Undersea Cable Damage Causes Internet Outages Across Africa (bloomberg.com) 28
Damage to at least three subsea cables off the west coast of Africa is disrupting internet services across the continent. From a report: The West Africa Cable System, MainOne and ACE sea cables -- arteries for telecommunications data -- were all affected on Thursday, triggering outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers, according to data from internet analysis firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare. The cause of the cable faults has not yet been determined.
Data show a major disruption to connectivity in eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia and Benin being the most affected, NetBlocks, an internet watchdog, said in a post on X. Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon are among other countries impacted. Several companies have also reported service disruptions in South Africa. "This is a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come," said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik. The cable faults off the Ivory Coast come less than a month after three telecommunications cables were severed in the Red Sea, highlighting the vulnerability of critical communications infrastructure.
Data show a major disruption to connectivity in eight West African countries, with Ivory Coast, Liberia and Benin being the most affected, NetBlocks, an internet watchdog, said in a post on X. Ghana, Nigeria, and Cameroon are among other countries impacted. Several companies have also reported service disruptions in South Africa. "This is a devastating blow to internet connectivity along the west coast of Africa, which will be operating in a degraded state for weeks to come," said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis firm Kentik. The cable faults off the Ivory Coast come less than a month after three telecommunications cables were severed in the Red Sea, highlighting the vulnerability of critical communications infrastructure.
The hacker tourist, circa 1996 (Score:4, Interesting)
For more technical context, I recommend reading this article. It is an oldie but a goodie.
Re:Microwave Network was Better (Score:4, Informative)
Microwave network can be taken out by one idiot with a club. Just smack the antenna a few times and it will no longer be locked onto the other point even if it does survive. And its range limitations are utterly crippling, making it as much of a competitor for undersea intercontinental cables as carrier pigeons.
Which is why it's been replaced with fiberoptic networks everywhere where range, bandwidth and reliability matter. Yes, including nuclear warfare. Microwave is better than radio against that, and way worse than fiber.
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I can secure the endpoints of a microwave link more easily than a fiber cable. All it takes is a couple of people with M16s.
Re:Microwave Network was Better (Score:4, Informative)
You're going to need a hell of a lot of automation to secure two towers with just two guys with automatic rifles, considering how easy it is to just throw something at it and damage it. Not to mention ensuring that no one flies a simple drone between them with a simple reflector. I can tell you never had to do that kind of security, or even think about it. I'm guessing either no military experience, or you went into a nerd field where basic securing of your location was just glossed over?
As opposed to termination point of a sea cable, which is often fully bunkered, and doesn't even need one guy with an automatic rifle on duty. You just need general society to be functional, so that when someone starts to try to burn through the bunker doors, all the noise and illumination that makes alerts local police who come to see what is going on. And to jeopardize cable itself, in shallows you will need something that can dig it out of the couple meters deep ditch, and then able to chew through the armour. There are ships with specific tooling to do this, but this is so complex that it generally requires large state actors to get to the level where this capability is available. When you get to deep waters, they're typically not buried, but still armoured, so you can drag a heavy vessel's anchor over it a few times and probably manage to punch through eventually. That's still a multi-billion dollar vessel needed to perform the task.
As compared to a few hundred for a hobby drone to go between microwave towers with a reflector.
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A fence topped with barbed wire and four soldiers with automatic rifles is AIUI what secured the NATO microwave tower near where I grew up. Of course, that was before everyone and his dog had aerial drones.
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That sounds like actual professionals did the security cordon. Cleared out terrain, protective fencing, guards in numbers sufficient to be working in shifts.
Still can be disrupted by attack with a drone obviously, but nominally secure from low effort attack and sufficient security while society is functional.
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considering how easy it is to just throw something at it and damage it
You can throw something (effectively) at 500 yards?
Whereas, you can cut fiber cables on land. Excavators are pretty easy to operate (seeing as how we have a homeless guy here who keeps stealing them to build himself a shack). Orange vests make you look like you belong. And you can call 811 and have the telephone company come out and mark the cable location for you.
That's still a multi-billion dollar vessel needed to perform the task.
Evidently you are unfamiliar with the used vessel market. Old bottom trawling boats and rigs can be had pretty cheap. And you're going to want t
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>You can throw something (effectively) at 500 yards?
Ah, so you need to clear terrain around it first. How long on average does it take "two guys with M16s" to clear throwing radius around the tower from places to conceal oneself for a throw? Do they do it by hand, since they have only m16s, or are we assuming at least basic field shovels and axes? How will they enforce this 24/7/365?
Again, this is telling that you never had to actually think about site security. You don't understand anything about how it
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How long on average does it take "two guys with M16s" to clear throwing radius around the tower from places to conceal oneself for a throw?
About as long as it takes to deploy the modern version of a Daisy Cutter.
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Right, that certainly is going to clear that tower out of the way nicely.
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Please explain how you plan on creating a point-to-point line-of-sight microwave network that can span an ocean. The only possible answer that doesn't involve deploying thousands of complex and failure-prone self-balancing and orienting bouys that are magically storm and wave resistant would be a satellite network that can carry the same throughput as undersea cables, and that doesn't exist.
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It is my understanding that starlink is not nearly as fast as standard internet. Starlink is only for cases when there is no other option.
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It is my understanding that starlink is not nearly as fast as standard internet. Starlink is only for cases when there is no other option.
So, large parts of impoverished third-world shitholes like the USA and Australia, then?
Re: Microwave Network was Better (Score:3)
This seems like a good idea.
Until you remember that the Earth isn't flat.
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Earth isn't flat
Wait! What!? [wikipedia.org]
No problem (Score:2, Funny)
Re: No problem (Score:2)
Peruse the map (Score:5, Interesting)
There's also Neal Stephenson's feature article for Wired [wired.com] (from 1996!) as he traces the route of a new cable being laid.
Re:bad neighbors (Score:4, Informative)
I don't usually respond to ACs, but this comment demonstrates tremendous ignorance of political geography. The Houthis are based in Yemen (the Arabian peninsula); the outages are along the cost of west Africa. The Houthis are about as far from these cables (5000 km) as Peru is from Washington DC. You may as well claim the Irish Republican Army took out cables in NYC. Dumbass.
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Yet, the Houthi attacks have somewhat decreased sea traffic through the Suez canal and correspondingly, increased the one around the west coast of Africa, and this could be in a direct relation to the incident.