Cut Undersea Cable Plunges Yemen Into Days-Long Internet Outage (wired.com) 26
Last week, the internet went dark for Yemen and its 28 million citizens. It's still not fully back today. In fact, the entire Red Sea region has dealt with slow to nonexistent connectivity since the severing of a single submarine cable on Thursday. Wired reports: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia all felt major effects from last week's cut of the so-called Falcon cable, which even impacted countries as far away as Comoros and Tanzania. Most of them weren't totally knocked offline, though, because they were able to fall back on other lines of connectivity. In Yemen, though, that one cable cut led to an 80 percent drop in capacity. Though the country still had that last 20 percent, trying to route a water main of web traffic through a drinking straw resulted in near-total connectivity failure.
While internet blackouts have been used in regions like Iran and Kashmir as a political cudgel, there's no indication that the cut in Yemen's case was nefarious; it's more likely that an anchor unintentionally severed it. Fixing it, though, won't be so simple. Yemen has three submarine cable landings -- a Falcon connection in the east, another Falcon connection in the west, and a third landing in the port city of Aden, which connects to two other cables altogether. Due to an ongoing civil war, Aden is the temporary capital of Yemen, controlled by the Hadi government; Houthi-controlled territory geographically divides the country. By Saturday, one of Yemen's two main internet service providers -- YemenNet -- was able to restore some connectivity by working with Oman's major ISP, Omantel, to receive service from a different undersea cable. The Falcon cable has not yet been fixed, though, and countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, along with Yemen, are still dealing with lingering impacts of the cut. If providers don't have a backup means of communication, or have to reestablish service with a manual rerouting process, restoring connectivity can take days.
While internet blackouts have been used in regions like Iran and Kashmir as a political cudgel, there's no indication that the cut in Yemen's case was nefarious; it's more likely that an anchor unintentionally severed it. Fixing it, though, won't be so simple. Yemen has three submarine cable landings -- a Falcon connection in the east, another Falcon connection in the west, and a third landing in the port city of Aden, which connects to two other cables altogether. Due to an ongoing civil war, Aden is the temporary capital of Yemen, controlled by the Hadi government; Houthi-controlled territory geographically divides the country. By Saturday, one of Yemen's two main internet service providers -- YemenNet -- was able to restore some connectivity by working with Oman's major ISP, Omantel, to receive service from a different undersea cable. The Falcon cable has not yet been fixed, though, and countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, along with Yemen, are still dealing with lingering impacts of the cut. If providers don't have a backup means of communication, or have to reestablish service with a manual rerouting process, restoring connectivity can take days.
So what? (Score:2)
There is a civil war going on. Who cares about the friggin Internet? It isn't as essential as we think it is.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Good news? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reaction to outages like this should be somewhat heartening to advocates of Enlightenment principles. These are countries whose politicial mouthpieces endlessly decry much of the content of the Internet as immoral, outrageous, illegal, and likely to cause hair to grow on their knuckles. And yet, when access is severed, do they take the golden opportunity say to their populations, "Oops, sorry, Internet is broken, we can't fix it"? Nope. They fix it. They engage in a mad scramble to lease capacity from some other country, to route around the problem, to repair the cable or lay a new one, whatever it takes.
Perhaps the Internet won't balkanize irreparably because of ridiculous idealogues. Once people get it, it seems very very sticky. Knowledge is power, and knowledge is achieved through communication, and the Internet is the greatest communication machine ever built.
Perhaps we'll stay connected.
Re:Good news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what you are talking about. There are people who have the job of providing Internet service in the country. They are just doing their job, trying to fix it. It isn't some Holy commandment to keep "knowledge flowing".
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure what you are talking about. There are people who have the job of providing Internet service in the country. They are just doing their job, trying to fix it. It isn't some Holy commandment to keep "knowledge flowing".
I'm talking about their bosses, the proverbial Powers That Be. Those people wouldn't be doing that job if the powers that be actually followed through on their rhetoric. They'd be told not to. And they'd obey, on pain of death. (That being the usual bar for disobeying said Powers in those countries.) Their jobs wouldn't even exist, if the rhetoric was meaningful. Instead, those jobs do exist, and the people doing them are allowed and encouraged to actually do them correctly, and might even be competen
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Good news? (Score:5, Funny)
Once people get it, it seems very very sticky.
I think that really depends on the kind of websites they're visiting.
Re: (Score:2)
Curious timing (Score:3)
The timing of this along with other events is more than a little curious, especially given who was affected.
An "anchor" (Score:3)
Yes, it was totally an "anchor" that cut it by accident. It definitely wasn't another nation state accidentally breaking it by trying to tap into it. No, nothing to see here, please move along...
Re: (Score:3)
Some ship anchors can weigh 75 tons or more, and the links in their chains can be as much as 500 pounds [pri.org]. Surely if that was dragging on the ocean floor it could cut a cable only a foot or two in diameter.
Re: (Score:3)
Some ship anchors can weigh 75 tons or more, and the links in their chains can be as much as 500 pounds [pri.org]. Surely if that was dragging on the ocean floor it could cut a cable only a foot or two in diameter.
And undersea cables are typically only about an inch in diameter. They're built for strength, but that has to be traded off against size and weight because bigger cables cost more to construct and cost more to lay. So while a layer of protective steel strands is wrapped around the optical fiber core, the steel is less than a half inch thick all in all, and the rest of the cable is various plastics, aluminum, copper and, of course, glass fiber. It can easily be cut by a dragging anchor.
Of Course It Was Days Long (Score:5, Funny)
They called and the guy said he'd be by to repair it sometime between the hours of 1:00-3:00PM on Monday, 8:00-10:30AM on Tuesday, or 8:00AM-5:00PM on Thursday. Come on, guys, it'll be on Thursday! That's the way it always is.
Tell you what: You just go ahead and take the whole day Thursday off, so you can take care of this. We'll stop proving fueling and logistics in support of Saudi war crimes during that window. I mean, I'm sure it might be hard dealing with MBS and his Washingtonian lapdogs, but I think all Americans can finally empathize knowing you have to deal with the cable guy.
Re: (Score:2)
Cable cuts can happen anywhere (Score:4, Informative)
The past several days teams have been working to repair a major fiber cut in the South Lake Union section of Seattle. That's the part of town where much of the big tech presence is.
Re: (Score:2)
SpaceX Starlink to the Rescue (Score:2)
"Over time, SpaceX intends to launch at least 12,000 -- and possibly as many as 42,000 -- "Starlink" internet satellites. Granted, this is a long-term, stretch goal, and it will take years to orbit all of the (tens of) thousands of satellites envisioned. But Elon Musk says Starlink will be able to begin delivering at least "moderate" internet coverage to many locations on Earth once SpaceX has gotten 800 satellites into or
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)