Microsoft's Cloud Services Disrupted by Red Sea Cable Cuts (bbc.com) 40
An anonymous reader shared this report from the BBC:
Microsoft's Azure cloud services have been disrupted by undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea, the US tech giant says.
Users of Azure — one of the world's leading cloud computing platforms — would experience delays because of problems with internet traffic moving through the Middle East, the company said. Microsoft did not explain what might have caused the damage to the undersea cables, but added that it had been able to reroute traffic through other paths.
Over the weekend, there were reports suggesting that undersea cable cuts had affected the United Arab Emirates and some countries in Asia.... On Saturday, NetBlocks, an organisation that monitors internet access, said a series of undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea had affected internet services in several countries, including India and Pakistan.
"We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East," Microsoft said in their status announcement — while stressing that traffic "that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted".
Users of Azure — one of the world's leading cloud computing platforms — would experience delays because of problems with internet traffic moving through the Middle East, the company said. Microsoft did not explain what might have caused the damage to the undersea cables, but added that it had been able to reroute traffic through other paths.
Over the weekend, there were reports suggesting that undersea cable cuts had affected the United Arab Emirates and some countries in Asia.... On Saturday, NetBlocks, an organisation that monitors internet access, said a series of undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea had affected internet services in several countries, including India and Pakistan.
"We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East," Microsoft said in their status announcement — while stressing that traffic "that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted".
On the internet, no one can tell you're a dog (Score:4, Interesting)
but they can tell if you're on the other side of a war zone when your connection to civilization drops because of the war.
Geography matters a little less than it did before the internet, but it still matters.
Re: On the internet, no one can tell you're a dog (Score:4, Interesting)
There's been some debate in military science circles about whether it is more conducive to victory to kill an enemy combatant and put him out of the fight for good, or to merely wound and incapacitate him but keep him alive and sucking down resources at home.
The debate has not been conclusively settled. But what is clear is that diverting your adversary's resources away from the front line by causing havoc and committing sabotage away from the front line is a low-risk, high-reward exercise.
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Re:On the internet, no one can tell you're a dog (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they suffer no repercussions?
Re:On the internet, no one can tell you're a dog (Score:5, Interesting)
What does Russia have to do with Red Sea cable cuts? The BBC article only mentioned Russia in the context of Baltic Sea cables. This is most probably the Houthis.
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not much their style. also, trump said they capitulated ... (wink wink)
more likely mossad.
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Re: On the internet, no one can tell you're a dog (Score:1)
Yeah and I'm gonna get a bug-out cabin deep in the woods somewhere in case shtf. The only problem I have yet to solve is how I traverse the mass of humanity between me and it, should srhtf.
Geography matters. Natural resources matter. The industrial capacity to exploit them matters. The military strength to defend it all against aggressors matters.
Why not use low earth orbit satellites instead? (Score:2)
Just use laser communication. Send the signal from ground station to satellite, then satellite to satellite across space .. it will have less loss than inside a glass fiber. The laser aim won't even have to be exact because the beam would spread out over a few hundred km.
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Just use laser communication. Send the signal from ground station to satellite, then satellite to satellite across space ...
Obviously, somewhere in that link: ... from shark to shark ...
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Nah, light travels too slow in water. In the atmosphere although it's travels at about 99.9% c while in fiber it's slowed to ~66% c.
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The index of refraction of sea water is about 1.333. The index of refraction of most glass is between 1.45 and 1.95, or typically about 1.5. That corresponds to the speed of light in each medium being about 0.75 c and 0.66 c respectively.
TL/DR: the speed of light in sea water is faster than in glass.
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As you might have noticed if you read my post, I didn't even look up nor try to compute the speed of light in water. This is a discussion about sharks with laser on their head duh!
Re:Why not use low earth orbit satellites instead? (Score:5, Informative)
Clouds and rain tend to mess with light.
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That would just cause indiscriminate mayhem. You'd take out your own satellites too.
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That would just cause indiscriminate mayhem. You'd take out your own satellites too.
Taking out all satellites would do more harm to the US than any other country. The US relies on them a lot more than any other military. Obviously they have backups and contingencies. But it would degrade Intel, targeting, and navigation. The Navy had to make changes because they got too reliant on GPS.
Civilian navigation would be a disaster in the US. I still keep a road atlas in my car. But I know a lot of folks who can't read a map
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It would also harm and thus piss off the rest of the world. Giving not just the USA motivation to come after you, but also Europe, Asia, Africa, and more outside a few outliers like North Korea.
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Would gravel work? Wouldn't it have to be something with more mass (like tungsten carbide bearings) such that it would vaporize upon collision otherwise it would just drill a hole to some stopping depth instead of causing whole satellite disintegration.
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Nautilus is AVD (Score:2)
Is this why the DOD's cloud service (Nautilus) that uses Microsoft's Azure Virtual Desktop was down? Someone might have some explaining to do about why that traffic was headed overseas.....
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maybe those alternate paths do traverse the middle east?
Microsoft rerouted? (Score:2)
Isn't tcp/ip - or "the Internet" - supposed to be do this sort of thing automagically?
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Yes, you send your packet to the next router and it decides which router to send it to next.
But BGP is how the core routers decide which router to send it to next.
Roughly Microsoft can say "hey, this IP block is over here" with a BGP announcement. If everything is set up right the IP's that were in Herzliya [middleeasteye.net] a minute ago could be in Estonia in a few minutes. Hopefully redundancy and failover was properly configured.
Cable security drones (Score:1)
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The torpedo is probably overkill, the main job should be the identify the culprits. The main perps probably send low-paid minions to actually do the work, and nobody will care if their minions take the fall.
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the vessel was "highly suspicious". It had only one cargo record in the past year and was in poor condition, "but they were still sailing that ship around the Taiwan Strait". The ship had gone by multiple names, deliberately concealed information about the vessel's owner. Ships typically move in a circular motion around the anchor, but [this ship] sailed in a zigzag pattern around the cable.
Another court case is ongoing [euractiv.com].
Good Job. Cut 'em all (Score:1)
A period talking to your neighbours rather than arguing with random anonymous people across the world might do us some good.
Global economic and political chaos. Meh! Bring it on.