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Fourth Undersea Cable Taken Offline In Less Than a Week

Posted by Zonk on Mon Feb 04, 2008 01:36 AM
from the bad-week-to-be-a-backbone-cable dept.
Communications Networking Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "Another undersea cable was taken offline on Friday, this one connecting Qatar and UAE. 'The [outage] caused major problems for internet users in Qatar over the weekend, but Qtel's loss of capacity has been kept below 40% thanks to what the telecom said was a large number of alternative routes for transmission. It is not yet clear how badly telecom and internet services have been affected in the UAE.' In related news it's been confirmed that the two cables near Egypt were not cut by ship anchors." Update: 02/04 07:13 GMT by Z : A commenter notes that despite the language in the article indicated a break or malfunction, the cable wasn't cut. It was taken offline due to power issues.

Related Stories

[+] Millions in Middle East Lose Internet 304 comments
Shipwack writes "Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections. The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online. Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with Egypt's communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe."
[+] Hardware: Third Undersea Cable Cut 655 comments
Many readers are reporting that another undersea fiber optic cable has been cut, apparently caused by another wayward anchor. It looks like Iran has completely lost Internet connectivity."
[+] Hardware: The Effects of the Fibre Outage Throughout the Mediterranean 101 comments
Umar Kalim writes "Analysts have been studying the effects of the fibre outage throughout the Mediterranean in terms of network performance, by examining the changes in packet losses, latencies and throughput. We initially discussed the outage yesterday. 'It is interesting that some countries such as Pakistan were mainly unaffected, despite the impact on neighboring countries such as India. This contrasts dramatically to the situation in June - July 2005, when due to a fibre cut of SEAMEWE3 off Karachi, Pakistan lost all terrestrial Internet connectivity which resulted, in many cases, in a complete 12 day outage of services. This is a tribute to the increased redundancy of international fibre connectivity installed for Pakistan in the last few years.'"
Firehose:Fourth Undersea Cable Cut by Anonymous Coward
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  • Cue... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fyngyrz (762201) * on Monday February 04, @01:36AM (#22287790) Homepage Journal

    ...the bombs in 3... 2... 1...

    Seriously, is there anyone who doesn't think this is either a precursor to military action, or a direct attack on Iran's about-to-launch Euro-based oil market?

    4 cuts, as far as I am concerned, is no co-incidence. I literally expect to turn on the TV and see bombs falling any day now. Economy down, turn up the war machine. It really is a common historical sequence.

    • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dattaway (3088) on Monday February 04, @01:40AM (#22287804) Homepage
      Well the Pentagon has recently declared the internet as an enemy weapons system.

    • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ivan256 (17499) on Monday February 04, @01:44AM (#22287852)
      It does seem like it's not coincidence, but I just don't see the link between this and an attack on Iran. What could possibly be the connection between two cables in Egypt, and us bombing Iran? Do you honestly think that people within the agency that created this network are foolish enough to think that even several more of these cuts will stop the flow of traffic? It's more likely that a middle eastern group is doing this to reduce western influence without any real grasp on just how resilient the network is.

    • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by djdavetrouble (442175) on Monday February 04, @01:55AM (#22287938) Homepage Journal
      You're not thinking outside of the tin-foil box.
      These are obviously failed attempts to tap internet traffic.
      The NSA has long been rumored to be able to live splice [zdnet.com]
      undersea fibre optic cables.

      • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Breakfast Pants (323698) on Monday February 04, @02:56AM (#22288370) Journal
        These are not failed attempts--these are diversions. It is hard to splice in without intercepting service, so the purpose of these is to make a splice further down the line indetectable. The splice goes in while service is out, then the diversion cuts are repaired and no one is the wiser.

    • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Funny)

      by kestasjk (933987) on Monday February 04, @02:30AM (#22288190) Homepage

      ...the bombs in 3... 2... 1...

      Seriously, is there anyone who doesn't think this is either a precursor to military action, or a direct attack on Iran's about-to-launch Euro-based oil market?

      4 cuts, as far as I am concerned, is no co-incidence. I literally expect to turn on the TV and see bombs falling any day now. Economy down, turn up the war machine. It really is a common historical sequence.

      I think it's going to be the end of the world. The four horsemen draw near. OMG FOUR horsemen?! Coincidence? I don't think so.

      • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by J'raxis (248192) on Monday February 04, @01:45AM (#22287856) Homepage

        It would be political suicide indeed, for a politician to start a war shortly before an election -- in which he was running. Bush isn't.

          • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by McFadden (809368) on Monday February 04, @02:37AM (#22288228) Homepage

            No, but the Republican party still wants a chance at this election. If another war was started, it would guarantee a Democrat victory.
            The Neocons aren't Republicans by any definition of the term. They are a group of ultra-right extremists who have hijacked the Republican Party as a suitable vehicle to advance their cause. I don't think they care about what happens to the Republican Party - they're just hell-bent on carrying out as much of their destructive agenda as they can before Bush gets booted out, or (as some are predicting, although I don't believe it will happen) they declare martial law.

            • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Interesting)

              by freedom_india (780002) on Monday February 04, @02:41AM (#22288260) Journal

              They are a group of ultra-right extremists who have hijacked the Republican Party as a suitable vehicle to advance their cause.
              Why do i keep remembering William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" book?
              Somehow i have a Deja Vu sense...

              I bet EUR 100 (to be donated to Doctors without borders) that before this year runs out, we will have another major war with another country.

              Anybody willing to dare?

              • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Funny)

                by rucs_hack (784150) on Monday February 04, @02:48AM (#22288312)
                I'd appreciate any comment with a logical basis...

