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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. Send Them a Bill by Detritus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They should follow the example of the telephone company. Find the owners of the ships and send them a bill for the repair costs. That will get their attention.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  2. Now, I am not talking about nuclear attacks... by iamacat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But the Internet has become too centralized for even basic self-healing envisioned by TCP/IP researchers. Egypt is not an island and should have had many smaller capacity links to it's neighbors as well as satellite connections run by different companies. Every ISP and phone company in the world should have an agreement to provide emergency routing outside the usual patterns.

    I was hoping the news would be "cable cut, millions of surfers notice a slowdown in streaming video".

  3. "Tha facts have come out:" by cicho · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article has this to say on the cause of the damage:

    "According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday."

    According to whose reports? Published where? What was the name of the ship? How was it discovered that it caused all the damage? Is the same ship also responsible for the third cable cut, which did not occur in the Mediterranean, and later than Wednesday?

    This what you refer to as "facts". I sure hope you intended sarcasm.

    --
    "Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
  4. Re:Huh by cheater512 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Look at Australia for the moment.
    We have one line going from Brisbane to Hawaii and another from Sydney to New Zealand.
    They are both part of the same network.

    A few years back one of the cables got cut while the other was under maintenance.
    All our internet was routed through the two western cables.

    Do you realize how slow it was?
    Dialup was severely affected and if you got 1kbps you were very lucky.
    Thats just for a small 20million person country back in the day when everyone didn't have net.

    Fast forward to today with high speed broadband and about 90 million people affected.
    Yes data will be re-routed but it will probably be faster to snail mail Google asking for your search query.