Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
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
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
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
$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
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
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: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Roland Dobbins wrote: There are always corner-cases like the Tamil Tiger incident, and people don't always act rationally even in the context of their own perceived (as opposed to actual) self-interest, but I just don't see any terrorist groups nor any governments involved in some kind of cable-cutting plot, as it's diametrically opposed to their commonality of interests (i.e., the terrorist groups want the comms to stay up so that they can make use of them, and the governments want the comms to stay up so that they can monitor the terrorist group comms). History is sometimes a useful subject. May I suggest the book The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945 by Daniel Headrick. Let's cut all the cables is an old idea, and has been tried before. As usual, things didn't go as planned. Treaties exist because it was in everyone's self-interest to create the treaty. If any international terrorist or government espionage groups are reading NANOG: Hello. Please don't cut our cables. Thanks.
Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
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.
etc etc.
On Jan 31, 2008 10:05 PM, Martin Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Jan 31, 2008 11:20 AM, Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf
And if you enlarge the map, you can see little dots on the lines
representing the cables that denote repairs.
Lots and lots of repairs. Treacherous waters.
The distances are consistent with repeaters/op amps. And the chart
legend notates the same.
Coincidentally, Telecom Egypt announced a new cable to be built by
Alcatel-Lucent this morning. TE North, which looks like it's going
from Egypt to France, is an 8 pair system (128 x 10Gb/s x 8).
Thanks for your input.
-M
--
Suresh Ramasubramanian ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
There's an interesting article at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html on cable chokepoints.
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
Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
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
-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: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Of course, we all know the Mossad (Israeli secret services) and CIA did it as part of the global conspiracy against the Middle East and Third World ... In recent years I have restrained myself, but from time to time the 'old Rod Beck' manages to evade the supervision of the Super Ego (presumably you know your Freudian psychology). But seriously, double failures occur all the time. TAT-14 went dark for over 24 hours on December 28, 2003 when one cable was damaged and the switch of traffic to the other cable caused the second cable to experience a repeater failure. Probability dictates that the improbable will happen given enough time. The improbable is unlikely, not impossible. 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: Ahmed Maged (amaged) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 2/1/2008 6:05 PM To: Steven M. Bellovin; Martin Hannigan Cc: Rod Beck; Hank Nussbacher; Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption Doesn't look normal to me that both cables were cut 'accidently' -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steven M. Bellovin Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 6:49 PM To: Martin Hannigan Cc: Rod Beck; Hank Nussbacher; Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption Today's NY Times reports that the problem was caused by two near-simultaneous cable failures: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html
Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
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, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html. randy
Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
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, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html. randy
Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Dorn Hetzel wrote: perhaps my favorite magazine article of all time. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html. the original came with pictures sigh. 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
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
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
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
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: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Well, when you have all these cables running through narrow straits or converging to the same stretch of beach, it does not strike me as at all extraordinary. An important factor is cooperation. Is there cooperation between the fiber optic guys and fishing associations to minimize hits? I would wager there is close to zero. 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 Martin Hannigan Sent: Fri 2/1/2008 10:33 PM To: Ahmed Maged (amaged) Cc: Steven M. Bellovin; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption On Feb 1, 2008 2:25 PM, Ahmed Maged (amaged) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does look normal to me is far from a global conspiracy theory. Thank you for the translation but I think you got it wrong. I agree, there should be a sanity check as I understand that they are within close proximity of each other. Two ships slipping anchors and causing cable breaks in the same area is odd, but if there's a storm in the area, that would not be that much of a surprise. There should be some logic to the madness. I think that the moral of the story is that more operators should try to better understand what diversity means beyond the metro. The challenge is getting the information. The Teleography series of internet/sub maps are interesting. They don't demonstrate diversity though, since they show figurative routing. Those nice and straight lines are a pipe dream. -M -M
