Slashdot Mirror
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."
isn't this why we are supposed to have system redundancy? so a failure in one area won't cause a complete blackout?
isn't this why we are supposed to have system redundancy? so a failure in one area won't cause a complete blackout?
-I only code in BASIC.-
..if you read this as "Millions in Middle Earth Lose Internet"
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..
all i could think was "The fools! if only they'd built her with 6001 hulls! when will they ever learn!"
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.
so shouldnt they be cutt off from the global network, but still have a working 'web' of their own ?
They must have their own servers, anything going into that cable is just a 'foreign' request.
Those are important - sure, but i would gather they dont make up more then 40% of all requests.
But only some of the routes should be down, and they still should have a very large lan, with dns, www, email and anything else they have on the spot, and im willing to bet that the ISP's there have stuff like that.
IIRC the web wasnt just designed to be foolproof, it was also designed to be autonomus once disconected from other networks.
Or am i missing something here, and all that they have is cables, no other infrastructure ?
That is not TCP, but rather BGP (Border Gateway Protocol). TCP handles data transmission and congestion control. It doesn't do routing.
I guess now would be the time to say it, then.
Deep breath, Rie.
*inhale*
I think the Danish cartoon controversy was really overblown.
Guess TCP was able route the packets through alternate gateways after detecting the problem.
1. TCP has nothing to do with routing packets. 2. IP also has nothing to do with selecting an "alternate gateway" after "detecting a problem". 3. If it was down for an hour, then I don't think this was anything to do with magical routing protocols. Human interaction was required to either repair the broken link or set up an alternate path.
According to the article:
Reports suggested that the lack of alternative routes for internet traffic meant only a small proportion of surfers were managing to get online. Egyptian officials said that around 70% of the country's online traffic was being blocked, while officials in Mumbai said that more than half of India's internet capacity had been erased, which could have potentially disastrous consequences for the country's burgeoning hi-tech industry."There has been a 50% to 60% cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Charia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India told Reuters.
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.
Mind you, the article then comes out with this astonishing "fact":
The shutdown highlighted the often frail nature of international communications: despite the vast number of individuals who have access to the web, nearly all internet traffic is routed through a small number of cables submerged deep below the oceans. It is then forwarded through an internet backbone consisting of just 13 servers which handle and direct all online requests.Is this the new version of the Majestik 12 that run the world?
I'm guessing this is a reference to [A-M].root-servers.net, but I'm pretty sure none of those are actually a single server, and several have multiple physical locations. Even so, the vast majority of even remotely popular sites will have their nameserver entries cached at a bazillion ISP DNS caches.
A lot more information is available from the Renesys Blog.
It was both the Flag Telecom and SEA-ME-WEA 4 cables outside of Alexandria, Egypt. The SEA-ME-WEA 3 cable is apparently OK.
In long distance telecommunications, you really need another path going "the other way around" to be safe. For example, many of the large companies with back-offices in India pay for routes both over the Atlantic to the Middle East to India (which might have been broken by this) and also West Coast to Pacific to Singapore to India (which would not have been).
At AmericaFree.TV, the steady Egyptian audience went to zero yesterday, presumably because of the break, while the audience in Iran, Iraq, the GCC, Pakistan and India did not seem to be affected.
A communications' disruption can mean only one thi... Oh never mind, that movie sucked.
I think it's the SEA-ME-WE4 cable.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
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...
Seriously given the magnitude of this, /. could have come up with a more factual and informative writeup.
/snip/
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.
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.
Since we have lotsa redundant connections here.
Lucky us!
hemi
Every night I back up the internet to my RAID array to protect myself from this and similar eventualities.
Obviously there's a hole in the tube so all the data has leaked out and the water has leaked in. The data, being lighter than water, will have floated to the top and evaporated away. Once the tube has filled with water, the incoming data is unable to push the water out of the way.
First they need to blow some air down the tube and inspect the tube for bubbles, then put a patch over it. Once that is done, they'll need to drain all of the water out of the tube, possibly just by blowing air down it some more. Finally, they will be able to allow data to flow again. The first few gigabytes are probably going to come through a bit damp, but after that it should be fine.
... by the fact that news.bbc.co.uk is asking for comments from anyone affected. Paraplegics, take one step forward...