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A Broken Undersea Cable Knocked Mauritania Offline For Two Days, Affected Another Five Nations (fortune.com)

The West African nation of Mauritania lost all internet access for 48 hours due to an undersea cable break, according to infrastructure analysts. From a report: The break, which took place a couple weeks ago, provides a reminder of how much internet users rely on the cables that connect their countries. According to Dyn, the Oracle-owned internet performance firm, the African Coast to Europe (ACE) cable was cut near Noukachott in Mauritania on March 30. It's not clear what caused the break, but six countries entirely rely on that one cable for their connectivity, and all -- Sierra Leone, Mauritania, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and the Gambia -- saw a big impact. The impact in Mauritania was the worst, with its two-day outage, while Sierra Leone also had big problems. The latter country also had a big outage on April 1, but that may well have been down to government action -- African governments are notorious for interfering with citizens' internet access, particularly around election time or during periods of unrest.

36 comments

  1. Time to think about redundant access by cyn1c77 · · Score: 1

    Really. If it's critical, you have have two internet access points, at least.

    1. Re:Time to think about redundant access by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      Probably this African nation should have invested in some diversity.

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    2. Re:Time to think about redundant access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We do have redundant access... it's called "satellite internet"

    3. Re:Time to think about redundant access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With a 52% literacy rate in Mauritania, there's probably more important things to worry about than redundant internet access.

    4. Re:Time to think about redundant access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't need to literate to look at rotten vag on the internet.

    5. Re:Time to think about redundant access by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Why do you think a government can only do one thing at a time?
      It would be inefficient to allocate 100% of government resources to working on the literacy rate. As there are people, smart people, who will not be good at that topic, but would be good at making a better internet infrastructure for their country.
      Also better internet can help with general literacy, as still the primary form of communication is via written word.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    6. Re:Time to think about redundant access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you think they only have the two problems (illiteracy and Internet access)?

    7. Re:Time to think about redundant access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I suspect happened was someone dropped an anchor and broke it somewhere in between the main trunk and the Mauritania shore. It's likely that Mauritania powered the light amplifiers going north towards Europe, without power to run the amps, the rest of the link was toast, even though the transit portion to the other countries was always intact except for that last few miles to shore which were damaged in Mauritania..

      I'd seen similar issues in the Carribean where there were two competitors and each had a fiber and were loath to buy transit on the competitor. So if a link went down, things slow way down.

  2. I was wondering what had happened there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All of my .MR domains were unreachable all weekend

    1. Re:I was wondering what had happened there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why do you have .mr domains

    2. Re:I was wondering what had happened there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thatsmyname.plow.mr

    3. Re:I was wondering what had happened there by outlander · · Score: 1

      Because it's the polite way to address them.
      ".mr domain, meet .ms domain" ;)

      --
      "Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
    4. Re:I was wondering what had happened there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      formetoknowandforyoutofindout.mr

  3. Russian 'research vessels' by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    More likely than not.

    1. Re:Russian 'research vessels' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Putin. With a pair of scissors.

      I'm surprised to learn those countries have internet. I figured they didn't even have electricity.

    2. Re:Russian 'research vessels' by TFlan91 · · Score: 1

      Intelligence-based TLA: "Sorry, about that. Our engineers thought they had finished installing our MIM, but they missed a step in their post-op checklist. Don't worry though, nothing to see here, business as usual."

    3. Re:Russian 'research vessels' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More likely than not.

      Is that you Hilary?

    4. Re:Russian 'research vessels' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go back to bed, Donald, you're drunk.

    5. Re:Russian 'research vessels' by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      Anything is possible of course, but if you want a best guess..
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      Binney is one of the real guys. The guys who've been penetrating all the networks are from the US not Russia.

  4. Just Reroute With HOSTS File by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This wants a problem for me. I was able to quickly route to new IP addresses using APK Hosts File Engine 11.2 Turbo 2 Alpha x64.

    I'm Anonymoys Coward, and I approve this message.

  5. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would seem that just surviving for the day would be more important than internet in these places.

  6. Notorious, right by cloud.pt · · Score: 3, Informative

    While some (third-world mostly, not only African) governments are notorious for interfering with citizens' internet access during key periods, it's becoming clear that many types of political and commercial organizations, be it in evolved or developing nations, and even entities not associated with government, are becoming proficient in interfering with citizens's internet use - through internet access (e.g. corporate interests from ISPs such as net neutrality), unfair use of information (such as targetted ads), or flat out privacy and freedoms violations (such as Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, IRIS, etc etc). There's absolutely no need to single out African Nations' Governments, since it has become a widespread practice.

    At least in African nations things are a lot more transparent - a relevant number of even the most illiterate citizens will see through internet downtime on pre-election days as something planned, and that will, hopefully, affect their voting decision.

