie infections and attacks dropped dramatically worldwide as well!

Re:No effect on Stock Market? One could hope.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

There may be an internal trading system, but how can they say that there would be no effect on the local stock market/trading system?

The local stock/trading system can be found downtown Karashi. Just go to the the third street seller in the market and ask for Ali.

Details

[gooogle]

It is caused by a break in the SME-3 cable, in the Arabian sea, some 35 km south of Karachi. The problem started out on Monday morning [ reported on a local slashdot-style forum http://tech.one.com.pk/?q=node/87 ]

The repair operation is complex and might take up to two weeks possibly causing disruption in India and UAE as well, who are also connected by the same cable.

SME-3 is Pakistan's primary pipe to the internet and the only backup is through satellite uplink which is providing service to some high ISPs at 10% of regular bandwidth. Call centres are surely going through a real tough time and their business will probably be impacted adversly by this.

Re:Details

[chowells]

backup is through satellite uplink which is providing service to some high ISPs at 10% of regular bandwidth

Great, now we can slashdot an entire country.

Aquaman

[greenskyx]

Damn, where is Aquaman when you need him?

Re:Aquaman

[NardofDoom]

Aqualad just had an interview on /. Maybe you could ask him for help.

I thought something was wrong...

[canfirman]

I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if a million DSL connections cried out and then were silenced.

In Other news

[halo8]

In Other compleatly non-coincidence news software Giant XXX started to hire 5,000 more developers today.

(posting anonymously)
((work for software giant XXX))
(((I like my job, please dont fire me)))

That explains it.

[vegetablespork]

*** Osama has been left the channel #h8usa. Disconnected.

Underwater death-starfish attacks?

[Andy Gardner]

I feel a great disturbance in the Internet. As if millions of Pakistani nerds cried out in terror, and were suddenly silienced.

Internet to Pakistan

[TimeTraveler1884]

Internet to Pakistan

Did anyone else at first think the Internet was trying to speak to Pakistan? "Internet to Pakistan: Microsoft called, they want their OS back."

Underwater Cables

[wembley]

Now that we know what the underwater cable is for, will someone in Pakistan please tell me what's in that damned hatch?

Technical Pigeon Packet Details

[WebHostingGuy]

Pigeon Packet Transfer Protocol

Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol

Pictures from the worlds first rfc 1149 implementation.

Whomever is responsible for this.....

[cttforsale]

is a very very bad man...

One cable?

[kvn]

We don't need no stinkin' backup! What could possibly happen to our

Well..

[tinkerton]

I'd fake it :)

but ... actually all Pakistani newssites I think of right now are online.

Maybe they're not based in Pakistan but can anyone actually confirm that all Pakistan is offline? Or almost?

This sucks...

[h2d2]

Two years ago I noted in my blog about how Pakistan's entire bandwidth is depended on this one undersea connection (SMW3) and how 'little' it is when compared to what ordinary consumers have in the developed world.

Since then, Pakistan has leased a Hughes HGS-3 satellite and using it for various purposes, including telecommunications. Apparently now, all internet traffic is going through that and other satellite links... and from what I can tell even the country's biggest ISP Brain.NET (known for it's of the same name) site is taking forever to load. (Damn 6 second lags!)

Obviously, this is bad for the country's outsourcing ambitions, especially with a recent this sector due to rising costs in Bangalore.

Smells like bureaucracy

[KriKit]

Ouch, no redundancy! In my experience there's always some local law in place - made by people that don't understand the net - that makes situations like this crop up. Perhaps they want to monitor what their people are doing on the internet. Having one pipeline makes that easy.

A Whole Country Can Function on One Line?

[megarich]

Nevermind that when the line goes down your screwed big time as is the case here but how in the world can you function on one line normally? Wouldn't the bandwidth of a country be too great for one line to handle? Hell we had to expand to 3 t-one lines in my office because we were hogging too much bandwith with 2 lines, an office of 70 people.

I know that they use fiber or what not but can the cable really handle all that bandwidth? Maybe this incident did the people a favor. "Yay, my page downloads in less then a second now with an error than the 30 minutes it took before!"

Re:A Whole Country Can Function on One Line?

[NerveGas]

Nevermind that when the line goes down your screwed big time as is the case here but how in the world can you function on one line normally? Wouldn't the bandwidth of a country be too great for one line to handle? Hell we had to expand to 3 t-one lines in my office because we were hogging too much bandwith with 2 lines, an office of 70 people.

