14 Comments

Internet failure hits two continents

Jan 31, 2008
by

Ok, I do not want to appear to be a panicky female but hey, isn’t this bad? I mean “Bob” whom I call on occasion to ensure my bank statements are accurate, lives in Dubai.

Our reliance on technology from other countries is an important pat of the globalization of our industry. I welcome it, yet now am curious as to the viability of the cable infrastructures that support this development. Apparently many Middle East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure. So I guess it is time to move away from cable all together now if possible for these regions that were affected? Makes sense to me.

Reports say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.

“Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East.” (CNN)

CNN is also reporting that the possible cause for the damage to the two undersea cables was due to a ship’s anchor. Besides the Internet, the outage caused major disruption to television and phone services, creating chaos for the UAE’s public and private sectors.

The Du internal memo called the situation in Dubai “critical” and stated that the cable’s operators did not know when services would be restored. My heart goes out to all of our internet comrades who are enduring this outage, I know personally I would be running around the house doing one of those shrieking “la,le-la-le,la-le,la, screams and pulling my hair out!

It is interesting yesterday one of my friends texted me a message trying to entice me off my computer to come out for dinner, his text read, “So you think this internet thing is just a fad?” My reply is now, not if we still have satellites.

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  • Tony Cohn

    Amazing. Can you imagine what would happen if we lost internet in the United States? How could I read revenews?

  • http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Let's just say there are a few companies right about now with large development projects overseas panicking just a little. This issue will correct itself soon..The two cables that were cut are the prime direct links between Europe, the Middle East, and south Asia – apparently Israel is unaffected thank goodness.

    Many comments across the forums are starting up now as the news is spreading…

  • http://billso.com/2008/01/31/internet-outage-affects-two-continents/ billso.com

    Internet outage affects two continents

    From VNUnet.com and UPI: Earlier today two undersea cables that carried Internet traffic to the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent was damaged. The outage is most noticeable in India, Pakistan, Kuwait and Dubai. Internet traffic has mostly…

  • http://finaltag.com Pranav Chavda

    I had no idea that the internet was "Dead" here in India – That's before I read the news in my RSS feeds.

    Seriously, I didn't catch the internet connection even blink for a fraction of a second. It's been steady as ever and the news reports all seem like one big rumor to me somehow.

  • http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    On this side the reports are relaying to us that this is quite serious. The "President" of the Internet Service Providers had the following to say:

    "Information-technology companies, software companies and call centers that provide online services to the UK or the US East Coast are the worst affected," said Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India."

    Article – http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h9BEBo-w_gSei…

    Pranav – Where is your location?

  • http://finaltag.com Pranav Chavda

    That's funny because It's all over the news, but nobody I've spoken to has experienced downtime!

    I'm in Bombay.

  • http://www.manishsingh.com/ Manish Singh

    Yes, its certainly a non-issue at least in Mumbai (Bombay). The only reason I know there is an Internet problem in my country right now is because its all over in the news.

  • http://www.leading-webpromotion.com/recommends/webhosting Boris C.

    Luckily Israel wasn't affected by internet failure, but i hear they speak about the topic in the news.

    Heather, from the post above i can assume, that you were glad, that it didn't happen to Israel.

    Why Israel is so important to you?

  • http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Hi Boris,

    India, Israel, Asia, these are all important technology developing regions and are our collective brethren in so many ways. I have many friends and teams of people that I and many companies in the US work with, we depend on their support and abilities to ensure that we all thrive and grow. Technology "our collective community" has no borders – we are all in essence one.

    Many of my top super affiliate friends, network partners and software investors and developers are in Israel as well as India and Asia. their success is vital to the collective community that we all share.

    Sababa!

  • http://leading-webpromotion.com/recommended/webhosting Boris C.

    (Sorry about multiple posts above)

    So there are probably a lot of affiliates in Israel?
    And i though i am the only one…

    Those are probably the ones i see ride on expesive cars…
    Do they all know paid search advertising?
    Are there any arabs among them?

  • Brian

    I am in Costa Rica and for the past 3 to 4 days I have only been able to access just over half of the URLs that I enter into my browser.

    It is very frustrating.

    My question is why are we having problems here in Costa Rica? It could be a separate problem local to Costa Rica, but maybe there is something bigger going on than currently reported?

  • Boris C.

    This Web 2.0 website apparently has comment submission problems, because i see some people post more than once same comment including myself.

    I think some of world's continents experience delays when accessing several domains. The intetnet outage probably caused delay in traffic routing system.

  • http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Hey Boris,

    I deleted the multiple posts no worries..Yes the news reports are coming in that a third line was cut – very unfortunate hope access is restored soon.. Reports are that Iran is completely down as far as internet and that potentially a fourth cable (speculation) was also cut.. Word on the blogs is this is fishy –

    http://www.therawfeed.com/2008/02/third-cable-cut…

    http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm

  • Mike

    These outages can easily happen on your doorstep too.

    Back in 2005 I was working on a cruise ship as the Internet Manager when we lost out internet. It turned out that some roadworks had cut through a major cable and all our satellite communications came through this junction – apparently the whole of New Jersey was affected!

    If we are reliant on just one route aren't we open to sabotage?