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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."
Russian subs used to employ a cutting device on some of their submarines designed to cut the cables used in undersea sonar nets... I'm thinking it wouldn't take too much to start a war these days given how much we rely on these underwater communication cables. That said, it's more likely that a ship's anchor snagged it.
There is simply too much glass..
in the same way that you have two sets of everything "just in case." we have a hard time convincing telcos that they should upgrade just to handle the traffic they have as it is never mind if anything went wrong. [think comcast or AT&T] to them anything that isn't directly doing something [ie not a backup] is costing them cash that would otherwise go into padding their pockets.
If this can happen to the Middle East, it can happen to Russia.
This is final proof that Russia can be cut off from "the internet".
Now about that Storm bot net....
Cutting cables merely temporarily deprives your opponent of his ability to use that cable. Far better to tap the cable and monitor everything that's being sent across it without your opponent knowing that you're listening in. It also has the added bonus that cable traffic is not typically encrypted as radio transmissions are.
how odd. It is so strange to see a story like this not tagged as "whatcouldpossiblygowrong".
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
Will probably cause further re-evaluation of the Business Process Outsourcing model. And this time a more serious concern. The bloom first goes off BPO where you realize the logistical and cultural hurdles of dealing with a supplier/'partner' very far off-shore. This however is more crucial, because if you can always tell yourself that the BPO partner 'will get better' with time, but a lack of connectivity is like a lack of oxygen. Infrastructure re-evaluations are much more difficult to handle or weasel your way out of.
Filmo The Klown
Too sensationalist, tone it down will ya? Schools are STILL teaching real math and real science, despite all you doomsday theorists out there. This is especially true at the university level, where education is as good as it's always been.
You pick one example of a '60s era tech that has survived the ages, and conveniently forget the many thousands of inventions that never made it this far, and never made it long enough for us to even REMEMBER. Then you conveniently ignore all of the genius inventions being put forth today and focus on some crappy examples, kudos.
The US is suffering from lack of funding in basic research, but seriously, your "proof" is weak sauce.
That is not TCP, but rather BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). TCP handles data transmission and congestion control. It doesn't do routing.
Would you pay 2 time the price to prevent a one-day outage once every year ? Military does. Consumers don't. Yet.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Internet split into two independent networks due to broken cable
Europe and America cut from the internet
That's what I thought. This probably isn't a case of "Middle East Loses Internet", more a case of "Millions in Middle East Now Using One Fibre Connection Instead Of Two".
Like when a major motorway gets closed due to an accident, and every road within a hundred mile radius is choked for the rest of the day.
You haven't spent any time working for the US military in South West Asia, have you? I can't expand on this further, mainly because I'd really annoy a lot of "important" people by doing so, and I am a loyal servant of the American Empire.
There's no redundancy because people do not demand it. Why is it that military communications don't ever fail like this? Simple, because the customer understands the importance of fault-free operation and is willing to pay for it.
Sometimes this is the case. But you also get the likes of soldiers borrowing phones from journalists because they work better than military radios.