What you don't realize is that your three t1 lines were only discreet lines from a box out on the side of the street into your building. At that box, they were simply channels on a larger line.

I know that they use fiber or what not but can the cable really handle all that bandwidth?

Well, an OC192 can carry 10 gbps. That's an awful lot of bandwidth. Besides, it probably wasn't one single fiber - you don't go to all of the expense of laying an undersea cable with just *one* fiber in it.

steve

list of newspapers

[tinkerton]

List of online newspapers.

Re:Dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the US have any major undersea pipes?

No. All our high-speed internet links to Europe and Asia are done with carrier pigeons.

I smell a rat

[kurt555gs]

Let's see, Bush's poll numbers are in the dirt, he has to go on TV tonight and spew more of the same , we need to keep going in Iraq forever to support Halliburton.

What if the powers that be though that catching Bin Laden today before he goes on TV would be great, and if so we need to cut off Pakistan to control the news.

hmmmmmm

Bull?

[pinkocommie]

A significant percentage of the access is through satellite linkups. The dominant state run telco (monopoly?) Paktel has a receiver farm setup on the outskirts of Karachi (near the airport for ppl in the area). As well as links offered through various other ISP's. Yes a significant portion may be dead because of fiber disruption but no way could it be anywhere near 'all'. Also for those talking about redundancy submarine cables are an expensive proposition especially for third world countries. From my experience in Pakistan they heavily oversubscribe before actually having enough capital to expand capacity.

This sucks...

[h2d2]

Two years ago I noted in my blog about how Pakistan's entire bandwidth is depended on this one undersea connection (SMW3) and how 'little' it is when compared to what ordinary consumers have in the developed world.

Since then, Pakistan has leased a Hughes HGS-3 satellite and using it for various purposes, including telecommunications. Apparently now, all internet traffic is going through that and other satellite links... and from what I can tell even the country's biggest ISP Brain.NET (known for it's founders' famous DOS virus of the same name) site is taking forever to load. (Damn 6 second lags!)

Obviously, this is bad for the country's outsourcing ambitions, especially with a recent spike in interest in this sector due to rising costs in Bangalore.

Repost due to errors in original. Damn no edit rule!

Re:So that explains it!

[ghoul]

mod the parent up. Hilarious!!!

Too much outsourcing

[pjdepasq]

I have it on good authority that the real cause was due to the high volume of jobs being sucked overseas and the amount of code being squeezed off shore.

OMG

[Celt]

Porn is scattered all around the crash site...

A strange disturbance in the force

[KlomDark]

As if millions of PakMen screamed out and then were suddenly silenced...

Many businesses have been seriously impacted...

[JustNiz]

> Many businesses have been seriously impacted...

Especially the ones selling Pen1s enlarg3m3nt products as their spam servers are now inaccessible.

...duh

[comzen]

"...In my country, Internet goes down on you!"

Pakistan = NEXT INVASION?

[thecaramelsensation]

I'm going to be a paranoid American... and go out on a limb with this quick mathmatical equation. (destruction of Pakistan's telecommunications infrastructure) x (2 NSA operatives) + 1 Presidental Address in 4 hours EST = Invasion? Just a thought....

Heres what I've found

[bryz]

I was thinking the same thing earlier today.

Seeing how we think Osama might be in that country. And seeing how we have submarines with undersea cable tapping capabilities.

Note that the article about there being too much data was in 2001. Moore's Law might have allowed us to compute this amount of data by now.

Oops...

[gwayne]

Sorry about that. I unplugged a cable that I thought led to an empty wall. Let me put it back...brb!

Why not satellite?

[furry_wookie]

Couldn't you use a couple of say 54Mbit channels on a SAT link for backup/redunancy?

How can they be "off the Internet?"

[pclminion]

Surely the network continues to function within the country, no? Basically, it sounds like the entire country has a single upstream connection to the 'net, and that got severed. Well, I work in an office with a TCP/IP based LAN, and if our uplink goes down, we can still use the LAN. Not everything grinds to a halt.

So maybe it isn't really accurate to say that they are off the Internet -- it's just that the number of hosts they are able to reach has been greatly reduced. Surely this shouldn't cripple domestic uses of the Internet, only international ones... (No more so than a broken uplink at the office interferes with me reaching the local file server.)

Re:How can they be "off the Internet?"

