RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Today's MIT Technology Review newsletter contains an article by John Borland, aided in large part by Tim Strong of Telegeography Research, covering the recent spate of submarine cable failures in the ME: Analyzing the Internet Collapse By John Borland | Feb 5, 2008 MIT Technology Review Multiple fiber cuts to undersea cables show the fragility of the Internet at its choke points. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854 -- A few afterthoughts after receiving a number of offlist mailings responding to my earlier post of yesterday concerning the naval submarine, Jimmy Carter: My comments weren't intended as disparagement or as a means of denigrating most of the excellent material that was posted on this subject. They were, instead, merely cautionary in nature, intended primarily for students who frequent NANOG for research and general interest, after noticing some folk lore and widely-held misconceptions being introduced into the thread. Upon re-reading those, however, they turn out to be mostly trivial, at worst. Besides, some would argue that passing down folk lore to the next generation of practitioners is not only a good thing, but a necessary thing, lest we get too caught up in being precise ;) On my posting about the naval submarine Jimmy Carter, that was half-intended as entertainment, although some of the dubious-seeming points made in that article have now been borne out in later releases by Egypt's telecommunications ministry in asserting that, indeed, there were no vessels in the waters surrounding the breaks, as is also noted in the reference MIT TR article above. Frank A. Coluccio DTI Consulting Inc. 347-526-6788
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:11:13 -0600 Frank Coluccio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Today's MIT Technology Review newsletter contains an article by John Borland, aided in large part by Tim Strong of Telegeography Research, covering the recent spate of submarine cable failures in the ME: Analyzing the Internet Collapse By John Borland | Feb 5, 2008 MIT Technology Review Multiple fiber cuts to undersea cables show the fragility of the Internet at its choke points. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854 Good article; thanks. My own summary is at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2008-02/2008-02-04.html --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
There is an important point to make here. The word 'cut' is misleading as it suggests that someone cut it. The correct terminology is 'non-operational cable'. Shakespeare faces no competition from my industry ... Most cable failures occur when deep ocean currents rub the cable against rocks and erode the cladding until water hits the copper that carries power through the cable to the undersea repeaters. At that point the individual fibers have little protection and it is not long before those fibers are cut or sufficiently bent by pounding against a rocky surface to degrade the signal to the point where it is useless. In other words, the very terminology we use tends to suggest misleading that there had to be an agent - a doer. And as noted, all it really takes is bending a fiber sufficiently to knock it out. Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com Wireless: 1-212-444-8829. Landline: 33-1-4346-3209. French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] said: A few afterthoughts after receiving a number of offlist mailings responding to my earlier post of yesterday concerning the naval submarine, Jimmy Carter I will have to read up on that boat. apropos this subthread, I recommend these two books (I've read both) that lend insight to what can be candelstinedly accomplished below the surface: Dark Waters: Insider's account of the NR-1 http://www.nr-1-book.com/ NR-1 http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/nr-1.htm Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage By Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew http://books.google.com/books?id=IpUggPJL4t4Cprintsec=frontcovervq=blind+man s+bluff SSN-21 Seawolf-class http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/ssn-21.htm =JeffH
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Analyzing the Internet Collapse analysing press sensationalist hyperbole http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854 not bad. but no new insight and facts differ from other reports (marsailles). randy
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
For Lebanon: Here is the MPT's web site on submarine cables: http://www.mpt.gov.lb/berytar.htm It has links to aletar and cadmos as well. Chip Sharp Marshall Eubanks wrote: Dear Sean; Do you know how Syria, Jordan and Lebanon get their connectivity ? They have dropped off the map today for us. (Or maybe yesterday - I wasn't able to pay any attention to this yesterday.) Our Egyptian audience remains very low, while Iran still seems to be unaffected. Regards Marshall On Feb 3, 2008, at 6:52 PM, Sean Donelan wrote: A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
