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Fourth Undersea Cable Taken Offline In Less Than a Week

Posted by Zonk on from the bad-week-to-be-a-backbone-cable dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Another undersea cable was taken offline on Friday, this one connecting Qatar and UAE. 'The [outage] caused major problems for internet users in Qatar over the weekend, but Qtel's loss of capacity has been kept below 40% thanks to what the telecom said was a large number of alternative routes for transmission. It is not yet clear how badly telecom and internet services have been affected in the UAE.' In related news it's been confirmed that the two cables near Egypt were not cut by ship anchors." Update: 02/04 07:13 GMT by Z : A commenter notes that despite the language in the article indicated a break or malfunction, the cable wasn't cut. It was taken offline due to power issues.

4 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. The cable was not cut - Bad summary, bad! by AchiIIe · · Score: 5, Informative

    RTFA: The cable was not cut, it was taken offline due to power problems.

    > the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship's anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be the case in the other three incidents.

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    Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
    1. Re:The cable was not cut - Bad summary, bad! by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Informative

      RTFA: The cable was not cut, it was taken offline due to power problems.

      Back-atcha. The article states that the cable may be offline due to power problem, not that it was taken offline. A rather significant difference. If you don't mind, I'm going to privately freak a bit until we find out who or what caused all these outages. If it's just incompetence, I'll be a happy panda. (Not to mention rolling my eyes at the all-to-common situation.) If it's more than just that...

      Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action. The fourth? The fourth is a testament to the Internet's ability to withstand damage. Even if it is the coincidence out of the bunch, that doesn't preclude enemy action. Quite the contrary, I'm afraid. :-/
      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Order of Battle by AtomicSnarl · · Score: 5, Informative

    From Sun Tzu (IIRC):

    1. Attack the plan - Futility
    2. Attack the alliances - Division
    3. Attack the resources - Frustration
    4. Attack the army in the field - Attrition
    5. Attack the cities - Destruction

    The costs increase with each step, which is why the cities are last. Good, proactive intellegence and operatives can prevent things from happening. If not, they can foul things up so they can't happen. Communications is a resource, so it looks like step 3 is on the table.

    --
    Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
  3. Re:[Citation Needed] --NT by fohat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's the link that was on reddit.com on Friday regarding this info:
    http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=JES20080202&articleId=7980

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    Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus