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Undersea Cable Break Disrupts Life In Northern Mariana Islands
An anonymous reader writes: The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands experienced a devastating undersea cable break on Wednesday, with phone, Internet, SMS, banking services, the National Weather Service office, and airliners all being affected. The US territory depends on a single undersea fiber optic connection with Guam for its connectivity to the outside world (except for a backup microwave link, which was itself damaged during a recent storm). While services are in the process of being restored, this may be a prime example of the need for reliable backup systems in our "always connected" mindset.
Here I was thinking this was about some adverse effect of electricity+salt water on the ecosystem surrounding the islands, but no, it's about people being unable to stream porn until it's fixed.
This is the definition of 'first-world problems'.
No one is behind this. There was a typhoon and then a series of storms.
To put this into perspective there are around 50k people living on the island and its link runs through difficult terrain. It is about 100km from Guam itself hence why it could use a microwave backup. Honestly this is about as surprising as a small country town getting cut off by a back hoe hitting their cable.
I think it's a prime example of why choosing to live on a remote island served by only one cable and one fragile microwave link is just part of the bargain when you choose to live on a remote island. The whole "having more backups" thing is actually pretty well covered in most continental locations.
/. these days, is getting a periodic, hands-off lurching scroll/navigation to the top of the page while either writing or passively reading? I have been too lazy to figure out which script/object is offending. But it's astoundingly obnoxious.
BTW, is it just me? Am I the only one that, while using Chrome to view
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's interesting how Joe Q. Public continues to think that their data and voice zips around the globe via satellites, when in reality the vast majority moves on our terrestrial networks.
Just last week I overheard someone commenting on how their text messages were going via satellite.
Pretty much any Engineer who works in Reliability and Maintenance has known this for years... Redundancy is king. In fact, the redundancy is usually there to allow you to do the maintenance.
Been reading Cryptonomicon? :p
The US territory depends on a single undersea fiber optic connection with Guam
There's the problem. No redundancy at all. How were they planning to take things down for maintenance? You need redundancy!
Always read at -1, don't let others decide what you should and should not read.
Start countdown to baby boom in 9 months.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's hard to believe that there is not a single VSAT connection available or even a HAM radio with someone running Linux and broadcasting/receiving packets. Weather data would be my first concern. I wonder how many of the elders remember how to navigate and read the weather the old fashioned way?
this may be a prime example of the need for reliable backup systems in our "always connected" mindset.
Or it may be a prime example how helpless many systems are with even a small break in connectivity, and point to a strong need for all systems to be built with robust (or any!) offline modes...
Airlines being affected for example is bullshit - the schedules for example are all known months ahead of time. That the systems had not cached everything needed for a few weeks at least verges on criminal. Incoming planes can carry USB sticks with updated manifests and other data...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's 50k people. They probably planned to say - guys the internet is going to be slow running over the microwave link for the next 5 hours.
F'ing cruise ships have that... you'd think the island could afford ONE satlink. Just for emergencies.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I was thinking of the Mariana islands as a 'close enough' for me stop-gap. Crap. There must be some other Micronesian territory left that didn't get suckered into independence.
The Chinese tourists just want to go gambling on Tinian. They are also ill-prepared for an unconnected visit.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Why the hell would China deliberately sabotage a foreign cable in order to knock 50,000 islanders off the 'net? That's like opening yourself up for actual diplomatic reprisals for 0 gain.
Now if you claimed they broke it by accident dredging for sand to build their their little island thing, maybe.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
When you live in the boonies, you learn to make do without all of the benefits of civilized society from time to time.
They could always have set up additional backup links via satellite, a secondary microwave link, etc. They chose not to invest the money. Now they suffer the consequences.
They've no one to blame but themselves. It's not a "conspiracy" as some have claimed. It's just bad luck.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Mariana Islands official here,
I have just put a redundancy plan in the todo list.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I know there is a chance you are just an idiot, but I really can't help but notice that these type of postings happen pretty frequently recently. This makes about the 4000th or 5000th idiotic posting in recent memories.
Really can't help but wonder if these aren't idiots so much as they are distractions while they are spliced into further down the line.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It isn't the number of people but the importance to those people, individually and as a group, that matters. Is it just a matter of inconvenience or does the outage cause economic hardship? If so, how much. How often might it happen? The outcome of that risk analysis will determine if a third link is cost effective. But since we're talking about a government here, a strict cost-analysis isn't enough. The politician will ask, "Might the next outage get me thrown out of office?"
There are occasional clusters of cuts that seem a little curious; but single undersea cables getting knocked out now and again is just a fact of life. My understanding is that the people who specialize in laying and repairing undersea cable are more or less constantly moving from job to job. The only real story is that the fiber went down before the microwave link had been repaired. Given that you can get 100km out of a wifi link(with distinctly non-stock antennas, and potentially some small-but-FCC-unapproved increase in transmission power), it sounds like they should consider some backups that they can bring back into service more quickly.
