[General] Internet Slowdown

[Burhan Khalid]

Salaam Everyone:

As I'm sure you all have noticed; the Internet has been anemic today, 
and for good reason. Two submarine fiber optic cables were damaged 
affecting the Middle East and most of Asia. You can quote the following 
in case you are being hammered by complaints. The local ISPs are aware 
of the issue (well, at least FT with whom I spoke).

"A submarine cable in the Mediterranean was cut earlier today, resulting 
in a dramatic slowdown in internet access for people in India, Sri 
Lanka, Pakistan and much of the Middle East.

A spokesman for Flag Telecom, the owner of the severed cable, told the 
Reg: "It is a problem off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt. For some 
reason ships were asked to anchor in a different place to normal - 8.3km 
from the beach. One of the ship's anchors cut our cable but there are 
multiple cuts - we're not the only company having problems."

He said they were in the process of getting a repair ship out to assess 
the damage but he warned the whole process could take 12 to 15 days even 
though the ship was in the Med. He said users in India would have a 
slower internet access as a result.

Such major damage to the internet backbone can cause major problems 
despite redundancy which allows some re-routing. The loss of so much 
bandwidth is likely to have an impact.

A Reg reader told us: "We've got some connectivity to our India office, 
but it's very flakey (currently losing half the packets) which could be 
a result of overloading. Is very similar to a couple of Christmas' ago 
when there was a earthquake near Taiwan and it severed undersea cables 
causing major bottlenecks on what was left to most of Asia for a couple 
of weeks."

Apart from being serious for the region, the cable break could also hit 
large UK and US enterprises which have offshored business processes and 
backoffice functions to companies in India, Pakistan or the Middle 
East." @ 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/30/india_mideast_lose_internet/

"International phone calls from the UAE were disrupted and Internet 
service crawled to a halt Wednedsay when two submarine fibre-optic cable 
systems “snapped” in the Mediterranean.

The cables link the Middle East with Europe, but the slowdown was felt 
the world over, according to local telecom operators. The disruption, 
whose cause remains unknown, has wreaked havoc among millions of 
internet and phone users, etisalat and du said in a statement.

Du said two submarine fibre-optic cables, FLAG Telecom and SEA-ME-WE 4, 
were “damaged”.

“We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience and assure them 
that we will keep them informed of the situation on a continuous basis,” 
said etisalat in a statement.

A company spokesperson said they are working closely with the concerned 
operators for urgent repair work “to ensure the links with major global 
internet hubs are restored at the earliest.”

The company said it has activated backup links which meant that normal 
Internet browsing and essential traffic will continue to work “at 
reasonable speeds”.

At the Dubai Media and Internet free zones and the Knowledge Village, 
web access crawled to halt.

“It’s a day gone to waste. They’re not telling us what time it’s coming 
back.

And they’re not even sure whether it’s coming back tomorrow,” a Media 
City executive said.

A du spokesperson told XPRESS the degradation of internet services and 
international voice calls only occurred for some customers during peak 
times.

“We are working actively with the submarine cable system operators to 
ascertain the reasons for the cables being cut, and they are working to 
give affected operators a recovery schedule.”

Etisalat said it has already started migrating internet and 
international voice traffic through other cable systems that have not 
been affected.

“Some congestion may be expected at peak times until this issue is 
resolved. We will keep our customers updated on its progress.”" @ 
http://www.xpress4me.com/news/uae/national/20005528.html

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