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Feb 1, 2008 2:25 PM, Ahmed Maged (amaged) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does look normal to me is far from a global conspiracy theory. Thank you for the translation but I think you got it wrong. I agree, there should be a sanity check as I understand that they are within close proximity of each other. Two ships slipping anchors and causing cable breaks in the same area is odd, but if there's a storm in the area, that would not be that much of a surprise. There should be some logic to the madness. I think that the moral of the story is that more operators should try to better understand what diversity means beyond the metro. The challenge is getting the information. The Teleography series of internet/sub maps are interesting. They don't demonstrate diversity though, since they show figurative routing. Those nice and straight lines are a pipe dream. -M -M
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 22:42:02 - Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, when you have all these cables running through narrow straits or converging to the same stretch of beach, it does not strike me as at all extraordinary. But they aren't near each other. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html says that the first two cuts were in the Mediterranean, near Marseille and Alexandria; the third was in the Persian Gulf, near Dubai (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages.html). --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Martin Hannigan wrote: On Feb 1, 2008 2:25 PM, Ahmed Maged (amaged) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Does look normal to me is far from a global conspiracy theory. Thank you for the translation but I think you got it wrong. I agree, there should be a sanity check as I understand that they are within close proximity of each other. Two ships slipping anchors and causing cable breaks in the same area is odd, but if there's a storm in the area, that would not be that much of a surprise. There should be some logic to the madness. I think that the moral of the story is that more operators should try to better understand what diversity means beyond the metro. The challenge is getting the information. The Teleography series of internet/sub maps are interesting. They don't demonstrate diversity though, since they show figurative routing. Those nice and straight lines are a pipe dream. -M -M Well, when you have all these cables running through narrow straits or converging to the same stretch of beach, it does not strike me as at all extraordinary. An important factor is cooperation. Is there cooperation between the fiber optic guys and fishing associations to minimize hits? I would wager there is close to zero. Roderick S. Beck Wouldn't that be a pretty narrow tightrope to walk from a security standpoint? The undersea cable maps are deliberately vague, specifically to try to avoid making them easy targets of terrorism. Which is the bigger threat? Boat anchors and fishing nets because of inaccurate maps or deliberate sabotage because of accurate maps? I guess you pick your poison. Andrew ...don't we rehash these same issues every time there's an undersea cable failure?
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Hi Steve, TransAtlantic cables average three repairs a year. That's the industry average. So given 7 high capacity cable systems, that's 21 repairs a year. Now, not all damaged cables go out of service. In fact, most stay in service until the repair begins. But the public rarely hears about a TransAtlantic cable going dark. Yet it does happen quite regularly in the business. Why? Because there are seven very high capacity (multi-terabit) systems to route traffic across! There is no need to announce to the public that a cable been cut. That is not the case in the Midterranean or the Persian Gulf. You have only a few systems (relatively low capacity) serving a huge population. In fact, I suspect Flag is probably the sole provider for many of these countries. So yes, when the only guy in town falls down, it's going to be noticed. That's the real answer. 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.
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 23:07:16 - Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Steve, TransAtlantic cables average three repairs a year. That's the industry average. So given 7 high capacity cable systems, that's 21 repairs a year. Now, not all damaged cables go out of service. In fact, most stay in service until the repair begins. But the public rarely hears about a TransAtlantic cable going dark. Yet it does happen quite regularly in the business. Why? Because there are seven very high capacity (multi-terabit) systems to route traffic across! There is no need to announce to the public that a cable been cut. That is not the case in the Midterranean or the Persian Gulf. You have only a few systems (relatively low capacity) serving a huge population. In fact, I suspect Flag is probably the sole provider for many of these countries. So yes, when the only guy in town falls down, it's going to be noticed. I hope you're right. As I noted, by profession I'm paranoid. I've even contemplated the uses of deliberate cable cuts; see http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/reroute.pdf for some thoughts from five years ago. But I hope you're right. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Telecommunication facilities have rarely been targets of terrorism. There is only one known case - the Tamil Tigers destroyed a central office in Sri Lanka some years back. My guess is that terrorists want to kill people, not destroy optical muxes, Class 5 switches, and the like. And the undersea cable maps are not deliberately vague. There are very accurate maps on the Web so that fishing boats can avoid the cables, which every couple years cause a small fishing to capsize. Boats are the prinicipal threat. The next important threat is oceanic cross currents that erode the plastic cladding that protects the fiber and the copper rod that carries the power. Regards, Roderick.
