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Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East
You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.
I remember last time a cable cut was reported they said Iran was offline that time as well. I'm not so sure Iran is really offline now either. I have been clicking into the websites of various Iranian universities and all of the ones I've checked so far are up, although some are kind of slow. While I guess it's possible some of them are hosting their main websites offshore, I doubt all of them are. Unfortunately, the routers here block outgoing traceroute for some dumb reason, so I can't verify for sure, but it seems like Iran is not as offline as we might think.
Iran has shown a connection of 0 for the past week or so. That doesn't mean a cable was cut does it? Just means that you cannot ping that one router. Last time I checked Iran had more than 1 router.
Also look at this.
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/namerica.htm
Does that mean Florida is offline? No it just means you cannot communicate with one of their routers.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Whether the cables are being cut by ship anchors, Navy Seals or lasersharks, there are slower alternate routes. In a pinch most Gulf-region ISPs can route the other way, through Asia, under the Pacific Ocean to America. Obviously that degrades connection quality. Backup routes were contracted after the tsunami damaged so many of the undersea cables at once.
The BBC has a decent article on the issue, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7228315.stm
The cables (at least two of them) are owned by http://www.flagtelecom.com/, they have updates on repairs on their news page and a nice map of the cables. Their Gulf-region cables are described as a "Self healing Gulf loop, providing maximum design capacity of 1.28 Tbps. Initial launch capacity 50 Gbps.
Four fibre pair route linking the Gulf to Egypt and India. Design capacity of 2.56 Tbps, with initial launch at 90 Gbps.
Approx. length 10,300 km."
The Iran Institute of Science and Technology ( http://www.iust.ac.ir/ ) is online, and their servers are physically in Iran, but a traceroute from Roadrunner in New York, NY shows traffic going the wrong way around the world.
Tracing route to www.iust.ac.ir [194.225.228.25]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 194.225.228.25
2 8 ms 9 ms 11 ms 10.39.192.1
3 12 ms 8 ms 7 ms gig-4-3-nycmnyg-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.98.109]
4 8 ms 9 ms 8 ms pos-3-2-nycmnya-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.130.129]
5 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms tenge-3-0-0-nwrknjmd-rtr.nyc.rr.com [24.29.119.106]
6 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 4.79.188.37
7 23 ms 18 ms 17 ms ae-32-54.ebr2.Newark1.Level3.net [4.68.99.126]
8 29 ms 18 ms 14 ms ae-4.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.101]
9 20 ms 16 ms 19 ms ae-92-92.csw4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.158]
10 14 ms 18 ms 13 ms ae-94-94.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.189]
11 89 ms 91 ms 89 ms ae-4.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.132.81]
12 84 ms * 84 ms ae-93-93.csw4.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.69.137.46]
13 84 ms 81 ms 86 ms ae-4-99.edge3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.68.20.201]
14 84 ms 85 ms 83 ms SINGAPORE-T.edge3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net [4.78.195.202]
15 118 ms 84 ms 83 ms ge-7-1-0-0.laxow-cr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.183.81]
16 85 ms 274 ms 84 ms ge-4-1-0-0.laxow-cr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.183.90]
17 276 ms 265 ms 282 ms so-3-0-1-0.sngc3-cr2.ix.singtel.com [203.208.149.185]
18 338 ms 253 ms 269 ms ge-0-0-0-0.sngtp-dr1.ix.singtel.com [203.208.149.78]
19 254 ms 272 ms 264 ms GigabitEthernet1-1-1.sngtp-ar4.ix.singtel.com [203.208.183.114]
20 284 ms 287 ms 303 ms 203.208.192.226
21 298 ms 286 ms 290 ms 217.218.155.201
22 301 ms 299 ms 292 ms 217.218.163.252
23 328 ms 319 ms 292 ms 194.225.239.254
24 298 ms 294 ms 303 ms 194.225.228.25
Trace complete.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
The word you were searching for is "intact". It's one word, not two.
And I'm sure that it is. They are also not offline, as my buddy with a plain home connection is still chatting with me, so they obviously aren't feeling too hurt by it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
And Israel's beef with Asia is?
And India, who is on pretty decent terms with Israel...I mean Israel wants the data lines cut why?
I'd give more respect to aliens planning an Independence Day attack credence than some of the bologne on Slashdot comments at the moment.
As several people here have pointed out, Iran is not disconnected from the Internet. Users in Iran have been able to connect to the internet without any atypical problem... this rumor has been swirling about for a few days. I manage a Persian-language website with many readers in Iran, so I have both the motivation and the resources to check into this... we've seen no decrease in traffic from within Iran. I've also been able to find no source for this that doesn't trace back to the Internet Traffic Report, which as other has pointed out has a somewhat inexact methodology. This is the second time this has been mentioned in Slashdot, and everytime it is posted, it gives me a heart-attack... there might be a need to post a correction or at the very least to stop asserting that Iran has no connectivity without better confirmation.
... Step 3: Have everyone ping Iranian servers to death to prove story wrong ...
;-)
Heh. I read that while having a few traceroutes running in other windows, testing times to a few sites in Iran. All of them do pretty well from here (Boston) as far as the sites in New York, Amsterdam, and Turkey, with ping times mostly under 200 ms. Then the packets go to numbered machines without DNS addresses, and the ping times jump to over 500 ms. I'd thought that this was probably a sign of satellite hops, but now I wonder. Maybe it's just that we've slashdotted all the routers. Ya think?
The government site at www.iran.ir doesn't repond to pings, but it does respond on port 80 in the usual manner. It is sorta slow, but firefox doesn't time it out.
I don't read Farsi, so I can't tell much about what it says. There are some familiar faces at the upper left, though.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"Our government claims it wants democracy and freedom for others, but doesn't seem to value that too much here at home either."
There, fixed that for you..
which is totally what she said
Iran is an Islamic Republic, meaning its government is half democratic and half unelected asshats.
Iran WAS a democracy, until the CIA and the British military intelligence organized a coup and replaced their democracy with a subservient monarchy.You can't take the sky from me...
José Padilla. Glad to be of service.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Iran had a perfectly fine, democratically elected leader in the person of Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953.
He had the outrecuidance to nationalize the oil industry, so the CIA fomented a coup against him and put the Shah in charge. The US then supported this asshole for close to 30 years, until iranians revolted in 1979.
The revolution didn't end so swell, the mullahs took the helm eventually. But the country wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the sick US meddling. Sure, that was back in 1953, but the pattern continued in other countries over the world in the 55 years that followed. So yeah, the US is responsible, and the dumbass in chief you still have for 11 more months is apparently hell-bent on meddling still some more with Iran.