Internet Disruption in Middle East

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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:46 pm

Apparently, a large region of the Middle East (including Egypt) has sustained some sort of internet access outage today. I do not know if the Israeli satellite providers are online or not.

Anyone baiting someone in that area may experience delays in delivery of e-mails.

Bruin

Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 9:54 pm

BBC have an article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7218008.stm

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

Cable cut wouldnt cause that

5 coaxial submarine cables; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean), 1 Arabsat, and 1 Inmarsat; tropospheric scatter to Sudan; microwave radio relay to Israel; a participant in Medarabtel (1998)

India is serviced by israel sat, as is alexandria via 5 communication cables - source (mundi - africa is serviced by 1 massive underwater loop too.)

Without politics - because its difficult to explain otherwise - the link between egypt an israel where the cable picks up is via sat and microwave - so cutting any cable would have no effect, and those cables certainly dont service india - its on a different network entirely - something else has happened and we will have to probably wait 75 years to find the truth - but one thing is certain the cable being cut is impossible to cause that. (engineers would have almost certainly routed in redundancy, same as the indian ocean has more than 1 method)

EDIT: IPR Strategic Business Information Database, well anyway 4 different systems and 2 different loops - its not a cable cut - more than likely an accident but a cut cable cant cause that - when the uk - us cable was damaged in a earthquake - the systems other cables took the strain - yea it slowed things a little but no one really noticed same in the med - and the indian cable couldnt be in the med - check out google earth Twisted Evil

Edit 2

Ok this isnt a perfect map of how it is - ive used google earth to put the sat footprint in red, the backup footprint in black and the underwater routes of cable in red as lines - image

Notice theres a lot of land between egypt and india - well if you believe the news were fed these days you were not told that was there - the cable from egypt goes OVERLAND from saudi - laying continuous cables is not only expensive - but its best to keep them as short as possible and make them as useful as possible - no one in there right mind would lay any cable to circumnavigate saudi arabia one of the biggest forms of income for any company - which leaves a very big mystery.

Also europe and usa are not the be all and end all of the internet, nodes work as nodes - cut one the traffic will just go the other way - mostly out towards russia and via china etc i simply refuse to accept that cutting those cables in the med would knock out 2 continents - the net isnt built like that and common sense would tell ya india wouldnt just use uk/usa/europe they have other friends too lol.

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:26 am

^^D1^^

That hurt my brain . . . but I think I got it thanks to the picture.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

Yea when i read the story i thought hang on I know those cables they are important and yea they cause disruption if damaged but only while the system switched over 4 hours at most, i also know the india part cant be correct - there are communication cables under the indian ocean too but anyway the rough map i copied and filled in shows it doesnt just go down 1 direction, and everyone knows 1 pc if linked will find pc 4 even if it has to go via hong kong - cutting a cable almost the other side of the globe would only cause minor congestion, again within a few hours it would revert to other systems - what actually happened we will never know i guess, someone probably fell asleep and the gf plugged in a hair dryer into the main server lol

Had to be a woman - men wouldnt use a hair dryer Twisted Evil

No offence to our ladies but the story is very suspicous.

Actually thats more than likely what has happened some twit has switched off a small innocent looking machine - only that machine he turned off just so happens to be the hub for nearly quater of the net population.
It could explain the calls too - the machine as we rely more on them might simply be broke or such and not forwarding anything.

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:35 am

If the plug was going to be pulled by the men in the black helicopters, then the whole of the region would be cut off. According to the BBC, there is severe degradation in service, which will cause congestion and timeouts. The current thinking is that an anchor dragged both cables.

@D1 your map is simply not correct, the cable route for SEA-ME-WE 4 which is a major backbone pipe, can be seen here. Also, I take it you don't know the economics of laying telecomms cables - dropping it in the sea is far cheaper and safer than going overland (and yes, I do know of which I speak after nearly a quarter or a century in the telecomms business, half of that in network engineering). The cable is $500m for 20000km, which works out at around (in real money) �13/metre; cheap as chips compared to laying accross land.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

I didnt say my map was perfect, in fact i did add it wasnt perfect, but your cable and the other cables cant be cut at alexandra to take out the whole 2 continents - there simply isnt just 1 backbone in the entire region

The other side

You cut the cable at alexandra and singapore simply re-routes everything to usa / russia / china

Now if you cut that cable too then you would have the region effectively isolated - if i was to sabotage it - dont matter posting this no one could find the money to go do it so no danger of a lad going to snap cables you would need to sever both sides otherwise the dns servers in the usa still serve india Wink

And i think by two cables they mean 2 cables 1 each side thats the only way - and what are the chances of that happening its a million to 1 event that say taiwan and alexandra on the same day are stuck by anchors
alexandra important - essential but cause the disruption - not on its own.