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
RodBeck said: Telecommunication facilities have rarely been targets of terrorism. There is only one known case - the Tamil Tigers destroyed a central office in Sri Lanka some years back. My guess is that terrorists want to kill people, not destroy optical muxes, Class 5 switches, and the like. Actually, last year, Scotland Yard claimed Al Qaeda planned on blowing up one of the Telehouse facilities in the UK: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/garfinkel/17561/ Randy
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption - Original Message - From: Rod Beck Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 12:42 PM Subject: RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption Well, when you have all these cables running through narrow straits or converging to the same stretch of beach, it does not strike me as at all extraordinary. An important factor is cooperation. Is there cooperation between the fiber optic guys and fishing associations to minimize hits? I would wager there is close to zero. ~~ Here's at least one: http://www.ofcc.com/procedures.htm
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Hi Michael: On Feb 1, 2008 6:44 PM, Michael Painter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Here's at least one: http://www.ofcc.com/procedures.htm Yes, this is the idea. My experience is that fisherman coops, similar to this one for network operators, are contacted during the desk top study DTS phase so that the parties can negotiate the best routes insuring that fisheries aren't disrupted or displaced and that the cable finds an agreed upon and effective route around risks that the fisherman have unique views into. There's also public permitting processes that occur and you want harmony. Groups of people angry at your submarine cable is not a good way to start a business and a submarine cable is a business (see Rod Beck ;-P ) -M
Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
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
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
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
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
: 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: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Actually, last year, Scotland Yard claimed Al Qaeda planned on blowing up one of the Telehouse facilities in the UK And, significantly, AQ would benefit from a telecommunications (and other things) disconnect from the West to the Middle East, in both tactical and strategic senses. However, despite the attractive target angle of what got busted, and the proximity of the breaks to Islamic Terrorist problem spots, I don't see a statistical or evidentiary case made that these were anything but the usual occasional strings of normal random problems spiking up at the same time. Another one in the region, or evidence from any of the cuts that it was not an accident, would start yellow lights flashing in my mind, but we're not there yet. -george william herbert [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Feb 2, 2008, at 8:56 AM, George William Herbert wrote: However, despite the attractive target angle of what got busted, and the proximity of the breaks to Islamic Terrorist problem spots, I don't see a statistical or evidentiary case made that these were anything but the usual occasional strings of normal random problems spiking up at the same time My instinctive reaction was to recall the Auric Goldfinger quote as smb did - after reflection, however, it's highly unlikely that these issues are the result of a terrorist group action simply because, just like the economically-driven miscreants, the ideologically-driven miscreants have a vested interest in the communications infrastructure remaining intact, as they're so heavily dependent upon it. There are always corner-cases like the Tamil Tiger incident, and people don't always act rationally even in the context of their own perceived (as opposed to actual) self-interest, but I just don't see any terrorist groups nor any governments involved in some kind of cable-cutting plot, as it's diametrically opposed to their commonality of interests (i.e., the terrorist groups want the comms to stay up so that they can make use of them, and the governments want the comms to stay up so that they can monitor the terrorist group comms). --- Roland Dobbins [EMAIL PROTECTED] // 408.527.6376 voice Culture eats strategy for breakfast. -- Ford Motor Company
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
George William Herbert wrote: And, significantly, AQ would benefit from a telecommunications (and other things) disconnect from the West to the Middle East, in both tactical and strategic senses. Funny, I was thinking the same thing about the Pentagon...