I disagree... I think information warfare tactic could easily be terrorism, though I can't see why this particular event could/would be terrorism. Disrupting a major network like the Internet WITHIN the US could definitely be a form of terrorism... I think anything which maliciously disrupts a huge portions of a nation's day-to-day activities would be cause for concern for many folk, especially the telecommunications infrastructure. However, I'm not sure what the mindset of the terrorist would be even if they fully succeeded what is proposed would be the terrorist's plan - even if we lost totally connectivity with the middle east, or even what's considered friendly countries... as long as the information is flowing at home, nobody's going to be filling their swimming pools full of drinking water. I imagine the mindset would be different if you were a small country loosing a substantial portion of it's communication channels with the outside world... -Patrick - Original Message - From: Mark Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Martin Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED], nanog@merit.edu Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2008 11:12:46 PM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles Subject: Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) On 04/02/2008, at 4:38 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote: I agree with Rod Beck as far as the speculations go. It could be terror, Well, no, it couldn't be. Nobody is being terrorized by this. How can it possibly be a terrorist incident? If it's deliberate, it might be described as an information warfare tactic. But not terrorism. (visions of some guy sitting a in cave with a pair of wet boltcutters laughing maniacally to himself, cackling, Ha-ha! Now their daytraders will get upset, and teenagers will get their porn _slower_! Die American scum! Doesn't really work, does it?) Politicians have succeeded in watering down the definition of the word terrorism to the point where it no longer has any meaning. But we're rational adults, not politicians, right? If we can't get it right, who will? - mark -- Mark Newton Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (W) Network Engineer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (H) Internode Systems Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82282999 Network Man - Anagram of Mark Newton Mobile: +61-416-202-223
[admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism. Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread. -alex [NANOG MLC Chair] On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Patrick Clochesy wrote: I disagree... I think information warfare tactic could easily be terrorism, though I can't see why this particular event could/would be terrorism. Disrupting a major network like the Internet WITHIN the US could definitely be a form of terrorism... I think anything which maliciously disrupts a huge portions of a nation's day-to-day activities would be cause for concern for many folk, especially the telecommunications infrastructure. However, I'm not sure what the mindset of the terrorist would be even if they fully succeeded what is proposed would be the terrorist's plan - even if we lost totally connectivity with the middle east, or even what's considered friendly countries... as long as the information is flowing at home, nobody's going to be filling their swimming pools full of drinking water. I imagine the mindset would be different if you were a small country loosing a substantial portion of it's communication channels with the outside world... -Patrick - Original Message - From: Mark Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Martin Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED], nanog@merit.edu Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2008 11:12:46 PM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles Subject: Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) On 04/02/2008, at 4:38 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote: I agree with Rod Beck as far as the speculations go. It could be terror, Well, no, it couldn't be. Nobody is being terrorized by this. How can it possibly be a terrorist incident? If it's deliberate, it might be described as an information warfare tactic. But not terrorism. (visions of some guy sitting a in cave with a pair of wet boltcutters laughing maniacally to himself, cackling, Ha-ha! Now their daytraders will get upset, and teenagers will get their porn _slower_! Die American scum! Doesn't really work, does it?) Politicians have succeeded in watering down the definition of the word terrorism to the point where it no longer has any meaning. But we're rational adults, not politicians, right? If we can't get it right, who will? - mark
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Two days from Alexandria to the Gulf? Pull the other one. And you can't go through the Suez Canal submerged. On Mon, Feb 4, 2008 at 2:25 PM, Frank Coluccio [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This will be my only post on this subject after biting my tongue for several days:) Some members will appreciate this item I came across earlier, I'm sure. As always, caveat emptor. Where is the USS Jimmy Carter? By Dave | February 3, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/3y7zgu List members -- and lurking students, in particular, should NOT take much of what's been posted _on _this _topic _ too seriously or regard everything written as factual. This cautionary note applies equally to the article I've posted above, as well. 73s,
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
This will be my only post on this subject after biting my tongue for several days:) Some members will appreciate this item I came across earlier, I'm sure. As always, caveat emptor. Where is the USS Jimmy Carter? By Dave | February 3, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/3y7zgu List members -- and lurking students, in particular, should NOT take much of what's been posted _on _this _topic _ too seriously or regard everything written as factual. This cautionary note applies equally to the article I've posted above, as well. 73s,
Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Feb 4, 2008, at 4:29 AM, Alex Pilosov wrote: This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism. Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread. In all the fuss about terrorism, people may be forgetting that the terrorists have goals *other* than terrorism, and one of those is reducing the influence of the West over the Middle East. Removing internet connections certainly is an effective (and probably necessary) step in that direction. Even if this was accidental, it will have made them more aware of the possibility. Which leads me to my operational question. If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq?