But the cable wasn't the only system that was cut. They also had a redundant microwave link that the same storm damaged. Run the storm event again and you will probably find that 1 of those 2 systems remains up. In this case however it didn't.
Have a look at the coast around these islands. The coast is shallow and has a large amount of reefs. Surface storms of any size WILL impact things on the sea bed at that depth. Not to mention that the cables have to cross the shore at some point meaning they will be in very shallow water at each end.
Why the hell would China deliberately sabotage a foreign cable in order to knock 50,000 islanders off the 'net? That's like opening yourself up for actual diplomatic reprisals for 0 gain.
Now if you claimed they broke it by accident dredging for sand to build their their little island thing, maybe.
These islands are very strategically important to the naval control of the Pacific Ocean. There is a reason that the US has military bases there. There is also a reason that the Japanese took these islands by force during WWII. There are reasons to knock out communication on these islands, but they all involve conventional warfare with the hope that disruption to normal communication and air traffic would prevent the US from being able to prevent a change in the status quo in the Western Pacific. Obviously, this is not a likely scenario at this point in time.
Which may or may not be relevant. Since we do not know that the two events were not caused by common point of failure (i.e. the fiber backbone and microwave system were powered by the same system, etc) then we can't know the likelihood of it happening again, and again, and again. That's what the risk analysis is for. Perhaps a third option really is the cheapest way forward.
From a political point of view, this can be leveraged into something a little more significant. Consider
http://www2.ntia.doc.gov/grant...
They were granted $8M to improve their backbone. Perhaps a decent politician can now leverage this outage into $16M.
What, they just have the things draped across the beach? I would have thought they'd bury it once it got somewhat close to shore...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The Marianas are volcanic islands on top of tall peaks above the deepest part of the ocean. The depth goes from miles to feet in a relatively short time. When a storm passes, the storm surge has to compress to pass through the island chain gaps. This would cause havoc with anything laid between them.
It is about 100km from Guam itself hence why it could use a microwave backup.
For a single hop 100km line-of-sight radio path that just skims the sea in the middle of the path, the antennas would have to be 150m tall on both ends (or some combination of appropriate heights). Those are mighty tall towers, which might explain the storm damage. If you want to clear 80% of the 1st Fresnel zone, you'd need an additional 33m at the middle of the path.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And before someone mentions it, the link is not necessarily single-hop:
Guam-based Pacific Telecom Inc says a backup microwave link, connecting Guam, Rota, Tinian and Saipan, has now restored emergency services.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Good job the highest point in Guam is 407m above sea level and the highest point in the Northern Mariana islands is 965m above sea level, and that is before we build any structures to hold the antenna.
Good point - I'm used to flat Caribbean islands, not mountainous Pacific Islands.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
100 km is about 60 miles as I recall. I did not realize that wifi could go that far within the specs of the access points being made. I suppose a directional, perhaps a flat plain, antenna and what not assuming power increases are allowed would get this working but I would worry about jitter and lag. Anyhow, I realized that I do not know something (this is not new and I am not at all ashamed to admit it) about Guam...
I have never been to Guam. I searched for FCC and Guam and a few other search terms and clicked about a dozen links. One thing I could not find was if Guam, and other US territories, are actually obligated to FCC regulations. My understanding is that not all regulations are forced on the territories and that territories are able to have some flexibility in some areas. Do FCC regulations apply with radio transmission power in unlicensed spectra in Guam? I was under the impression that a ham license was not needed in the US territories - though I could easily be mistaken. I am not sure where I heard this but I am sure that I never bothered verifying it when someone mentioned it in the past.
Other than expense, with the ubiquity and importance of internet access, I wonder why they do not have a tertiary backup? It seems logical to maintain a semi-hot facility that has a second microwave transmission tower or to even suck up the expense of a new cable or even just a satellite system that can be brought online to maintain a connection.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
FWIW, the Japanese did not take the northern Marianas in WWII. They did take Guam, but started with the rest of the Marianas under League of Nations mandate.
In WWII, they were strategically significant as part of the Japanese last-ditch perimeter, which is why the USN defeated the Japanese Navy soundly in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. They were also an excellent platform for B-29 raids on Japan, the B-29 having exceptional range for the time. It isn't clear that either of these reasons would still apply.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actually we do know that they weren't caused by the same event. In the article it points out that the microwave link was knocked out by a previous storm event and the cable was severed prior to completing repairs on the microwave system. The microwave system succumbed to physical damage from storm debris.
Usually a channel is dug and the cable is laid in a conduit for the beach crossing. But that only goes a certain distance out and it is about the most expensive part of the cable lay. Even assuming they trenched 100m out that could easily be less than 4m of water over the cable and well inside the depth that a large storm would influence.