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 - -- Steven M. Bellovin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I hope you're right. As I noted, by profession I'm paranoid. I've even contemplated the uses of deliberate cable cuts; see http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/reroute.pdf for some thoughts from five years ago. But I hope you're right. Oddly enough, the same sort of discussion is going on over on Defense Tech: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003979.html FYI, - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFHo/TMq1pz9mNUZTMRAgrmAJ4/y+8eY5gCFdtfybKT2HQxJUxqdgCcD9fQ 9cvUgVDPm2L0o4xg+4iN/wc= =bBJC -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 10:56:26PM +, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 22:42:02 - Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, when you have all these cables running through narrow straits or converging to the same stretch of beach, it does not strike me as at all extraordinary. But they aren't near each other. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html says that the first two cuts were in the Mediterranean, near Marseille and Alexandria; the third was in the Persian Gulf, near Dubai (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages.html). beings as i live in dubai, i can also add that over the last two days there have been some quite strong winds blowing. which i supposed could be a factor in a ship dragging its anchor across a fiber path. -- Jim Mercer[EMAIL PROTECTED]+971 55 410-5633 I'm Prime Minister of Canada, I live here and I'm going to take a leak. - Lester Pearson in 1967, during a meeting between himself and President Lyndon Johnson, whose Secret Service detail had taken over Pearson's cottage retreat. At one point, a Johnson guard asked Pearson, Who are you and where are you going?
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 02:41:22AM +, Todd Underwood wrote: On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 01:56:42AM +, Paul Ferguson wrote: For what its worth, Todd Underwood has a very good overview of the countries affected by this outage over on the Renesys Blog here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml there are some interesting findings here about who (what carriers, what countries) were critically dependant on these cable systems. we'll probably put some more effort into analyzing this situation as it develops and compare it to the taiwan outages that hit late 2006. an FYI for anyone looking to do hosting/connectivity to Dubai or the UAE: there are only two providers in the UAE, etisalat and du. while du is either completely offline, or pushing all its traffic across what appeared to be single dial-up ISDN link 8^), etisalat seems largely uneffected. (connectivity from my du connected office was barely useable, while my du connected residence was completely offline, connectivity from my etisalat connected co-lo and etisalat connected office are operating pretty much at norm, which is to say, not quite what i'd expect for north america, but quite acceptable for the region) the downside is that du is the progressive provider, while etisalat continues to filter and block various and sundry sites and facilities based on complaints from its more conservative customers (porn, dating sites, and social networking sites like facebook/etc) and techno-political bents (ie. many sites relative to VoIP and web proxies are blocked) -- Jim Mercer[EMAIL PROTECTED]+971 55 410-5633 I'm Prime Minister of Canada, I live here and I'm going to take a leak. - Lester Pearson in 1967, during a meeting between himself and President Lyndon Johnson, whose Secret Service detail had taken over Pearson's cottage retreat. At one point, a Johnson guard asked Pearson, Who are you and where are you going?
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, Martin Hannigan wrote: From what I read about this cut, the way it happened seemed to have figurative odds of 1:1,000,000. It looks like authorities moved the anchorage area for some undefined reason. Cables are documented on marine charts and, at least theoretically under international standards, Captains and Pilots are lawfully required to refer to them before dropping the hook. Having some experience in marine operations, it would be 'curious' for a Captain or Pilot to not notice that there was a cable marking so close to their re-designated anchorage based on the chart that they would need to refer to for low tide depths and other (un)common hazards to insure that they weren't in imminent danger. I'll leave the international law opinions to the lawyers rather than the network engineers :-) I'm sure that there is more to this story than meets the eye. Single cable cuts are very interesting anymore because most networks have figured out most of those issues, usually by network darwinism. Stuff breaks normally. There are the usual exception to the rule networks. What makes this incident more interesting, as I indicated if its not one cable its another cable, was the double international cable cuts. Likewise, what made Tawain 2006 interesting wasn't an earthquake affected a cable, but there were multiple cable cuts in the region. Quick, everyone get out your international cable maps and speculate where in the world the next double (or triple, quad, etc) cable cut could happen. Due to regional politics, I don't think there are many overland geographic diverse routes between countries to backup the undersea routes. If I remember the Wired article, FLAG did try to build some overland geographic diversity through the region. Stuff happens. Although it will take a couple of weeks to repair these cables (which seems to be the new normal repair time), I expect most user traffic will be re-routed through less optimal but functional routes within a few days. Again, with the usual exception to the rule networks.