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 08:25:44AM -0600, Frank Coluccio wrote: This will be my only post on this subject after biting my tongue for several days:) Some members will appreciate this item I came across earlier, I'm sure. As always, caveat emptor. Another paranoid suggestion I have seen is that the cuts were intended to force traffic rerouting so that the traffic might pass through one or more 'compromised' nodes for inspection. No mention of little green people yet. Where is the USS Jimmy Carter? By Dave | February 3, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/3y7zgu List members -- and lurking students, in particular, should NOT take much of what's been posted _on _this _topic _ too seriously or regard everything written as factual. This cautionary note applies equally to the article I've posted above, as well. 73s, -- -=[L]=- Honorable Factotem
RE: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
I have not looked at a map. My guess is that most of these cables are linear - point-to-point. Obviously a more robust architecture is a ring. All TransAtlantic cables are rings, but can you justify the economic cost of a ring architecture to serve relatively small countries? Hmm ... Despite the needless worrying about terrorism, the single most important factor is how well a cable is buried. Deeper is better and more expensive. To bury a cable, you dig a deep trench, drop the cable in it, and let Nature cover it. Nature is very good at doing so ... Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com
Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On 2/4/08, Kee Hinckley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq? While reading the hacker tourist article someone posted from Wired many years ago, it mentioned that as the FO cable comes closer to shore, more extreme measures are taken to protect it, including fluidizing the sand underneath the cable to cause the cable to sink under, and then stopping the fluidizing process so the sand compacts above it. I'm unsure how practical this would be along a substantial link of cable though. (Although, burying the cable under compact sand seems like it would protect it from a whole host of dangers). -brandon
Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Alex Pilosov wrote: This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism. Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread. -alex [NANOG MLC Chair] Agreed. In December of 2005, for reasons entirely personal, I read every paper available at the Dudley Knox (Naval Post Graduate School) and the Air University (Maxwell AFB) Libraries mentioned in Greta Marlatt's 06/00 IO bibliography -- Information Warfare Information Operations (IW/IO). A Bibliography, Documents, Theses Technical Reports. This is a snap-shot of where IO was five year ago. People who want to flesh out a modern IO reading list please mail me (off-list) your URLs. In a nutshell, there were many, many operationally unsophisticated and more-dangerous-to-self-then-other ideas in these papers, in addition to alot of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) Wonder-Cruft, and a lot of it was blatent fund-me stuff. My two beads worth, Eric
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Feb 4, 2008 9:33 AM, Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's obviously the KGB, which wants the world to be dependent on Russia for oil :-) On a more serious note... who benefits from repairing of these lines? -Jim P.
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
It's obviously the KGB, which wants the world to be dependent on Russia for oil All Russians please report to their nearest FBI office for execution and subsequent interrogation ... Regards, Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com
RE: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
The US Navy will deploy their killer ninja dolphins to bottlenose any wrong doers :@) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kee Hinckley Sent: 04 February 2008 17:08 To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) On Feb 4, 2008, at 4:29 AM, Alex Pilosov wrote: This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism. Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread. In all the fuss about terrorism, people may be forgetting that the terrorists have goals *other* than terrorism, and one of those is reducing the influence of the West over the Middle East. Removing internet connections certainly is an effective (and probably necessary) step in that direction. Even if this was accidental, it will have made them more aware of the possibility. Which leads me to my operational question. If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq?