    The worst kind of influence is the one we don't comprehend, or even get to see. And that's only becoming obvious now thanks to the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it's been here in some form even before internet times, through media, censorship, marketing and lobbying. The only common denominator is that it always emanates from entities with poor ethics and morality.

    1. Re:Notorious, right by dcardon · · Score: 1

      You are seeing this as a political or societal problem, but for having been there recently (actually not in Mauritania, but a little bit south in Senegal), I can tell you that internet sucks. It sucks on many point (even if you pay the price. First I'd like to say that local network (in main city) is decent, but there is no local web hoster, so every site are hosted on OVH or 1&1 in Europe. So you'll have you're local web traffic going through Europe in the over-saturated ocean links. Worst, if you want to access a site located in Ivory Coast from Dakar in Senegal, the TCP/IP route will go though London... The same fiber cable that gets data to London to Abidjan sits a few kilometers outside of Dakar... Well doing better BGP is not rocket science, we shall just try to do a better thing with what we already have!

    2. Re:Notorious, right by cloud.pt · · Score: 1

      I understand perfectly the African internet access problem, which as you state, does exist and by itself hampers development on what are, supposedly, developing nations. I work on a for-profit research which has projects targeting better internet access in Africa - we make hardware that attempts to deploy back-haul-like technology on a smaller scale so that it becomes cheaper to repeat signals from town halls and other central structures to village periphery. Of course other problems come from further up the link as you state. I personally face the problem of "internet access hampering development" as my family sits on a remote location which I had to move away from but still visit a lot, a location that despite having a state-sponsored, Gbits/s-level fiber link deployed, the ISP that owns the current licensing won't sell it, as it will cannibalize their expensive, BAD copper service (think sub-500kbit/s and constant downtime) and political lobbying by this ISP is succeeding in maintaining exclusivity rights for the government-sponsored rural fiber installation (for the most stupid of reasons, something along the lines of: "supposedly these and other remote locations have 3/4g signals by every carrier - a BIG FAT lie as signal is VERY INCONSISTENT across rural areas - and thus there's no need for opening up fiber to competition as there is already competing solutions by different ISPs and development is not affected"...).

      My comment was, nonetheless, meant as critic to the last sentence of the original post: "African governments are notorious for interfering with citizens' internet access, particularly around election time or during periods of unrest.". It had nothing to do with internet access problems indeed.

  7. Not just African governments that are doing this by doubledown00 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Quote: African governments are notorious for interfering with citizens' internet access, particularly around election time or during periods of unrest.

    Yea. You may want to take a look closer to home, subs. Western governments have been in on this for some time.

    https://www.sfgate.com/news/ar...

  8. Re:Not just African governments that are doing thi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not to worry...cell service will remain available in the free speech zone, conveniently located 10 miles away. And since it will be provided by a Stingray, you'll get a really good signal.

  9. Cue the idiots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Cue the idiots who mention a wireless tech.

    Guys, this is not hard. The undersea cables connect countries because it's more expensive to go over land, and in some cases the land doesn't exist, or is in politically unstable locations.

    Like an undersea cable between the US and Asia, has redundancy, but a cable between two African nations? Nope. Go look at the map.
    https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

    The only African country with redundant cables is South Africa, connected by both the west and east. Everything South of Keyna on the east side and Gabon on the West side has two.

    The only less connected region is Alaska.

    1. Re:Cue the idiots by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      The only African country with redundant cables is South Africa, connected by both the west and east.

      Maybe there was originally one for blankes and one for the kaffers?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:Cue the idiots by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

      We have those morons here in Australia.

      A National Broadband Network rolled out, intended to be fibre and the neanderthals suggested "wireless will beat fibre in 10 years anyhow, you're wasting money!!"

      I won't deny, 4G USB dongles, did end up doing better than I expected them ever capable, in both speed and download quota offered, but vs Fibre? Future proofing? These idiots opinions should be relegated to the trash sadly.

      Unfortunately, everyone has an opinion on something, even those who aren't technically savvy.

  10. LEO Satellites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Perhaps low Earth orbit satellites are a good idea, after all. Except, of course, for that next devastating solar flare.

    1. Re:LEO Satellites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only if you pay for it

  11. Re:Not just African governments that are doing thi by doubledown00 · · Score: 1

    Indeed, the best signal in all the land! It sure is nice of the sovereign to ensure service at such times and places.......

  12. Who cares? They're all shithole countries. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who cares? They're all shithole countries.

  13. This never would have happened if by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This never would have happened if Wakanda would just share vibranium so we could use it to shield the undersea cables. I'm sure this is somehow the fault of the colonizers.