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
At 04:13 AM 31-01-08 -0500, Sean Donelan wrote: What makes this incident more interesting, as I indicated if its not one cable its another cable, was the double international cable cuts. Likewise, what made Tawain 2006 interesting wasn't an earthquake affected a cable, but there were multiple cable cuts in the region. Quick, everyone get out your international cable maps and speculate where in the world the next double (or triple, quad, etc) cable cut could happen. Due to regional politics, I don't think there are many overland geographic diverse routes between countries to backup the undersea routes. If I remember the Wired article, FLAG did try to build some overland geographic diversity through the region. I think more interesting is the landing stations where numerous cables intersect. They may be diverse in the water, but they cluster around each other when they hit the landing stations. -Hank
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Hank Nussbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think more interesting is the landing stations where numerous cables intersect. They may be diverse in the water, but they cluster around each other when they hit the landing stations. Exactly; which have historically been in the same strategic locations. Suez, Singapore, Cape Town; it's the strategic map of the British Empire. Five strategic keys lock up the world, as Lord Fisher said. (Dover, Gibraltar, Singapore, Cape Town, and Suez). The similarity is truly uncanny.
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Jan 31, 2008 4:30 AM, Hank Nussbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: \ I think more interesting is the landing stations where numerous cables intersect. They may be diverse in the water, but they cluster around each other when they hit the landing stations. -Hank They aren't that diverse in the water either and many cables cross each other and cluster before they hit landing stations including out in the middle of the sea. The Teleography maps, for example, are not route maps, they are showing a cable A and Z end with a relative route. The International Cable Protection Committee has some literal maps available that show just how much of a mess it all is. US East Coast to UK West Coast is a great example. -M
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Martin Hannigan Sent: Thu 1/31/2008 12:48 PM To: Hank Nussbacher Cc: Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption On Jan 31, 2008 4:30 AM, Hank Nussbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: \ I think more interesting is the landing stations where numerous cables intersect. They may be diverse in the water, but they cluster around each other when they hit the landing stations. -Hank They aren't that diverse in the water either and many cables cross each other and cluster before they hit landing stations including out in the middle of the sea. The Teleography maps, for example, are not route maps, they are showing a cable A and Z end with a relative route. The International Cable Protection Committee has some literal maps available that show just how much of a mess it all is. US East Coast to UK West Coast is a great example. -M
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Cables are mostly damaged by fishing in coastal areas (continental shelf) or by deep undersea currents that erode the polyurethane jacket that protects them. So it is crucial that the cable be buried at least one meter and preferably two meters in coastal waters. The big fishing boats scrape sea floor - the ecological equivalent of surface or 'strip' mining. These boats scrap the ocean floor and can hit the cables or even sever them. And consequently, the cables themselves have thicker and more rugged cladding in the coastal waters. A thick armor in the deep sea is simply too expensive and makes it difficult to raise the cable out of the water and repair it. Too much 'tension' according to the sailors that operate the ships that lay and repair these systems. 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: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Well, take a look at this map and tell me how many TransAtlantic landing stations are within several kilometers of each other. Look at how the TransAtlantic cables converge to landing points (except for Hibernia). http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf These maps are used by UK and Irish fishing boats to avoid the undersea cables. 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 Alexander Harrowell Sent: Thu 1/31/2008 10:48 AM To: Hank Nussbacher Cc: Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Hank Nussbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think more interesting is the landing stations where numerous cables intersect. They may be diverse in the water, but they cluster around each other when they hit the landing stations. Exactly; which have historically been in the same strategic locations. Suez, Singapore, Cape Town; it's the strategic map of the British Empire. Five strategic keys lock up the world, as Lord Fisher said. (Dover, Gibraltar, Singapore, Cape Town, and Suez). The similarity is truly uncanny.
