Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[George William Herbert]

>An interesting line from page 10 of the article:
>
>"Diversity is not needed in the deep ocean, but land crossings are 
>viewed as considerably more risky."
>
>This philosophy should probably be rethought somewhat, as we may have 
>discovered this past week.

All the recent cuts were littoral, near shore or shallow water.

Which is the historical pattern, by far.  Cables do go bad and are
damaged in the dark depths of the abysmal plains, but by and large
damage is near shore, due to people or shallow water related natural
effects (waves, underwater landslides, etc).


-george william herbert
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Rod Beck]

Gentlemen, 

This is my last comment on this subject. 

Paranoia is not a virtue. And security establishments are notorious for 
exaggerating threats (Soviet Union's economy and hence ability to wage war was  
half of what the CIA estimated). They are interest groups just like the rest of 
us ... They pursue their self interest as General Eisenhower noted about a 
certain's military establishment. 

:)

If you know the undersea cable industry, you know that several cables can be 
down at the same time without malice playing a role...

Last year both undersea cables into Pakistan were severed. The two cables were 
laid within several feet of each other along a stretch of shallow water. 

When a ship sank, it crushed both cables.

In December of 2006, three Irish sea cables went dead. One was cut in twenty 
feet of water. One was cut on land and a third damaged in the middle of the 
Irish sea.

It happens all the time.

Terrorists are clearly looking for more high profile events than disrupting 
unmanned undersea cable systems. It doesn't make for great television shots ... 
It is really to get shots of an undersea severed cable ...

Have a good weekend. 

Regards, 

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. 



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Robert Bonomi
Sent: Sat 2/2/2008 7:20 PM
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea 
cable disruption
 

> Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 14:21:00 -0800
> From: "Scott Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt 
> undersea cable disruption
>
>
> On Feb 1, 2008 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid={1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9}
> >
> >  "We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back.
> > The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data,
> > everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya
> > Dow Jones.
> > The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the
> > Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
>
> this (3 undersea cables in about a week, serving the same geographic
> area, with two of the cuts happening on the same day!) is leaving the
> realm of improbability and approaching the realm of conspiracy ...

  "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence"
  comes to mind.

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Robert Bonomi]

> Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2008 14:21:00 -0800
> From: "Scott Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt 
> undersea cable disruption
>
>
> On Feb 1, 2008 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid={1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9}
> >
> >  "We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back.
> > The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data,
> > everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya
> > Dow Jones.
> > The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the
> > Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
>
> this (3 undersea cables in about a week, serving the same geographic
> area, with two of the cuts happening on the same day!) is leaving the
> realm of improbability and approaching the realm of conspiracy ...

  "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence"
  comes to mind.

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Martin Barry]

$quoted_author = "Scott Francis" ;
> 
> maybe there's a lot more overlap in shipping lanes and cable runs than
> I thought ...

In confined waters like the Suez, Red Sea et. al. there is a lot of overlap.
Which makes three cables cuts in that area during bad weather not such a
stretch of the imagination.

Open waters like trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific have less overlap with
shipping lanes but still need to cross fishing areas etc.etc. But you'd be a
little more suspicious if those sites had a similar cluster of cuts unless
there was something in common (i.e. same landing station, cuts close to
shore).

cheers
marty

-- 
"Life's Little Mysteries. Noel Hunter of Chippendale is one of many to be 
confused, and amused, by the pair of professionally produced No Regrets 
street signs near the corner of Greens Road and Albion Avenue, Paddington. 
Printed in the same style as No Standing signs, their proximity to the 
College of Fine Arts may give a clue to their origins. Whatever, having 
regrets while between the signs is subject to a $144 fine from the NSW 
Dept of Second Thoughts." [1]

[1] - http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544560873.html

RE: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Neil J. McRae]

Really? What cable is that?!

-Original Message-
From: Rubens Kuhl Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: 02 February 2008 11:33
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea 
cable disruption


> "NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying
> phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick
> where they lie on the ocean floor."

And AFAIK not all kilometers of cables lie on the ocean floor; if the
ocean has high depth on a given part of the cable route, the cable
simply floats on the water on that run. It's just a matter of having
enough pressure to lift it up.



Rubens

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Randy Bush]

And AFAIK not all kilometers of cables lie on the ocean floor; if the
ocean has high depth on a given part of the cable route, the cable
simply floats on the water on that run. It's just a matter of having
enough pressure to lift it up.


and for the difficult parts, they pump helium in and get it above flight 
paths.


randy

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Rubens Kuhl Jr.]

> "NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying
> phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick
> where they lie on the ocean floor."

And AFAIK not all kilometers of cables lie on the ocean floor; if the
ocean has high depth on a given part of the cable route, the cable
simply floats on the water on that run. It's just a matter of having
enough pressure to lift it up.



