the Internet is fixed .. long live the internet.
There is finally a light at the end of the tunnel (pun intended). Flag Telecom has reported that both links will be fully operational by February 10th now.
Cut # 1: FLAG EUROPE ASIA Cable cut between Alexandria (Egypt) and Palermo (Italy)
- The repair crew of marine experts, optical engineers has reached the site yesterday and it is expected that the splice work will be carried out today. It is currently planned that the repairs will be completed by Sunday, February 10th 2008.
Cut # 2: FALCON Cable cut between Dubai (UAE) and Al SEEB (Oman)
- The ship loaded with spares, marine experts, and optical engineers have reached the site yesterday. The crew has recovered the one end of the cable and cable joining work is in progress.
- The repair team has observed steady progress and the repair work are expected to be completed by Sunday, February 10th 2008.
I personally find it quite ironic that the Internet issue is fixed the day after InfoConnect; memo to Gitex, there is no need to sabotage our event (the organizers are doing it for you). Until the internet is fully operational, I suggest you check out Mark’s post on the ‘The internet’s undersea world‘. One of the more unnoticed parts of the image is the available/used capacity of the underwater link.
The fiber links around the world can handle up to 7.1 tbps. The capacity ‘purchased/reserved’ by ISPs is 5.7tbps. Which leads us to ask .. how much of the internet capacity is actually being used? 2.1tbps. In theory, everyone (around the world) could have triple the internet speeds and the fiber links would still have roughly 15% left of unused capacity.
-Posted by K.
11 replies on “Internet fixed tomorrow”
“There is finally a light at the end of the tunnel”
Bu. bu .. but i thought the internet is series of tubes!!
its already fixed…latency to google for me is 220ms….
Thanks for the heads up .. updated the post.
Up until now three internet cables undersea have been cut.. now there is a fourth!! …
If you’re reading Engadget today because your favorite Iranian gadget blog is offline, here’s why: a fifth undersea cable has now been reported as cut (or at least damaged), responsible for knocking Iran and a few other million people mostly off the interwebs. Things were already looking awfully suspicious when a fourth undersea cable in the Mediterranean was cut yesterday, and while nothing about a fifth cable being cut necessarily means some sort of sabotage is to blame, it’s not exactly reassuring. Emergency measures are already underway to repair the cables, but we’re not sure our inter-continental Quake III Arena deathmatch can handle any more snips.
https://www.engadget.com/2008/02/06/cut-four-undersea-cables-shame-on-you-cut-a-fifth-also-shame/
It’s getting more and more suspect!!
K.. here’s more..
https://www.wikio.com/discussion/521821
A couple of points:
1. Iran was never offline, they have plenty of backup links.
2. The country most affected was India followed by Eygpt .. hardly US targets.
3. First two cuts were in the same place, the second has been cut before (anchors), the fourth wasn’t really a cut and the fifth was in Malaysia.
All in all .. it doesn’t really matter as the cables have been fixed.
At the very least, it doesn’t seem like anything the U.S. or any Western nation would have a lot of interest or benefit in doing.”
That doesn’t mean the current regime in Washington won’t do it. The US didn’t really have any interest or benefit in invading Iraq in 2003, for example.
As several people pointed out, losing one cable is probably accidental, and even losing 2 in a short space of time might be accidental. But five? Wake up, folks.
I am not saying that the dropped links are not a weird coincidence. I just don’t see how anyone could benefit from cut links .. as there are backups in place. I chalk it up to Murphy’s law .. cables get cut all the time.
Yes, it could be the weather but 5 undersea cables down in less than a week is likely to be a coordinated attack. According to (https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography//atlas/alcatel_large.gif) this looks like maybe half of all the cables in this area.
I’m not saying a war is imminent or remotely close. More likely it is Israel and/or the US testing if their sims are accurate (note that Israel is not effected by these outages since they use different cables).
Well, it’s an awful coincidence that the long-postponed launch of the (euro-denominated) Iranian Oil Bourse was due this week. They postponed it so many times already, the entire project would lose the last shred of credibility if it was postponed again, or maybe just appear sluggish on the launch day.
I’m not saying somebody is doing this to Iran, for what we know they might be doing it to themselves in order to cover their own failures by accusing a third party of sabotage. But it certainly is “funny” to have so many outages in one week which happens to be a very delicate week for the oil markets.
people worry because we’re in that period of the year (feb-apr) when you’re supposed to start a military campaign in the ME if you really want to. Can’t do it in the summer (untolerably hot), can’t do it in winter (untolerably cold in desert areas); if you start in autumn, you risk not being done when the winter comes, so you have to do it in early spring.
Just a small note to people arguing that there is no benefit to the West in cutting off Iran prior to attacking it. Though I do not know whether Iran has really lost connectivity or not, I would like to point out that part of what made Israel’s relatively recent war on Lebanon unpopular was the ability for people in Lebanon to communicate with people out of country and send messages and images showing the damage done to civilian infrastructure and homes.
It is not difficult to imagine in my opinion any attack on Iran taking the form of a bombing campaign. Bombing campaigns cause collateral damage which a country being attacked wants to present as proof of the other side being “unjust”. The internet gives everyone the ability to reach a large audience. In this hypothetical scenario Iranians would send pictures and videos of the damage to and death of civilians in order to argue their own position.
Internet is online. Iran hasn’t been invaded .. all is good.