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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.
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
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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!
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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...
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A satellite has limited and expensive bandwidth and high latency. It's cheaper and faster to use fiber. The public also thinks their phone calls go over coper wire, when almost the entire telephone system was converted to packet switched internet years ago.
F'ing cruise ships have that... you'd think the island could afford ONE satlink. Just for emergencies.
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I dunno about you, but for me no internet means I cannot do my job.
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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.
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.
You are funny, most jobs on that island do not depend on "cloud services" at all. I realize many marketing wanks think their BS buzzword phrase is critical to civilization, but the real world operates differently.