Rubens

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Scott Weeks]

: bubba driving his backhoe ship

Now that'd make a great NANOG shirt!  :-)

scott



--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

From: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Scott Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea 
cable disruption
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 07:09:50 +0530


On Feb 2, 2008 4:07 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yah.  I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan
> is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned.  The
> old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,
> but the third time is enemy action".  The alternative some common mode
> failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.

Quite a few other lists I look at (especially those with a "critical
infrastructure protection" type focus - seem to feel the same as you
do.  And at least one list has already started the "maybe al qaeda is
behind this" idea running.

The fun part is that quite a lot of these cables are in international
waters, so it just might turn into a high level multiple UN agency
conference, sooner or later with ideas like a bunch of navy or coast
guard cutters tasked to patrol on the borders of cable landing areas
and head off shipping that wants to anchor, trawlers that want to drag
nets across the ocean floor, bubba driving his backhoe ship .. [and
that still doesnt keep away sharks that want to sharpen their teeth on
undersea cables...]

srs

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

On Feb 2, 2008 4:07 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yah.  I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan
> is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned.  The
> old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,
> but the third time is enemy action".  The alternative some common mode
> failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.

Quite a few other lists I look at (especially those with a "critical
infrastructure protection" type focus - seem to feel the same as you
do.  And at least one list has already started the "maybe al qaeda is
behind this" idea running.

The fun part is that quite a lot of these cables are in international
waters, so it just might turn into a high level multiple UN agency
conference, sooner or later with ideas like a bunch of navy or coast
guard cutters tasked to patrol on the borders of cable landing areas
and head off shipping that wants to anchor, trawlers that want to drag
nets across the ocean floor, bubba driving his backhoe ship .. [and
that still doesnt keep away sharks that want to sharpen their teeth on
undersea cables...]

srs

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Sean Donelan]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

Yah.  I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan
is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned.  The
old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,
but the third time is enemy action".  The alternative some common mode
failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.


It may just be the normal growing pains networks go through as they reach
a certain size and those "minor" problems become "major" problems.  When
the Internet was sparser in the USA, we had similar "concindences."

1997: Backhoes in Concert
   http://www.nanog.org/nanog-tshirts/nanog11.jpg

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Bill Stewart]

More productively, there are real concerns with the cable routing
around India and Pakistan.  Connections across Egypt have geographical
constraints that are probably more significant than the political
ones, but having most of the connectivity into western India going
into Mumbai and not Cochin or Bangalore and only having one drop into
Pakistan are risks that ought to be fixed.  In large part they're a
heritage of telecomms monopolies, and are theoretically fixable, but
both countries are at some risk until they do something about it.

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Bill Stewart]

On Feb 1, 2008 2:37 PM, Steven M. Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > (either that, or the backhoe operators' union has decided there's
> > better money to be made on water than on land.)

Guys named Bubba can get fishing licenses just as easily as backhoe
drivers' licenses.
One of my customers in the forestry business ran their own cables
along their railroad tracks,
and every year during hunting season they'd have problems with guys named Bubba
shooting at birds on the cables at bridge crossings.

> Yah.  I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan
> is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned.  The
> old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,
> but the third time is enemy action".

My business card often says "Technical Marketing", which means I'm supposed
to have some wide-grinning explanation about sychronicity of root causes;
obviously this is some problem with ship navigation software not using
the correct GPS datum,
so it's a common-mode operator-interface error that's not the fault of
either the telcos or Vendor C's or J's equipment.   Funny how Iran's
just accidentally fallen off the net, though.

I forget the French and Arabic equivalent names for Bubba, but I still
think it's him and Murphy.

-- 

 Thanks; Bill

Note that this isn't my regular email account - It's still experimental so far.
And Google probably logs and indexes everything you send it.

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Scott Francis]

On Feb 1, 2008 2:35 PM, Rod Beck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>
> Not at all, there have been cables in the water since 1858 (first
> TransAtlantic cable - telegraph). Right now there are 80 major cables out
> there.
>
>  Give yourself 170 years of undersea cables and calculate the odds.
>
>  :)

hm. I wonder what the odds are (I don't have enough figures to do the
math myself):

80 cables worldwide (first time I'd heard that figure, actually)
X square miles of shipping lanes
Y ships in those lanes
Z square miles of overlap between shipping lanes and cable run
# of times, on average, a ship drops anchor outside of a port

maybe there's a lot more overlap in shipping lanes and cable runs than
I thought ...

(or maybe we just got unlucky, and we'll have a nice long period of no
undersea cuts following these :))
-- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED],darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527
  http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key

RE: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Rod Beck]

Not at all, there have been cables in the water since 1858 (first TransAtlantic 
cable - telegraph). Right now there are 80 major cables out there. 

