Millions in Middle East Lose Internet

Shipwack writes "Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections. The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online. Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with Egypt's communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe."

Comments

Anchor

[Kelson]

That said, it's more likely that a ship's anchor snagged it. The Guardian article doesn't speculate, but an earlier Register article suggested that was the cause:

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

Re:redundancy

[KDR_11k]

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

Re:SEA-ME-WE 3?

[locofungus]

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

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

[tomalpha]

So it sounds like not every ISP was able to use the alternate path, and the alternate path didn't have sufficient bandwidth for those that could, anyway I work for a large financial news company. We've had guys up all night whose sole purpose was to persuade the various telcos we lease circuits from that our's should be the one's they re-route first. They must have been pretty persuasive because we're almost back up to normal running now, but it took them a lot longer than an hour.

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

CORRECTION: Two undersea cables not one

[cheeni]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Response Conjecture

[CastrTroy]

Here's a quick undersea cable map for anyone who's looking.