EDIT: Ive just pulled up the cables as of 2004 image
It clearly shows a second backbone in the area, NOT connected directly to alexandra, the way the internet works you couldnt just cut a cable and that would be lights out - c'mon eamonn ya know this Wink

I do however fully agree it would cause congestion, as is reported and i fully think and agree its purely an accident - but what are the chances of it happening its not isolated either - reports are coming in about a second lot of cables cut - and i got it half right the second lot is in taiwan - coupled with alexandra is enough to cause the disruption - no men in helicopters tho - i never thought that i just thought hmmz as reported only alex wouldnt explain it - a second accident however does.

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:09 pm

It hasnt taken out the whole continent, it's caused a severe degradation of service which will mean bottlenecks and delays on alternate routes.

This is a BIG pipe that's gone down, it's a 1.28 Terabit DWDM system. You don't lose something like that and not have severe service issues.

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

I fully agree eamon, thats one hell of a big pipe, but looks like were both right lol, I like it when everyones right - theres been a second set of cuts near taiwan.
And the internet being the internet is finding its own way along now congested lines causing widescale timeouts and response times = dodgy connections.

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:35 pm

I was more right though Cool

(only kidding)

One thing to remember, somewhere, a lad is to blame...

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:47 pm

Brief explanation of the current state of play:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7219781.stm

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:35 pm

eamonn wrote:

a lad is to blame...

Yep. Mussad was trying to eliminate fraudstars on the Israeli satellite servers Laughing

j/k

... running from the mods ...

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 6:51 pm

bearkat419 wrote:

... running from the mods ...

it may be wiser to run from the Mossad... Wink

unless our mods are agents of.... and that will explain a few things...

Posted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:17 pm

^^ Watch it, HR - you're going to get us both in deep ... stuff Wink

Elite Baiter Joined: 02 Jul 2006 Posts: 1702

The general consensus is this was one big accident, just bad timing as the cuts co-incided with other cuts - but it did prove 1 thing the internet survives even the most brutal of errors etc. alright downloads would have been terribly slow but if you sent out an "sos we need help" it would have got through which is what the net was originally designed for - well sos we need arms mostly but heh its a technicallity that arpanet wasnt human friendly lol.

Theres information about the "Third" cut http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm

My sources are slow lol, but there it is now, if the final link is severed we know its deliberate lol, but so far just a freaky accident.

Baiting Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 12237

It appears that a 4th cable has been cut.

Click

Edit: I suspect this is why I am getting some strange IP headers from my lads, there must be some rerouting going on due to the cable cut.

203.188.202.147 Taiwan*
203.188.202.147 Taiwan*
203.188.202.147 Taiwan*
203.188.202.147 Taiwan*
202.43.196.224 United States*
217.12.4.214 United Kingdom*
216.252.122.218 United States*
69.147.65.174 United States*
77.220.0.102 Kenya*

Edit again: http://www.internettrafficreport.com/details.htm

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2008 11:10 pm

Damn these scrap-metal thieves...

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:52 pm

Whatever has caused it, it's a pain in the old behind for use over here. Until 2 days ago I didn't have Internet at home at all and in the office it was extremely slow. Now they seem to have fixed it at least in the UAE, but I hear from my colleagues in Qatar that they are still having major problems there.
Apparently it'll take them another week to fix it. I don't believe them, because something similar happened before (2005 I think) and back then it took them over one month to get things back to normal. All the while the user is obviously paying the bill - discounts for service outages? Nahhh, not here with the telecom monopolies still firmly in place Crying or Very sad

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:59 pm

@PastorF - me too. Lad started in Ghana, yesterday his IP puts him in Australia, today back in Ghana. Either that or he's nicked the transporter from the Enterprise! Very Happy

Hang about - if the signal was being re-routed, surely the originating IP would be the same though? Only the intermediary points would be different. Or am I missing something Confused

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

Not if the computer's IP address was temporarily reassigned because it was going through a different provider.

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:07 pm

The latest I have heard is that there have been four separate lines (undersea) damaged, which makes it less likely to have been an accident.

Bruin

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

Yes, some sharks have developed an appetite for fiber optic cable.

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:37 pm

Not to venture too far into the land of politics here, but... all kidding aside... it has been suggested that there is a particular nation with a current interest in cutting off the communications of another particular nation that it has been all-but threatening war with...

Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:42 pm

Looks like the number of cut cables is up to 5 now... linky Confused

419Eater is my life Joined: 18 May 2007 Posts: 428

Once is a coincidence. Twice is an act of God. Three times is enemy activity. And now we have five? What's that, all-out war?

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