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf And if you enlarge the map, you can see little dots on the lines representing the cables that denote repairs. Lots and lots of repairs. Treacherous waters. 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: Rod Beck Sent: Thu 1/31/2008 1:05 PM To: Martin Hannigan; Hank Nussbacher Cc: Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Martin Hannigan Sent: Thu 1/31/2008 12:48 PM To: Hank Nussbacher Cc: Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption On Jan 31, 2008 4:30 AM, Hank Nussbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: \ I think more interesting is the landing stations where numerous cables intersect. They may be diverse in the water, but they cluster around each other when they hit the landing stations. -Hank They aren't that diverse in the water either and many cables cross each other and cluster before they hit landing stations including out in the middle of the sea. The Teleography maps, for example, are not route maps, they are showing a cable A and Z end with a relative route. The International Cable Protection Committee has some literal maps available that show just how much of a mess it all is. US East Coast to UK West Coast is a great example. -M
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Jan 31, 2008 11:20 AM, Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf And if you enlarge the map, you can see little dots on the lines representing the cables that denote repairs. Lots and lots of repairs. Treacherous waters. The distances are consistent with repeaters/op amps. And the chart legend notates the same. Coincidentally, Telecom Egypt announced a new cable to be built by Alcatel-Lucent this morning. TE North, which looks like it's going from Egypt to France, is an 8 pair system (128 x 10Gb/s x 8). Thanks for your input. -M
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Today's NY Times reports that the problem was caused by two near-simultaneous cable failures: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/business/worldbusiness/31cable.html
RE: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Hi Martin, Look more closely. I agree the red dots are repeaters. The yellow dots are repairs. And the yellow dots are bunched, which what you would expect for repairs. Not evenly spaced. 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: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:20:07 - Rod Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cables are mostly damaged by fishing in coastal areas (continental shelf) or by deep undersea currents that erode the polyurethane jacket that protects them. So it is crucial that the cable be buried at least one meter and preferably two meters in coastal waters. The big fishing boats scrape sea floor - the ecological equivalent of surface or 'strip' mining. These boats scrap the ocean floor and can hit the cables or even sever them. In some areas, shark bites are a threat, too -- see http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel1/48/1267/00029600.pdf (subscription required for the full text), or http://www.tscm.com/phone/oceanic_cable.html --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Thu Jan 31, 2008 at 11:35:03AM -0500, Martin Hannigan wrote: The distances are consistent with repeaters/op amps. And the chart legend notates the same. I think you need to zoom right in and look for yellow dots, rather than red dots. Simon -- Simon Lockhart | * Sun Server Colocation * ADSL * Domain Registration * Director|* Domain Web Hosting * Internet Consultancy * Bogons Ltd | * http://www.bogons.net/ * Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
What I see from our Cogent transit is that Egypt has completely fallen off the map, with a normally consistent traffic gone to zero, but traffic to Iran, Iraq, the GCC, India and Pakistan and even Yemen doesn't seem to be affected, at least not noticeably. Regards Marshall On Jan 31, 2008, at 1:56 AM, Paul Ferguson wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 - -- Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If its not one cable, its another cable. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/30/asia.internet.outage Huge swathes of the Middle East and Asia have been left without internet access after a vital undersea cable was damaged. For what its worth, Todd Underwood has a very good overview of the countries affected by this outage over on the Renesys Blog here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFHoSrHq1pz9mNUZTMRAiFhAJ9y8gg/gSbXmPnYJhGKn5ZmlHXz3gCgkL7d U19z4eSg5DsEvUjhfzo9J8E= =v3bo -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 - -- Sean Donelan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If its not one cable, its another cable. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/30/asia.internet.outage Huge swathes of the Middle East and Asia have been left without internet access after a vital undersea cable was damaged. For what its worth, Todd Underwood has a very good overview of the countries affected by this outage over on the Renesys Blog here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFHoSrHq1pz9mNUZTMRAiFhAJ9y8gg/gSbXmPnYJhGKn5ZmlHXz3gCgkL7d U19z4eSg5DsEvUjhfzo9J8E= =v3bo -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 01:56:42AM +, Paul Ferguson wrote: For what its worth, Todd Underwood has a very good overview of the countries affected by this outage over on the Renesys Blog here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml while i very much appreciate the compliment, this work was all done by my colleagues at renesys earl zmijewski and alin popescu. i've been following the routing events around this cable break, though. there are some interesting findings here about who (what carriers, what countries) were critically dependant on these cable systems. we'll probably put some more effort into analyzing this situation as it develops and compare it to the taiwan outages that hit late 2006. (nanog program plug: my colleague martin a brown will be presenting and update on the way that the taiwan quake outages continue to affect transit and peering patterns in asia over a year after the original cable breaks: http://nanog.org/mtg-0802/brown.html . if you're interested in this subject you should probably register for nanog42 ( https://www.nanog.org/registration/ ) and attend.) if there's enough interest in this event, we'll do a lighting talk plug type=another lighting talk submissions are already open at: http://nanogpc.org/lighting /plug we'll monitor the situation and this community's level of interest and allocate our energies accordingly. :-) see y'all in sjc. t. -- _ todd underwood +1 603 643 9300 x101 renesys corporationgeneral manager babbledog [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.renesys.com/blog
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Jan 30, 2008 9:41 PM, Todd Underwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 01:56:42AM +, Paul Ferguson wrote: For what its worth, Todd Underwood has a very good overview of the countries affected by this outage over on the Renesys Blog here: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml while i very much appreciate the compliment, this work was all done by my colleagues at renesys earl zmijewski and alin popescu. i've been following the routing events around this cable break, though. there are some interesting findings here about who (what carriers, what countries) were critically dependant on these cable systems. In the Med/IO cable case, a ship dropped an anchor on the cable, something that is 1:1,000,000 shot, but happens. At least they know where it is. The failure to contract the maintenance ship tighter on a route that turns out to be that vulnerable is probably of concer for users of that cable now as well. A lot of the impact is likely also due to people not buying protect circuits or bothering to understand the IP architecture. That is something that is becoming common globally, IMHO. Folks assume that IP will route around the damage. Sure it will, if all the physical layer paths aren't busted. Layer 1 really does rock. Watching BGP announcements seems less important in these erious performance impacting cases, to me, than understanding the underlying architecture and what the root cause a half step above the anchor and a half a step below the advertisement was. Looking forward to Rod Beck's response. :-) Best, Marty
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 - -- Martin Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the Med/IO cable case, a ship dropped an anchor on the cable, something that is 1:1,000,000 shot, but happens. [...] Isn't that exactly what happened with the Pakistan fiber in 2005 with SEAMEWE-3? :-) - - ferg -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.3 (Build 3017) wj8DBQFHoXPlq1pz9mNUZTMRAsP+AJ4zaz+98bTSJM2IzwFOurjbusbbawCaAlqY 2yqlHXkWgWJsZ043fF94mfc= =PqfR -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(at)netzero.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
On Jan 31, 2008 2:08 AM, Paul Ferguson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 - -- Martin Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In the Med/IO cable case, a ship dropped an anchor on the cable, something that is 1:1,000,000 shot, but happens. [...] Isn't that exactly what happened with the Pakistan fiber in 2005 with SEAMEWE-3? :-) The 1:1,000,000 was without a reference so it was fugurative. Mea Culpa. If you count the amount of cables and the anchor drop cuts, it's probably much less as an afterthought. From what I read about this cut, the way it happened seemed to have figurative odds of 1:1,000,000. It looks like authorities moved the anchorage area for some undefined reason. Cables are documented on marine charts and, at least theoretically under international standards, Captains and Pilots are lawfully required to refer to them before dropping the hook. Having some experience in marine operations, it would be 'curious' for a Captain or Pilot to not notice that there was a cable marking so close to their re-designated anchorage based on the chart that they would need to refer to for low tide depths and other (un)common hazards to insure that they weren't in imminent danger. I'm sure that there is more to this story than meets the eye. -M
