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How One Clumsy Ship Caused A Major Net Outtage

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the just-redial-the-modem dept.

Ant writes "Here is an interesting world map of various Internet connections, showing how it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions."

4 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. 3rd cable cut by vivekg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So far they found 3 cable cuts. According to this BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/technology/7222536.stm - A third submarine internet cable is severed in the Middle East, compounding global net problems.

    --
    The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
    1. Re:3rd cable cut by Skreems · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How reliable is that site? Because it also claims that Colombia and part of Germany are completely absent from the internet...

      --
      Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
      The Urban Hippie
  2. Should be: How bad network design... by ZWithaPGGB · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Caused by politics and telco monopolies created a network without redundancy. A combination of the infeasibility, due to the political situation, of overland links through the middle east and central Asia, and the hidebound Indian telco not providing sufficient redundancy in connections out of the country, never mind the total misallocation of resources inside it, are the cause of this. TCP/IP is specifically designed to recover from link outages, if it doesn't, you've got an improperly designed and/or operated (statically, as opposed to dynamically, routed) network.

    Good news for US and European IT workers though: that buffoon who offshored your jobs has to explain why the IT department has been down for a few days. I guarantee the CEO/CFO is not amused that he can't get to SAP, or that the stores can't upload, or that whatever other mission critical system is off-line isn't working.

  3. Re:Now, I am not talking about nuclear attacks... by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Insightful

    True, but that ignores the economic reality, and a few more factors.
    1. We're talking about (relatively) poor countries, so the budget for massively redundant infrastructure simply isn't there.
    2. Cables across land are easy when the region you go through is politically stable. It's another matter when there's a war going on. For example, Egypt shares borders with Sudan, and a cable going West from Egypt would cross Algeria.
    3. Cables across hundreds of km of undeveloped desert aren't cheap to install or maintain. It's much easier along existing infrastructure, but even then it's an expensive business.
    4. Items 1 and 3 combined mean that you'll get a few high-capacity links instead of multiple smaller-capacity links.
    5. The telecom tradition of 100% uptime is typical of first-world countries. In Africa, people tend to be more accepting of the occasional outage. See #1.

    Also, how much redundancy is enough? Currently, Egypt has 3 major links (FLAG, SEA-ME-WE 3 and SEA-ME-WE 4) to Europe, and 3 (the same cables) to Asia. They're all separated, so a single incident would take out (ballpark) 1/6 of their bandwidth. Severing 3 cables in one week falls under 'shit happens', IMO.