Give yourself 170 years of undersea cables and calculate the odds. 

:)

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: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Steven M. Bellovin]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 14:21:00 -0800
"Scott Francis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 
> On Feb 1, 2008 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> >
> > http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid={1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9}
> >
> >  "We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours
> > back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet
> > data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named,
> > told Zawya Dow Jones.
> > The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the
> > Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
> 
> this (3 undersea cables in about a week, serving the same geographic
> area, with two of the cuts happening on the same day!) is leaving the
> realm of improbability and approaching the realm of conspiracy ...
> 
> (either that, or the backhoe operators' union has decided there's
> better money to be made on water than on land.)

Yah.  I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan
is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned.  The
old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,
but the third time is enemy action".  The alternative some common mode
failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.


--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Scott Francis]

On Feb 1, 2008 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid={1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9}
>
>  "We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back.
> The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data,
> everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya
> Dow Jones.
> The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the
> Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.

this (3 undersea cables in about a week, serving the same geographic
area, with two of the cuts happening on the same day!) is leaving the
realm of improbability and approaching the realm of conspiracy ...

(either that, or the backhoe operators' union has decided there's
better money to be made on water than on land.)
-- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED],darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527
  http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Randy Bush]

Dorn Hetzel wrote:

perhaps my favorite magazine article of all time.

.


the original came with pictures .  i tried the wayback machine, 
but could not find a version with them. :(


i guess i should wget the great ones with pics before they fade.  but i 
just can't archive everything.  and there are copyright issues anyway.


randy

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Dorn Hetzel]

perhaps my favorite magazine article of all time.

On Feb 1, 2008 1:13 PM, Randy Bush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
> > Weight is a bigger issue than most people realize.
>
> perhaps folk would benefit from [re]reading Neal Stephenson's wonderful
> classic bit of gonzo journalism in Wired,
> .
>
> randy
>

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Randy Bush]

Weight is a bigger issue than most people realize.


perhaps folk would benefit from [re]reading Neal Stephenson's wonderful 
classic bit of gonzo journalism in Wired, 
.


randy

RE: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Rod Beck]

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Martin Hannigan
Sent: Fri 2/1/2008 5:01 PM
To: Steven M. Bellovin
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea 
cable disruption
 

On Feb 1, 2008 11:43 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There's an interesting article at
> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html
> on cable chokepoints.
>


"NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying
phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick
where they lie on the ocean floor."

This article is somewhat "misleading". Semantics, but it set the tone
of the article for me and probably most of the public.

The cables are able to have their physical characteristics changed by
the ability to splice joints into the cable and connect two physically
disparate ends to serve specific purposes related bottom geologies,
depth, and other dangers. Different cable types are deployed to
mitigate different risks such as fishing, quakes, slides, etc. The
lightweight cable may be thinner, but is used in less risky settings
like massive depths. When you get to something like heavy weight
armored on the edge of a fishing ground or winding through a
treacherous bottom geology, your're talking much larger diameters and
much more weight, as Rod Beck had mentioned previously.

There are many variables that go into route selection and cabling
which impact type. Cost is one.

-M<

Weight is a bigger issue than most people realize. In order to lift a cable out 
of the water and onto the deck of a Global Marine or Tyco Submarine ship, it 
has be cut and the two segments lifted out of the water, spliced, and then a 
'joint' is placed at the splice point. The weight of even a thin cable is too 
great to be lifted without being cut in two. 

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Sean Donelan]

The Submarine Cable Improvement Group

http://www.scig.net/

has plenty of details about trends in submarine cable damage and
improvements in submarine cable protection.

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Martin Hannigan]

On Feb 1, 2008 11:43 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There's an interesting article at
> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html
> on cable chokepoints.
>


"NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying
phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick
where they lie on the ocean floor."

This article is somewhat "misleading". Semantics, but it set the tone
of the article for me and probably most of the public.

The cables are able to have their physical characteristics changed by
the ability to splice joints into the cable and connect two physically
disparate ends to serve specific purposes related bottom geologies,
depth, and other dangers. Different cable types are deployed to
mitigate different risks such as fishing, quakes, slides, etc. The
lightweight cable may be thinner, but is used in less risky settings
like massive depths. When you get to something like heavy weight
armored on the edge of a fishing ground or winding through a
treacherous bottom geology, your're talking much larger diameters and
much more weight, as Rod Beck had mentioned previously.

There are many variables that go into route selection and cabling
which impact type. Cost is one.

-M<

Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

[Steven M. Bellovin]

There's an interesting article at
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html
on cable chokepoints.