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A map of the fiber-optic cables crossing the Mediterranean, connecting Europe with Egypt, the Middle East, and ultimately India. The Flag Telecom Europe-Asia and Sea-Me-We 4 lines were cut last week just north of Alexandria, Egypt.
Credit: Telegeography Research
The cause of the cuts in the two main broken cables remains somewhat mysterious. A spokesman for Flag Telecom said on Monday that the company would not speculate on the causes until the broken line has been examined. However, Egyptian telecommunications officials said on Sunday that no ships had crossed the site of the breaks in the 12 hours before or after the incidents on Wednesday. The site is also a "restricted area," further lessening the chances of a ship's responsibility, the ministry said.
The unexpected collapse in service forced Internet providers across the region to scramble for alternative connections, most using backup bandwidth sources under contract for just such an emergency. Many ISPs began switching traffic east instead of west. Data from India to Europe might thus first pass through East Asia, across the Pacific, through the United States, and across the Atlantic Ocean before reaching its destination. While slowing traffic, in some cases significantly, this at least allowed data to get through.
According to ISP Association of India secretary R. S. Perhar, service providers in his country adapted to the cuts relatively quickly. Traffic from business customers was given a top priority on networks, with consumer traffic taking second place. Three of the country's largest service providers weren't affected at all, since they weren't buying bandwidth from the Flag or Sea-Me-We 4 cables, he says.
Many other Indian companies had diversified their network connections following December 2006, when an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan severed seven major undersea cables that served India as well as East Asia. But some providers who had not acted as quickly found themselves cut off entirely, Perhar says.
"Most have done good network planning and made sure they get bandwidth from several service providers," he says. "But there are people who did not have redundancy in their networks."
Outsourcing companies also found themselves facing potential disruption. With so much outsourced work now being performed in India or elsewhere in the region, companies in the United States and Europe are increasingly dependent on these broken lines for their everyday business. But like the ISPs, the biggest outsourcing companies said that they relied on redundant connections to ensure the flow of data.
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It seems rather crude to me that cables are being used at all. Satellites have been used for communications for so long now, why are such easily damaged items of hardware such as undersea cables even in existence anymore?
Fiber can handle much more bandwidth than satellite.
Fiber cables cam handle massively more data than satellites. Were the internet to rely on satellite technology we would still be living at dial up speeds.
If you use wireless communications, the various NSA collecting stations around the globe will scoop up wholesale amounts of these communications for their spying purposes. This is the reason more and more governments and organizations prefer to have cables. Cables can be hacked too, but it's a lot harder to do so.
Some people would say that these cable accidents were no accidents at all. Maybe some people have an interest to have communications shift towards satellites. Iran suffered the most outage from these cable cuts, and given all the war rhetoric going around...it doesn't take a genius to connect the dots.
Satellites are great for broadcast, mobile, temporary and "thin route" communications but they have far less capacity and cost more than modern fiber cables. Geostationary satellites introduce a delay that many find intolerable. Satellites in low earth orbit could avoid the delay problem, but this requires a large and expensive constellation to provide continuous coverage. Iridium and Globalstar were both financial failures.
Satellites also have their own failure mechanisms. The radio links can be jammed. Earth stations and satellites can both fail, and the latter are hard to repair. They also run out of stationkeeping fuel or just plain wear out and have to be periodically replaced.
Yes, redundancy & multiple paths are important! See this article from The Internet Protocol Journal on internet topology -- especially the parts on network resilience. Some structures are better than others.
Wireless internet by Satellite support as promising solution
Internet future is inclined to favor wireless connection through the support of satellites
as opposed to fiber lines.
As understandable as bandwith accomodation supports existing fiber application, material alteration,especially in satellite composition and design, could overcome any existing disadvantages, on the reasonableness
that, both risk and economic advantages support
wireless internet investment and eliminates any
long term failures, typical of the one in discussion.
Total wireless internet, replacing landline connection, is a dream that seems most
certain than probable.(martin@mpgatechnology.com)
Re: Wireless internet by Satellite support as promising solution
No matter how much you increase the bandwidth of satellite connections, they suffer from an inherent disadvantage - roundtrip latency of 72000 miles with geosynchronous orbits. This automatically precludes a lot of payloads - VoIP, video conferencing etc.
Re: Wireless internet by Satellite support as promising solution
Ha! Without a huge new constellation of low altitude satellites you'll never see it happen.
That is unless you've found a way to increase the speed of light. Current roundtrip latency from earth to satellites and back is almost 1000 milliseconds.
Imagine your ping times. That would all but destroy telephone/VOIP communications, online gaming, etc. Not to mention the incredibly reduced throughput because of the chatty nature of TCP.
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jwoodside
6 Comments
seafloor variety
How careful are the cable laying companies in where they lay their cables? In my work as marine geophysicist I have come across cables in the most peculiar locations, where geology indicates potential natural risks to the cable. Seafloor is an active environment with considerable variability from one place to another. The Mediterranean certainly has a wide range of seafloor conditions and probably just as high a risk to cables from nature as from man.
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KA9Q
2 Comments
Re: seafloor variety
According to the industry, they carefully plan routes to avoid shipping traffic and as much fishing as possible, and to follow the undersea topology. In shallow water, cables are armored and buried. The companies have detailed maps of where all the other cables are, and they're supposed to cross each other as close to a right angle as possible. They detect other cables by their magnetic fields, and they lift any burial ploughs when crossing them.
How well they actually do all this stuff is another question.
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jwoodside
6 Comments
Re: seafloor variety
I use maps of cable locations when planning seafloor activities like dredging. What I was more curious about was cable company awareness of such active seafloor locations as black smokers and hydrothermal vents on mid ocean ridges or locations prone to large scale sediment slope failures (like on the Nile deep sea fan). We have seen cables in risky locations. I was just looking at a sonar image of a cable crossing directly over the peak (and centre of activity) of a large mud volcano in the Mediterranean.
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