Slashdot Mirror
Zimbabwe's Internet Went Down for About Five Hours. The Culprit Was Reportedly a Tractor. (slate.com)
Zimbabweans lost internet access en masse on Tuesday when a tractor reportedly cut through key fiber-optic cables in South Africa and another internet provider experienced simultaneous issues with its primary internet conduits. From a report: The outage began shortly before noon local time and persisted for more than five hours, affecting not only citizens' day-to-day internet usage but businesses that rely upon web access. And while five internet-free hours might sound unfathomable to those of us accustomed to having the web constantly at our fingertips, large-scale internet outages -- from inadvertent lapses caused by ship anchors to government-calculated blackouts designed to showcase political power -- do happen, and maybe more frequently than you'd thought. According to local news sources, a tractor in South Africa damaged cables belonging to Liquid Telecom, which has an 81.5 percent market share of Zimbabwe's international-equipped internet bandwidth as of the second quarter of 2017 and leases capacity to other internet providers. In a bad coincidence, city council employees in Kuwadzana, a suburb of Zimbabwe's capitol city of Harare, cut an additional TelOne cable around the same time. (According to NewsDay Zimbabwe, it was an accident. The company blamed "faults that occurred on our main links through South Africa and Botswana" in a statement.)
Any details on why a tractor would have been able to cut through what should have been buried in a concrete trench? I thought the rule was that the more vulnerable and possible to be interfered with by humans, the more armoring and protection a fiber cable would have.
For example, near shore, a cable is deeply buried and clad with multiple layers of steel pipe, then gradually far offshore it becomes a lesser and lesser diameter rubber shielded cable.
That a tractor could cut through accidentally sounds like poor cable protection to begin with.
>> five internet-free hours might sound unfathomable to those of us accustomed to having the web constantly at our fingertips
I've been working with large datacenters for about twenty years now. One of the most terrifying things we can hear is that a truck with a backhoe has just pulled up down the street. And I've seen more "oops, they accidentally dug up all our redundant links" (because they were concentrated at point X) more times than I can count. So yes, it happens, and that large cable that you may see from time to time lying right on the ground (near a hole) is really some poor business's lifeline to the Internet.
I believe this is what is known as "Backhoe Fade."
A farmer in Michigan took out the internet with a backhoe for several hours. His farm is on the I-94 corridor and he accidentally cut through Merit's backbone connection. It made being the LMS administrator for a college with 500+ online courses a lot of fun. Phone rings: "Hi, I can't connect to my online classes!"
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Tow it to the shop Mr. Sulu.
It's obvious that a John Deere tractor detected someone trying to load new firmware onto it from an online source and merely acted to protect itself.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Wth dude? I've never seen a 419 come from Zim. They generally come from Nigeria, which is over 6000km from Zim. I guess you are one of these ignorant Americans who have never had a geography lesson in your life?
These types of issues are common, especially in the midwest of the US. However, it shouldn't have caused an outage. I see in the article that they're not sure why redundant links didn't work.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
What? Much of this country has Comcast, so more than five total hours of outages happen nearly every week.
Once is an accident. Twice in a short time frame is a coincidence. Twice in a short time frame shortly after a dramatic change in government is a very suspicious coincidence.
You think his minions have any loyalty? That's not how that works. 'Succession' is one of the key flaws in dictatorship.
They _never_ cared about the old man or his bitch. They are now fighting for control themselves.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It seems like not that long ago when I was in support, call volume spiked, and we found out later that somebody backhoed a huge portion of the US network. MAE East used to go down all the time. This is just normal growing pains in a developing network. It can still happen to "mature" networks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Goodness, what a narrow view of what matters. And the relative populations.
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Well, seriously....how could pretty much anything there have a real, direct effect that I could perceive on my life?
Life is short, I tend to only bother directing my attention and efforts to things, people and places that affect my life and lifestyle.
Why waste time on things that don't affect me?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And yet here you are posting on Slashdot, from a modern computer full of African conflict minerals in its screen and battery. Maybe having a chocolatey snack while you're at it. Speaking of computers, guess where they go when they're scrapped?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Whenever you go hiking way out in the woods, always be sure to carry a length of fiber along with you, in case you get lost. This way when the backhoe operator arrives to dig it up, you just follow him home.
I regard that view as very sad.
Why are you at /. if you only care what's on sale now in your budget range, and science and tech over the horizon is of no interest? Or where many of the the world's potential and actual pandemics flare up? Or where many people will be displaced from as climate change bites, some of whom will arrive in your backyard almost inevitably?
Never mind simply being humane.
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Who said I don't have interest in science and tech? That has nothing to do with what I've stated so far.
And I realize that I have a short amount of time and limited resources....so, I pretty much *only* concentrate on my immediate surroundings, family and friends where I can make an actual meaningful impact with said limited time, attention and physical resources.
Doing what I said will fill up most normal peoples' day....so, with my plate already full with myself and those in my immediate circle, why would I bother wasting already limited time and resources on a place on earth that again...has little to no real impact on my life and those in my life?
I don't actively wish anyone else (with few exceptions) on earth ill will, but I really also don't have time to waste giving them much attention either.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I give up.
Backhoe Fade
You think his minions have any loyalty? That's not how that works. 'Succession' is one of the key flaws in dictatorship.
They _never_ cared about the old man or his bitch. They are now fighting for control themselves.
Pretty sure that's what Robert Mugabe thought when he worked to kick out the Rhodesians. Nothing changes.
Accessible copper cables don't last long in the UK, let alone in Zimbabwe. The UK ones mostly get stolen by East Europeans who ship it back there and return there themselves when the police get close to them, to be replaced by new guys. It is a big reason for going to fibre. I expect the "tractor" driver was disappointed when he turned up fibre.
Tractors don't cut cables, people do.
I fart rainbows, you insensitive clod.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel