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Cuba Turns On Submarine Internet Cable
angry tapir writes "A change in Internet traffic patterns over the past week suggests that Cuba may have turned on a fiber-optic submarine cable that links it to the global Internet via Venezuela. Routing analyst firm Renesys noticed that the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica began routing Internet traffic to Cuba's state telecommunications company, Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA). The Internet traffic is flowing with significantly lower latencies than before, indicating the connection is not solely using the three satellite providers that Cuba has relied on in the past for connectivity."
I guess it's time for a Cuba Libre. Cheers.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
To finally have internet access on their submarines must be a godsend. I wonder how they avoid getting the cable tangled as the maneuver though.
Just ask them if it is active. Don't speculate. They have no reason to hide it, and every reason to boast that their internet connections just got better.
The author seems to have mistaken Cuba for North Korea.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Use this as a chance to end the embargo against Cuba. It has been 50 years, let's move on. If we can now trade with Burma and Vietnam, then why the hell should be still be fucking with Cuba?
You don't 'turn on' a cable.
you've never had your cable turned on?
"Las" is plural. I think you meant "La revolución".
The most interesting thing which the summary skipped over is from the Renesys article which states that apparently Cuba is only using the new fibre cable for downstream traffic and that upstream traffic is still going out via their satellite links.
Fair enough; still a LOT better than what you typically experience in Cuba.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Or get them from Canada. Or Mexico. Or any of your neighbours who don't have a ridiculous embargo against Cuba. :)
First they turn on their capitalist landowners and now they have turned on their Submarine Internet Cable! Don't you know what's good for you, Cuba?
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
I'm not sure what or how much difference this cable will make for the immediate future.
Cuba is a really interesting enigma. The Cuban government (and some misinformed Americans) likes to blame the U.S. embargo on Cuba's woes, being poor with little hope of advancement. But, the reality is that ALL of Cuba's woes are the failure of the Cuban government.
Sure, the U.S. and some of its allies own't (aren't allowed) to trade with Cuba, but the vast majority of the world can and will trade with Cuba. A few actually do trade. Countries like Canada, the E.U., Japan, Australia, Russia, India, China, most Latin American countries... They all willingly trade with Cuba. But, they require Cuba to pay them for goods and that is where Cuba suffers. Due to mismanagement by the Cuban government and their ideology, they have never had a strong enough economy nor enough money to buy the things that they need or should have as a modern country.
We are always shown the crumbling buildings and the 1950s era cars on the streets of Havana. But, there are a fair few brand new Peugots, Renaults, Toyotas and more driving around on Cuba's roads. But, they are all being driven by the extremely wealthy, government officials or tourists. There are fabulous opulent and modern resorts in Cuba. There are citizens with expensive yachts around Havana. The media never shows this and the Cuban government keeps it on the DL so that the local population doesn't get upset about it, but its all there.
Recently, there have been reports of food shortages in Cuba. Why? Cuba is a Caribbean island that is extremely fertile. They could, and in the past have been able to feed themselves. Once upon a time Cuba exported food, as well as other resources. Sure, the U.S. market isn't open to them, but all the rest of the world is. Yet they fail so miserably that they are now struggling to feed the populace? That's gross mismanagement. That's Fidel's fault. Raul may or may not be turning to a better course, but for the past 50 years, the management has been the cause of Cuba's problems.
All of Cuba's woes are caused by their government's poor management and failed ideology.
You don't 'turn on' a cable. How about 'start using'?
Try harder
Layer 1 - plug the damn thing in, "interface wtf0 enter no shut enter". Remove the testing loopback plugs, hopefully from each end. Unplug the OTDR and plug in the GBIC. Whatever.
Layer 2 - is kinda implementation dependent.
Layer 3 - "router bgp wtf enter neighbor wtf remote-as wtf" or if its already up, change your AS path regexes or route-maps to actually allow traffic to flow. Or change your prepending so instead of prepending your AS 50 times to force all traffic off the fiber, prepend 50 times to force all traffic off the satellite unless the fiber is down. 50 is a wee bit excessive of course.
I'm sure there's some collection of "humorous stupid networking tricks" out there, like if in a fit of insanity you're redistributing RIPv1 into BGP you could have some random internal machine start announcing your networks, or you could "down" a AS by intentionally flapping the interface using some automated process and then getting it route dampened and then activating the link means stopping the automated screwing it up process. It'll probably take more stupid networking tricks to get a +5 funny mod but I'm trying...
No in the biz I don't think "turn on" or "start using" was common terminology.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Apropos of nothing, but I always find it a bit ironic that supposedly free US citizens are barred by their own government from travelling to Cuba and can get into a lot of trouble for doing so.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"You don't 'turn on' a cable"
No, but you can trip over it
I have done that many times, I must tidy up my office.
BTW the rest of the world welcomes Cuba to the 20th century
Oddly enough, a lot of ISP's in North America actually monitor the traffic flowing to/from embargoed or troubled nations. Not necessarily deep inspection, but they do count the source/destination IP addresses and record the daily volumes.
Now, we need to consider traffic flowing out of Venezuela as another route to Cuba. It's fairly important if you peer with Telefonica directly, or if your job is to monitor this stuff.
To all of you who think Cuba is "modernizing" on its own, I remind you that Venezuela is sending over 100,000 barrels of oil on a daily basis which the Castros sell to other countries at current market prices. Venezuela became, for Cuba, what the USSR used to be. This is why many venezuelans think that their (our) country is being controlled politically by the Castros in Chavez' absence so that Cuba never loses that lifeline that, if it were to be gone tomorrow, it will send their country to another "periodo especial"
I went to a resort in Cayo Coco last year. The resort was nice and modern. Took a day trip into Ciego de Avila and it was a different story. The center of the city looks fine but you go a few blocks out of the way and it goes downhill pretty fast. In general everything looked pretty run down, especially on the drive in.
I didn't see as many 1950's cars as I thought I would. I saw plenty of small motor bikes, horses, bikes, etc. Saw newer cars at the resort but don't recall seeing many in the city. I'm sure it would have stood out.
In general it appeared that the vast majority of people lived in or close to poverty. That was reinforced by the many talks we had with Hotel staff and our tour guides. But who knows,they could have been playing us for tips. ;) They generally seem to be a very happy bunch of people tho.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."