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Generally speaking, it is the undersea cable maintence folks who benefit since they do the repairs. Alcatel, Global Marine, Tyco Submarine, to name a few. It is common practice to use the same company that laid the cable, but it is not an obligation. Contracts are structured as an annual charge with a per incident fee. Right now these charges are going up as fuel costs rise. Regards, Roderick S. Beck Director of European Sales Hibernia Atlantic 1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com
Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Brandon Galbraith wrote: While reading the hacker tourist article someone posted from Wired many years ago, it mentioned that as the FO cable comes closer to shore, more extreme measures are taken to protect it, including fluidizing the sand underneath the cable to cause the cable to sink under, and then stopping the fluidizing process so the sand compacts above it. I'm unsure how practical this would be along a substantial link of cable though. (Although, burying the cable under compact sand seems like it would protect it from a whole host of dangers). -brandon I have spent a few hours on a cable repair ship in the Med. Fascinating - highly recommended. This ship was sent to repair multiple spots of a cable that was cut about 1km from the shore. There was a gas pipeline that was laid across it and they built special concrete bridges in the water that were laid on top the fiber cable so that the fiber cable would be in the tunnel under the mini-bridge and the pipeline was laid on top. Worked well for the first few months. But the weight kept bearing down and the concrete bridge sunk deeper and deeper into the sand - and eventually the bridge tunnel acted as a guillotine and severed the underlying fiber. So much for the best laid plans of fish and men. -Hank
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 22:56:39 -0500 (EST) Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Caution: upon further research it appears there may be some language misscommunication in some of the reports; and some of the outages may be multiple reports of the same incidents. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February115.xmlsection=theuae Confirming international media reports, an Etisalat official yesterday told Khaleej Times that the cable network was not completely severed, though the damage slowed down the already affected system. He did not give any further details regarding the cause of damage. [...] This is the third incident of its kind in the area since January 30 since the cables were first damaged in the Mediterranean and then off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and south Asia. FLAG restoration update information: http://www.flagtelecom.com/media/PDF_files/Submarine%20Cable%20Cut%20Update%20Bulletin%20Release%20030208.pdf http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21567email=html is probably as authoritative a source as one can find for what happened. It says there were two cuts in the Mediterranean (SEA-ME-WE 4 near Marseille) and Flag Telecom's Europe-Asia cable near Alexandria. The Flag Telecom Falcon cable was cut between UAE and Oman, and the Qatar-UAE cable failed due to a power issue. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Kee Hinckley wrote: Which leads me to my operational question. If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq? The other answer is to be less dependent on the cables. Some communications need to be long distance -- talking to a specific person in a far away place, setting up import/export deals, calling tech support -- but a lot don't. E-mailing or VOIP calling your neighbors, looking at web sites for local businesses, reading your local newspaper or accessing other local content, or telecommuting across town, all ought to be able to be done locally, without dependence on international infrastructure. Yet we keep seeing articles about outages of Internet and long distance telephone networks, implying that this Internet thing we've all been working on is pretty fragile compared to the old fashioned phone networks we've been trying to replace. The report from Renesys (http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break_part.shtml) looks at outages in connectivity to India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt. I'll assume that those areas probably did keep some local connectivity. India has its NIXI exchanges, although my understanding is that they're not as well used as one might hope. Saudi Arabia has a monopoly international transit provider, which should have the effect of keeping local traffic local. Egypt has an exchange point. I don't know about Pakistan or Kuwait. Unfortunately, little else works without DNS. Pakistan and India have DNS root servers, but Pakistan's .PK ccTLD is served entirely from the US. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt all have servers for their local ccTLDs, but do not have local root DNS servers. Of that list, only India has both the root and their ccTLD hosted locally. And then there's the rest of the services people use. Being able to get to DNS doesn't help people talk to their neighbors if both they and their neighbors are using mail services in far away places, for instance. -Steve
Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Hey, me next! Or it could be a US (or other) attempt to disrupt some terrorist operation in progress which was designed to be coordinated over the internet. I think all this speculation, at best, just reveals the limitations of peoples' imaginations. Is there any triangulation of disruption for the cable cuts? Just curious, but that's a bit more operational in nature. -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
RE: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