[Nate Eldredge]

Matter of definition, I guess. Consider the graph G of all TCP/IP hosts, with edges between pairs which are able to reach each other. Perhaps you consider "the Internet" to be the entire graph G. I think most people would disagree: one or two hosts only able to talk among themselves are not "on the Internet" in any reasonable sense. Under normal conditions G has a single connected component H which is much bigger than all others; I would say that H is "the Internet". This is still the case at the moment; the Internet in Pakistan is a small subgraph of the Internet as a whole. So I think it is reasonable to only consider those hosts remaning in the largest component to be the Internet, and then Pakistan is not in that component.

Re:How can they be "off the Internet?"

[pclminion]

Yeah, I spent some time pondering it, too. If you cut the graph exactly in half, what reason would there be for one half to be more or less "the Internet" as the other? And if you can't reasonably say that one or the other is "the Internet," then where is the Internet?

Wow!

[wjsteele]

Ok... now that's what I call a /.ing!

Bill

hmmm where did .PK go?

[mnmn]

In the earlier days of the Internet in Pakistan, say 1996, the connection cost Rs70 per hour. In fact the first connection was from Paknet, the govt ISP.

Their connection was like a BBS system, where you'd dial into a BBS, and see the Linux 1.3.x kernel. You'd get a curses menu and seleced lynx to browse the net.

You could also select another option after which you could close the telnet window and use IE or netscape 3.0 through ppp.

Turns out, they were using a gigantic NAT, whereby everyone in Pakistan was channeled through a single IP address. Everyone knew that IP address, which was blocked by many IRC servers like the Dalnet. The customers must've been less than 65535 to fit at any time I imagine.

You'd have to try dialling MANY times to get a connection. At one time, we crossed the 100th attempt to dial to read a single email.

And boy was hotmail slow.

In the telnet menu, you could also drop yourself into a shell, which was my first brush with UNIX. All we knew was ls and cd (dont know how we learnt those, possibly from trial and error). We copied /etc/passwd, which was plaintext and humungous. The passwords were a simple MD5 hashes and didnt take more than a cracking script with words like 'pakistan' 'sex' 'fuck' 'god' 'allah' 'cricket' and common names like Ali to produce a significant list of passwords.

Now why would you run a whole country on a Linux server with kernel 1.3.x with bad security? It is amazing that even in beta, Linux held up well enough to run the country of Pakistan's internet connection. After all who could afford a cisco over there? Or even multiple IP addresses?

Here in Canada, businesses are commonly provided with 64 IP address blocks by Bell and Telus, even if they really need one.

Osama wanted to stop all the news media

[WillAffleckUW]

from covering his press conference.

That's why the Internet connections are down. He was way too many fans now. He needs his rest.

Re:MSN Support? Hello? *Nudge*

[whitehatlurker]

I just phone them up to ask stupid questions

I'm guessing here, but I'm not sure they'd be able to separate that from their normal phone traffic.

File Sharing

[johndierks]

They figured it would be much easier to slip under the RIAA's radar if they cut their pipe on the outside and allowed for internal file sharing. In other news, the RIAA has opened its first Karachi branch.

Re:No, Iran is the next invasion target

[ByrneArena]

Yeah... right.

some hosted offshore?

[Fishstick]

this

http://www.islamabad.net/offsites.htm

shows urls for "Pakistani Official Websites"

I clicked on a couple and was surprised a couple were still accessible. Particularly, the Ministry of Finace page.

why pakistan? couldn't this have been Nigeria?

[cashman73]

Just imagine if the internet cables leading to Nigeria had been cut. The rest of the world would probably not be quite so eager to restore them,... we'd get a bit of peace and quite from all those damned 401 emails! :-)

If Nigeria requested our assistance in restoring the cables, send back a reply charging them $200,000,000,000, in cold hard cash, packed into several suitcases. :-)

Undersea crab robots?

[infonography]

The North Koreans are using them to battle the Lobstermen of the Fabled lost city of Atlanta. Sometimes they have scirmishes with Japanese Squidbots. Likely somebody just tripped on the cable. I do it all the time in my apt.

If I am gonna break my tin foil hat out of it's hermeticly sealed container I am gonna use if for something serious.

Spam?

[Cigamit]

I haven't noticed a drop in Spam, so most of it must not originate from there. How about we shutdown the rest of the countries one at a time, to try to pin point the problem?

Uh huh

[sharp-bang]

With keywords like "a" and "the", this list would return close to 100% of all data communications. Obviously BS.