                You do know where you are, right?

                it doesn't even have to agree with me.

                Ah, I see the answer may be yes.

              • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Opportunist (166417) on Monday February 04, @02:56AM (#22288364)
                Says who? The press? Ahmadinedschad? Remember that the former want to sell and the latter is a politician. It's popular in the Iran to bash the US, so he's bashing. And, lo and behold, he gets elected. Look around yourself and notice that this works all over the globe. No, not US bashing. But looking for an external foe to distract from internal problems.

                Politicians rarely tell you their point of view, or what they are really going to do. They tell you what you want to hear. Can you point me to any Iranian actions that support a "threat" scenario? I don't care for politicians' words anymore, usually it's opinion making and swaying, but little if any substance.

      • Re:Cue... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AKAImBatman (238306) <akaimbatman@gm a i l . c om> on Monday February 04, @02:02AM (#22287994) Homepage Journal

        I wish the US would stop trying to impose themselves on the rest of the world.

        I don't think this is the U.S. The U.S. would make sure to cut all the cables at once, therefore ensuring maximum disruption and surprise at the time of the attack. The way this is being done is slow and relatively uncoordinated. Which suggests either a probing maneuver or a lack of resources.

        The U.S. is fairly straightforward with its objectives. The brass doesn't like taking things slowly when it comes to war. The plan is to get in, blow stuff up, rebuild the critical infrastructure, then leave. It doesn't always work that way (e.g. Iraq), but it is the ideal scenario that every General and Admiral desires. Long and protracted wars are far too costly. Not just to the U.S. itself, but also on a personal level for the brass.

        Which raises the question: Who would gain from slowly cutting international Internet access in the Middle East? The myriad of plausible answers contrasted with the lack of any solid suspects scares me a hell of a lot more than any U.S. military operations. IMHO, it's in the best interest of the U.S. to find out what is going on NOW. Something big may be coming down the pipeline in the middle east. If and when it comes, it's not going to be pleasant.

        • Also in terms of any intelligence related action (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Monday February 04, @02:32AM (#22288196)
          The last thing you want to do is alert the enemy that they have a potential problem and give them time to fix it. For example suppose you discovered that all military telephones were routed through a single building in a country you were going to attack. The system was supposed to have some redundancy, but they didn't know that it ends up all relying on the one centre. So what you do then is hit it coinciding with the start of your attack. Suddenly, all their communications are down and they are being attacked. Makes it hard to deal with either.

          What you don't do is send in some guy to much with it, take their communications down, then do nothing, then still do nothing as they fix it and start to work on alleviating the problem in the future. That is even less useful than just leaving it alone.

          As a precursor to military action, something like this makes sense only if idiots are running the show. Not only is it going to do no real good (who gives a shit if civilians can't get on the Internet? It is the internal military links that are the issue) but it makes it less likely that any sort of complete blackout would be achieved. I guarantee the companies involved in this aren't just going to fix the cable and go "Ok well that'll probably never happen again." They are going to try and figure out why this happened, and what can be done to prevent it.
  • Sounds like a concerted effort to isolate muslim nations, to me. Singapore, Pakistan, Qatar, UAE. We're looking for airplanes aiming for buildings and they're attacking the world under the sea with a pair of clippers and a web cam.

  • The cable was not cut - Bad summary, bad! (Score:5, Informative)

    by AchiIIe (974900) on Monday February 04, @01:46AM (#22287860)
    RTFA: The cable was not cut, it was taken offline due to power problems.

    > the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship's anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be the case in the other three incidents.
    • Don't interrupt us with facts!

    • Cable Not Cut; Cable Merely 'Damaged' (Score:5, Insightful)

      by n dot l (1099033) on Monday February 04, @02:03AM (#22288010)
      The entire sentence you quoted from is:

      The cause of damage is not yet known, but ArabianBusiness.com has been told unofficially the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship's anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be the case in the other three incidents.
      So it's really a question of what "damage" means in this case. Are we talking about a mundane problem that happens on a regular basis (which was only reported due to all the other links going down at around the same time) or did a component that almost never fails suddenly break down under mysterious circumstances?

      Not to run against the whole "this could mean only one thing" meme, but I think it's just as likely that some old hardware sitting at the ends of that cable got stressed past its breaking point because having the other links down finally pushed it past its limits.

  • Oh no. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChePibe (882378) on Monday February 04, @01:49AM (#22287880)
    Underwater backhoes.

    The last safe spot for the network admin has been found - and destroyed.

  • Order of Battle (Score:5, Informative)

    by AtomicSnarl (549626) on Monday February 04, @01:52AM (#22287910) Homepage
    From Sun Tzu (IIRC):

    1. Attack the plan - Futility
    2. Attack the alliances - Division
    3. Attack the resources - Frustration
    4. Attack the army in the field - Attrition
    5. Attack the cities - Destruction

    The costs increase with each step, which is why the cities are last. Good, proactive intellegence and operatives can prevent things from happening. If not, they can foul things up so they can't happen. Communications is a resource, so it looks like step 3 is on the table.

  • I guess this means... (Score:5, Funny)

    by afabbro (33948) on Monday February 04, @02:21AM (#22288138)
    ...that the Old Ones are finally stirring. Must be part of that Cthulhu For President 2008 campaign.

  • Cloverfield Promo? (Score:5, Funny)

    by GaryPatterson (852699) on Monday February 04, @02:30AM (#22288188)
    It's not an overly elaborate promotional thing for a Middle-East release of Cloverfield is it?

    I mean, we're all getting bored of the alternate reality web thingies these films do to hype themselves before release, so it sort of makes sense to kick it up a notch (bam!)

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