My experience is that a lot of the BB providers route through NAPs/MAEs when they have local peering. The Internet IS more brittle than it needs to be, because routing seems to be a lot more static than it should be. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Gibbard Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 12:39 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Kee Hinckley wrote: Which leads me to my operational question. If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq? The other answer is to be less dependent on the cables. Some communications need to be long distance -- talking to a specific person in a far away place, setting up import/export deals, calling tech support -- but a lot don't. E-mailing or VOIP calling your neighbors, looking at web sites for local businesses, reading your local newspaper or accessing other local content, or telecommuting across town, all ought to be able to be done locally, without dependence on international infrastructure. Yet we keep seeing articles about outages of Internet and long distance telephone networks, implying that this Internet thing we've all been working on is pretty fragile compared to the old fashioned phone networks we've been trying to replace. The report from Renesys (http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break _part.shtml) looks at outages in connectivity to India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt. I'll assume that those areas probably did keep some local connectivity. India has its NIXI exchanges, although my understanding is that they're not as well used as one might hope. Saudi Arabia has a monopoly international transit provider, which should have the effect of keeping local traffic local. Egypt has an exchange point. I don't know about Pakistan or Kuwait. Unfortunately, little else works without DNS. Pakistan and India have DNS root servers, but Pakistan's .PK ccTLD is served entirely from the US. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt all have servers for their local ccTLDs, but do not have local root DNS servers. Of that list, only India has both the root and their ccTLD hosted locally. And then there's the rest of the services people use. Being able to get to DNS doesn't help people talk to their neighbors if both they and their neighbors are using mail services in far away places, for instance. -Steve
Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Dear Sean; Do you know how Syria, Jordan and Lebanon get their connectivity ? They have dropped off the map today for us. (Or maybe yesterday - I wasn't able to pay any attention to this yesterday.) Our Egyptian audience remains very low, while Iran still seems to be unaffected. Regards Marshall On Feb 3, 2008, at 6:52 PM, Sean Donelan wrote: A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Sean, do you have any URLs with additional info on the new cut? Questions are being asked. Marc -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 6:52 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ DOHA (AFP) . An undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, disrupting services, telecommunications provider Qtel said on Sunday, the latest such incident in less than a week. The cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das on Friday, Qtel's head of communications Adel al Mutawa told AFP. On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Marcus H. Sachs wrote: Sean, do you have any URLs with additional info on the new cut? Questions are being asked. Marc -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 6:52 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
y'all, there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US prelude to war with iran. while i don't claim to know much about whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/attention_iran_is_not_disconne_1.shtml we (renesys) have been tracking (at layer 3) this set of outages (see the previous 3 postings at: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break_part_1.shtml and http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break_part.shtml for a view of this from a routing perspective among out peer set) and iran is not even one of the 10 most affacted countries. it certainly all seems suspcious and worrisome, but it does not seem that iran is the target of a competent campaign to disrupt its telecommunications (slashdot paranoia notwithstanding). i'll be interested to hear more about what is found about the physical layer causes. t. -- _ todd underwood +1 603 643 9300 x101 renesys corporationgeneral manager babbledog [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.renesys.com/blog
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
So is this cause for concern or just business as usual with respect to the daily operations of USFO cables? Seems somewhat out of place to have four within five days but then it might be only slightly abnormal and amplified by the media paying more attention. -Original Message- From: Sean Donelan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 8:22 PM To: Marcus H. Sachs Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ DOHA (AFP) . An undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, disrupting services, telecommunications provider Qtel said on Sunday, the latest such incident in less than a week. The cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das on Friday, Qtel's head of communications Adel al Mutawa told AFP. On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Marcus H. Sachs wrote: Sean, do you have any URLs with additional info on the new cut? Questions are being asked. Marc -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 6:52 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Caution: upon further research it appears there may be some language misscommunication in some of the reports; and some of the outages may be multiple reports of the same incidents. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February115.xmlsection=theuae Confirming international media reports, an Etisalat official yesterday told Khaleej Times that the cable network was not completely severed, though the damage slowed down the already affected system. He did not give any further details regarding the cause of damage. [...] This is the third incident of its kind in the area since January 30 since the cables were first damaged in the Mediterranean and then off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and south Asia. FLAG restoration update information: http://www.flagtelecom.com/media/PDF_files/Submarine%20Cable%20Cut%20Update%20Bulletin%20Release%20030208.pdf