TAE Cable system from Iran to Islamabad, Kabul

[billstewart]

There's been a proposal to extend the TAE Trans-Asia-Europe Silk Road cable system from Tehran across northern Pakistan to Islamabad, and from there over to Kabul. The newest documents I could find in Google were from about 2002, and while much of central Asia appears to be connected, I couldn't tell if the Pakistan parts had been completed or not. Also, it's up north, while Karachi is down south and gets the SMW-3 (aka SEA-ME-WE-III) cable, which is the one that's down.

Of course, when you've got telecom monopolies, that seriously degrades your ability to get competitive diverse services, which degrades your ability to create a market that encourages more people to build connectivity. India has theoretically liberalized, but VSNL still seems to have a strong hold on most of the major cable landings, which has been a problem, since there's lots of fiber passing nearby on FLAG, SMW3, etc, and lots of terrestrial fiber to connect it to, if you could just get the stuff up the beach onto dry land without some bureaucrat trying to prevent competition. (Too many US politicians whine about outsourcing - they should only imagine what would have happened if India's telecoms had been liberalized five years earlier and caught more of the 1990s boom.)

secondary wireless link

[a11]

maybe they should have a country-wide set of satellite links? not quite enough to provide the same qos, but at least some kind of a route to take.

Re:Dammit

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Diving to depth is a skilled task, but so is flying a plane.

I'm gonna assume this is a 9/11 reference.
Flying a plane is trivial. Landing a plane is a skilled task. Hell, taking off is pretty tough too, but the 9/11 hijackers didn't even have to do that. They simply took over the controls of an already-flying craft, and manipulated the stick and throttle controls.

The *mountains* are the tough neighbors

[billstewart]

There's been a global cooperative telecom project called TAE for a number of years, which has built fiber networks across much of central Asia, including connecting up to Tehran and other parts of Iran and the whole mess of troubled countries around the Caspian Sea and geographically difficult areas like northwest China. There have been proposals to extend it across northern Pakistan and then to Kabul, but I couldn't find anything newer than 2002 so I don't know if it's being built yet.

But basically if they can run an oil pipeline along many of these regions, they can drag a fiber optic cable along with it; dealing with local telecom bureaucrats is often tougher than installing the cable system across the mountains.

There's some work going on connecting northern Pakistan with nearby parts of India, which is politically significant, just as restarting the bus line was.

Crashed??

[xander2032]

Um... The Internet crashed?? LOL

These people at CNN really need to get one of those education things! The Internet did NOT "crash". There's just been a disruption in service due to the loss of an undersea cable. That's not a crash, it's a bloody disruption!

The headline should be: Internet access disrupted in Pakistan

Submarine cable landings are pretty diverse

[billstewart]

While many of the transatlantic cable systems are near each other, and some of them do share cable heads landing sites, there's also a lot of diversity, put in there specifically to prevent single events from taking out redundant systems all at once, and they're designed in self-repairing rings and meshes for most networks. The Pacific and Caribbean cable systems are pretty much the same way - it takes a lot of time and money to get diversity, and it's done because otherwise you can lose all your connectivity too easily. In India, there are at least three major cable landing locations, and systems like SMW-3 and FLAG use at least two of them, with land and water connections between the landings, to avoid getting disconnected. But Pakistan only has one spur off of SMW-3, and there are other small countries with similar problems along the Persian Gulf.

That doesn't mean you can't have multiple failures that take out redundant systems - about a year ago, there were multiple cable cuts on different sides of Singapore that killed parts of some of the cable systems, so carriers who only used one cable consortium were in trouble for a couple of weeks. Similarly, there was an earthquake in the Mediterranean a couple of years ago that took out parts of half a dozen cable systems, and it took a long time to get them all fixed.

Land-based internet peering points in the US do have the possibility of things going wrong - but that's why any respectably large ISP has physically diverse connections into their important buildings, and access rings using those connections that can restore around failures, and big ISPs peer with each other at multiple locations. There are occasionally geographically entertaining problems, like that railroad tunnel near Baltimore that caught fire a few years back, taking out the circuits from several major ISPs - railroad right-of-way is a very popular way to route long-haul fiber, and often carries multiple long-haul providers as well as local telcos. Fortunately, my employer's network didn't use that tunnel, but we had sufficient diversity in that area that cutting one of our cables would have minimal impact (we design everything with that objective, but there are places like crossing the Rockies where you sometimes have to go a long ways to get an alternate route.

I work at Electric Boat in Groton...

[Gadgetfreak]

I'm quite sure the capable boats aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

At least not before I'm done with it.

Re:Mods? Troll? wth?

[CapnGrunge]

My money is on these: they must have watched too much Beavis & Butthead and know nothing about Americas geography.

