Severed cable disrupts web access

Severed cable disrupts web access

news.bbc.co.uk

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.

(visit the link for the full news article)

India Suffers Massive Outage: Times Online
Mass Internet outages in Egypt: Yahoo News



[edit on 19-12-2008 by thomasblackraven]

"For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern." -Jonathan Wright, Interoute

I remember the first time around, there were theories of the timing with political occurrences in the same areas. Could the same be happening now? Cut access to limit or monitor communications?


news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I saw a great episode of "Spooks" recently where MI5 uncovered a plan for Russia to interrupt these cables and send a virus taking out the entire British economy and comms.

It was quite clever, very entertaining.

My guess is that this is either
a) a fault (very boring though) or
b) a major power trying to limit the sharing of information for some reason.

(probably a)

Good find.

A question, it says that three out of the four cables have been cut, and that if the fourth is severed we'd be looking at total blackout in the Middle East.

If these provide communications between the Middle East, Europe and Asia as stated at the start of the article, how come Europe and Asia would not suffer a blackout, only the ME?

Don't these cables work both ways?

CX.

Glad someone found a atricle on it, i saw it happend but was a bit confused
as to what the occurance was..

EDIS Number AC-20081219-19707-NLC
Event type Technological Disaster Date / time [UTC] 19/12/2008 - 21:10:47
Country (Non-Localized) Area Submarine Internet Cables
County / State Mediterranean Sea City -
Cause of event Unknown Log date [UTC] 19/12/2008 - 21:10:47
Damage level Heavy Time left -
Latitude: N 36° 25.277 Longitude: E 12° 34.102
Number of deads: Not or Not data Number of injured persons: Not or Not data
Number of missing persons: Not or Not data Number of infected persons -
Number of evacuated persons: Not or Not data Population No data!

hisz.rsoe.hu...

Possibly due to seismic activity...

www.thewhir.com...

Something doesn't add up - the cables to the ME/Africa run via Japan, and the US to Europe.

I did have network topologies for the backbone service providers, and they all terminated in Europe.

The link went something like:

* Netherlands -> UK (LON) -> NY -> SFO -> Japan -> Far East
* Japan -> Austrailasia
* Japan -> India/Africa

Japan is a major hub for comms in the Far East.

reply to post by thomasblackraven


more cable cuts?

weren't there a bunch during the last spring/summer?

very suspicious

Is this a prelude to a blackout?

Should it have been complete and not just 3/4?

What major events are about to take place that we aren't meant to know about?

Dun-dun-daaaaaa!

I love the way they tell us "France Telecom" have sent a ship!
Should be there some time in the next 3 months then. They're bl**dy useless and will probably stop for lunch every four hours en-route.

Gimme some super-glue and a snorkel

Originally posted by mirageofdeceit
Something doesn't add up - the cables to the ME/Africa run via Japan, and the US to Europe.

I did have network topologies for the backbone service providers, and they all terminated in Europe.

The link went something like:

* Netherlands -> UK (LON) -> NY -> SFO -> Japan -> Far East
* Japan -> Austrailasia
* Japan -> India/Africa

Japan is a major hub for comms in the Far East.

Exerpt from here...

"Egypt is connected to the internet by three major fiber-optic cables. First is SMW3, owned by a global consortium of telecom companies. It has been operating since the early days of the internet. Next is SMW4, also a consortium-owned submarine cable that connects India to Italy by way of the Suez Canal and Alexandria. And, finally, there is the FLAG Telecom cable linking Europe and Asia. The result is a combined national capacity of 17 Gigabytes (GB) per second. These three lines, combined with the rest of the world's network, add up to over 325,000 miles of submarine telecom cables.

The FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA) and SMW4 cables were damaged off the coast of Alexandria, forcing the SMW3 line to take on the rerouted telecom traffic. These cables are used for voice traffic, call centers and connecting to the internet. ISPs and call centers buy certain amounts of capacity on these cables according to their specific needs. Local ISPs currently average around 11GB per second."

If there anything like Telstra here in Oz it will take anywhere up 2 a year to repair lol and thats even with staff allowances etc...... bloody useless lot....lol

here we go again.

I remember back the first time we were supposing that the cut was supposed to stop an expose about something going on in Iraq.

I wonder if this cut has something to do with the Grecian riots?

Is it possible that some government out there is trying to cut the military cables down there and getting some of the civilian cables also? After all if they cut any of the military cables we wouldn't hear about it.

Its volcanic and seismic activity.That always happens on the seabed.
Its been happening since time began the only reason we are noticing it now is because of the widespread use of fiber optic cables through the sea.
Fiber optic cable breaks really easily.All it takes is a rock to fall on it or a piece of rock smashed out of the seabed into it, and it cracks inside.
When they say severed they don't necessarily mean cut in half.
They mean connection is lost.

Originally posted by InvisibleHeroes
Its volcanic and seismic activity.That always happens on the seabed.
Its been happening since time began the only reason we are noticing it now is because of the widespread use of fiber optic cables through the sea.
Fiber optic cable breaks really easily.All it takes is a rock to fall on it or a piece of rock smashed out of the seabed into it, and it cracks inside.
When they say severed they don't necessarily mean cut in half.
They mean connection is lost.

Not quite. The cables in the ocean are armoured in multiple layers, to break one is very difficult. Seismic activity could do it of course but the cables are usually placed in places where this shouldn't happen. If it was just the occasional break then i'd be thinking the same as you, but recently there has been a great many of them being damaged.

Here's an illustrated layering of submarine cables.

mosquito-blog.blogspot.com...

[edit on 20-12-2008 by ImaginaryReality1984]

Originally posted by warrenb
reply to post by thomasblackraven

 

more cable cuts?

weren't there a bunch during the last spring/summer?

very suspicious

Warren... I like your posts usually, but I find that you don't actually read alot of the articles.

The article actually mentions the previous cable cuts.

it is happening not for the first time and most probably it can be the technical damage only but...

but let's imagine that some powers (NWO) would like to strike somewhere in the Middle East area (India-Pakistan, Iran-Israel, etc) it could be the really helpfull for them. it could be also the test for the global comunication breakdown for the event they are surely working on right now.

According to my friend in Egypt, its being reported there as being a result of natural phenomnon. He said thats what the news is reporting anyway at this time.

this summer were lots of cablebreaks reported..... weird..all options are bad news.. terrorist assaulds ore continent shifting..ore bad taps on the cables to get info of data transported trough the cables..

What about satellite transmissions ?
Have there been any problems there?
Is there space "up there" to transmit some or all of the data that is being delayed due to the "severed cables"?
Is there a backup method to relay the data the long way around (through the Asian hub)?
Why isn't there a backup system already in place to deal with obviously imminent problems such as this ?
Who stands to benefit from this and how (if it is not an accident)?
And lastly does it have anything to do with the FCC canceling plans to give away FREE National Broadband access through the existing unused airwaves and the possibility that other nations will follow suit.
A meeting to vote on implementation of this plan that was expected to be unanimously approved was canceled suddenly Thursday Dec 18th due to overwhelming negative pressure from congress.