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Todd Underwood wrote: there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US prelude to war with iran. while i don't claim to know much about whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job: An extremely poor job if that was the intent. According to SLAC, throughput to Iran actually improved. https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean If the intent was to cut off Iran, they're picking the wrong cables. TAE goes across the northern part of Iran http://taeint.net/en/network/middle/ FLAG via UAE, SE-ME-WE-3 (not 4), ITOUR and KAFOS Sometimes concicidences are concidences.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Hi, anyone with a source of unadulterated information from an operational point of view about this cuts. A search on the Net is springing up a lot of speculative whodunits. Reason is, how will the affected regions get round this issue before the repairs are done. First thought would be to set up satellite links, not as good but better than nothing. Raymond Sean Donelan wrote: On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Todd Underwood wrote: there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US prelude to war with iran. while i don't claim to know much about whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job: An extremely poor job if that was the intent. According to SLAC, throughput to Iran actually improved. https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean If the intent was to cut off Iran, they're picking the wrong cables. TAE goes across the northern part of Iran http://taeint.net/en/network/middle/ FLAG via UAE, SE-ME-WE-3 (not 4), ITOUR and KAFOS Sometimes concicidences are concidences.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
Marshall: I don't see any cables for Lebanon. I also don't see any cable for Syria. I see Falcon coming down an estuary on an edge border for Jordan. In proximity, Israel has some redundancy, although I don't have the granularity to strip out the specific cables. It looks like a branch to me, a splice point in a cable that happens under the water, which allows for multi-directional paths from a single cable. I would think that route-views would have any of what you may need to track down what's going on advertisement wise, and for free. Best, Marty On Feb 3, 2008 7:33 PM, Marshall Eubanks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dear Sean; Do you know how Syria, Jordan and Lebanon get their connectivity ? They have dropped off the map today for us. (Or maybe yesterday - I wasn't able to pay any attention to this yesterday.) Our Egyptian audience remains very low, while Iran still seems to be unaffected. Regards Marshall On Feb 3, 2008, at 6:52 PM, Sean Donelan wrote: A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates. This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables. Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On 04/02/2008, at 4:38 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote: I agree with Rod Beck as far as the speculations go. It could be terror, Well, no, it couldn't be. Nobody is being terrorized by this. How can it possibly be a terrorist incident? If it's deliberate, it might be described as an information warfare tactic. But not terrorism. (visions of some guy sitting a in cave with a pair of wet boltcutters laughing maniacally to himself, cackling, Ha-ha! Now their daytraders will get upset, and teenagers will get their porn _slower_! Die American scum! Doesn't really work, does it?) Politicians have succeeded in watering down the definition of the word terrorism to the point where it no longer has any meaning. But we're rational adults, not politicians, right? If we can't get it right, who will? - mark -- Mark Newton Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (W) Network Engineer Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (H) Internode Systems Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82282999 Network Man - Anagram of Mark Newton Mobile: +61-416-202-223
Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)
On Feb 4, 2008 12:38 AM, Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Todd Underwood wrote: there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US prelude to war with iran. while i don't claim to know much about whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job: An extremely poor job if that was the intent. According to SLAC, throughput to Iran actually improved. https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean If the intent was to cut off Iran, they're picking the wrong cables. TAE goes across the northern part of Iran Where are you seeing that? I can only see access to Iran through the Gulf of Oman and Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea doesn't appear to have any cables. The only service to Iran that seems logical, or that I can see, is via Kuwait City and across the Gulf. Nothing appears to go through the Straight of Hormuz without touchdown in Oman or the UAE. I would hope that there is significant terrestrial cooperation in the region all considered, but I don't know anything about Med terrestrial networks. I agree with Rod Beck as far as the speculations go. It could be terror, but it's just not that interesting and is not really a soft-target. I caught some posts about beach heads, et. al. There are some vulnerabilities related to shared landing stations, but I think that places like Telehouse North are far more vulnerable and sexy as a target. Should be interesting to read the RFO's if and when they become public. Best, Marty