Duncan Campbell, Expert, Disagrees With You!

[mr_luc]

http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_play_stream.html?st ream_id=423

"ECHELON and the Insecurity Industry"

You can grab it with StreamRipper (as the download link appears to be broken, even via ftp), and listen to your heart's content. I'll spare you the details, but at one point he mentions how the USS Jimmy Carter has been overhauled -- at MASSIVE expense -- to have a bigger "ocean interface", which means (as it has in the past) that, in addition to the incredibly rare rescue scenarios, they still believe that tapping undersea cables is a viable technique.

Since almost everything important is running on fiber nowadays, and the old cables are going the way of the dodo, the obvious conclusion of security industry observers (and of Sy Hersh, recently and notably) is that the big players in the sigint/commint community can tap undersea fiber.

This is not make-believe! It's not bull, or exaggeration. It's widely known and accepted within the intelligence community (including the community of intel watchdogs).

Generally, the US *does* tap endpoints (and the countries that it shares intel with, like Britain and Australia and New Zealand, all help), and there are really only a couple of cables of interest in the Mediterranean, but in Asia and the Middle East, there are a lot of places that the US does not have end-point access to via the ISPs.

Contrary to popular belief, it is far less risky for the US to tap an undersea cable than to do so covertly on land in a country like Pakistan (or to secure THAT level of intel cooperation with their government; they're cooperative in some ways, but not THAT cooperative).

Pakistan Goes Down

[trelanexiph]

did anyone parse this as the title to one of those cheesy ethnic porn flic's or was that just me?

NSA Screws Up Another Cable Tap?

[raphae]

This sounds exactly like another screwup by the NSA to do a tap of a major trunk line. In case you don't know about this, read here for more information about this crap.
(http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529826.html?le gacy=zdnn)

And it was not too long ago that connections to France went down, supposedly from a "problem" with an undersea cable too.

Re:NSA Screws Up Another Cable Tap?

[rbarreira]

Geez, I never thought that they had the money or the nerve to do this (I'm so naive...). Not that it amazes me too much, but you see what I mean.

I wouldn't be happy to know that my taxpayer money was being spent on this, if my country did this kind of shit.

Re:Dammit

[d474]

"Does the US have any major undersea pipes?"

Oh, just a few more than Pakistan. See for yourself.

interesting effect

[mike3k]

That probably explains why I got a bit less spam than usual today.

Re:Dammit

[Omnieiunium]

And it would be a target that cost billions of dollars without any loss of life

Think of all the geeks and nerds... PLEASE THINK OF THEM!

Submariners...

[kaladorn]

Actually, submarines are properly refered to as "boats" -- at least they are by submariners, who are an entirely different breed than surface sailors.

Yes, they are that. Submariners are insane. (*VBG!*)

Too much alike? :)

[kaladorn]

Not really, unless they've recently returned from a couple of years in London and it rubbed off on them. Kiwi's are more likely to use "eh" at the end of sentences, like Canadians.

Next thing you know, you'll be telling me Kiwis have taken a fancy to Tim Horton's Donuts, Maple Syrup, Beaver Tails (the pastry delicacy, for those who think I'm talking about an actual appendage from an actual beaver which I'm not), and Ice Hockey....

I mean, then you'd be like Canada (vast and interesting geography, fun-loving and relatively peaceful folk, brew some good beer, neighbours that sometimes make you wince but whom you depend on for defence, etc.) except with a nicer climate.

Careful, you might find your immigration figures from what would then be called "Northern Canada" go waaaay up.... (*grin*)

Re:seriously

[JustOK]

We all come out of our igloos and look around. And the polar bears start looking cute. Also, since we're bilangual, if teh internet don't work, we use la internetez.

And the good news is...

[sweetnjguy29]

I was wondering why I hadn't been hit on my any pakistani perverts today while in chat rooms....

Submariners are *NOT* insane.

[KMSelf]

They're in boats.

Stirred, not shaken...

[Shome]

and James Bond doesn't really order shaken martinis.

Stirred, not shaken...

Strange coincidences

[Zoxed]

What I noticed was the timing of 2 stories as they broke. I have now gone back to see what time they appeared on the BBC news website:

1) GMT 14:20 Pakistan rape acquittals rejected

2) GMT 14:34 Pakistan internet woes hit firms

Guess it was another of those strange coincidences !!

Re:Submariners are *NOT* insane.

[kaladorn]

Unless, of course, they are Canadian. Then they're in obsolete, leaky, British cast-off boats. And perhaps, in big trouble....