[LINK] Severed cables cause internet traffic jams

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Severed cables cause internet traffic jams
December 20, 2008 - 9:09AM
SMH
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/severed-cables-cause-internet-traffic-jams/2008/12/20/1229189923604.html

Internet and telephone communications between Europe, the Middle East 
and Asia were severely disrupted on Friday after three undersea cables 
were damaged in the Mediterranean, France Telecom said.

"The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between 
Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain 
unclear," a statement said, while a spokesman said it was unlikely to 
have been an attack.

The company said it was sending a ship to fix the lines but that it 
would not arrive until Monday and that it could take until December 31 
before normal service was restored.

Two of the cables were among five damaged earlier this year, an accident 
reportedly caused by a ship's anchor.

Most business-to-business traffic between Europe and Asia was being 
rerouted through the United States, the firm said, but regular 
communications between Europe and several Asian countries has been 
disrupted since early Friday.

Sixty-five per cent of traffic to India was down, while services to 
Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan were also 
severely affected, a spokesman said Friday evening.

An afternoon toll released by France Telecom said that 100 percent of 
traffic was lost in the Maldives Indian Ocean islands, with the Gulf 
state of Qatar and Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden, also losing over 70 
percent of their traffic.

Egypt's state news agency MENA reported that the cuts happened off the 
coast of Sicily at 10:00 am (0800 GMT) on Friday, with Indian-registered 
Reliance GlobalCom directing a submarine cable repair company to head to 
the region to fix the cables.

The agency added that services were being rerouted to backup cables and 
satellites to compensate for the failures.

The cables are jointly owned by several dozen different countries. One 
of the cables is 40,000 kilometres long and links 33 different countries 
while a second is 20,000 kilometres long and serves 14 states.

"If there was just one cable down we could have used the other two," 
said France Telecom spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard. "But all three are 
down so this puts us in a very difficult situation. This is a very rare 
situation," he said.

The cables might have got caught up in trawlers' nets or there may have 
been an underwater landslide, said Aymard. One appeared to be fully 
severed, while the other two seemed to be only partially cut, he added.

Each cable has a "leader" country, he said. Egypt is in charge of the 
main cable and in this capacity commissioned France Telecom Marine, a 
subsidiary of the communications giant, to handle the repairs.

The boat, with 20 kilometres of spare cable on board, will leave very 
early Saturday and arrive Monday.

In January, five cables in the Middle East and Europe were cut, causing 
Internet failures in the region and damaging traffic through the 
region's important call centre industry.

France Telecom said it would publish updates on its website on the 
latest traffic disruption. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is 
not affected, it said.

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au