Is anyone seeing this ?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17179544
"East Africa's high-speed internet access has been severely disrupted
after a ship dropped its anchor onto fibre-optic cables off Kenya's
coast."
Regards
Marshall
Along with:
http://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/44263-triple-whammy-hits-eassy.html
The east is struggling with outages.
Most of the ISP's in Malawi have been having issues since the 17th due
to a severed cable in the Red Sea.
Oliver
- --------------------------
I don't have a direct feedback into this disruption but from what I
gather they were able to (manually) re-route traffic (alternative
submarine cable and /or satellite systems) whether its slow that's a
different story but having performance degradation, as opposed to
complete service outage is still workable, IMO. Hopefully diversity will
help minimize localized damages as the global economy (communications,
education, business, entertainment, banking & commerce) continues to be
dependent on undersea cables.
Typically the GPS navigation suite has undersea cables well documented.
I for one am interested to know how this was overlooked or maybe human
error?
regards,
/virendra
The ship was reported to have dropped anchor while in a restricted or
prohibited area. These areas are _EXTREMELY_ well marked on charts. I can't
see it being anything other than human or mechanical error: not checking if
the ship is in a no-anchorage area, or the anchor chain wildcat brake _and_
the anchor chain blocking device fail simultaneously, or watch officer
totally mistakes the ship's location and orders the anchor to be let go.
One more option: engine or steering failure making dropping the hook an urgent necessity. What are the chances you'd hit a fiber-optic cable. ; - )
Greg
A comment on the WSJ
story<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833004577249434081658686.html>contains
a link to a great map.
Good call. I'd not seen that one, but should have, and engineering
failures seem to be happening (or to be reported) rather more than they
used to.
A comment on the WSJ
story<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833004577249434081658686.html>contains
a link to a great map.
There's about 1/2 a dozen or so known private and government research facilities on Antarctica and I'm surprised to see no fiber end points on that continent? This can't be true.
Cost-benefit. A dozen sites, each with only 100-200 people, scattered across something
a tad bigger than Europe. Even if you *land* a cable (which would be a technical
challenge, as there's few places you can land it without having to contend with an
ice shelf), the other 11 sites will *still* be so far away that dragging fiber to *there*
will be cost-impractical. Especially the ones that are moving because they're actually
on glaciers or ice shelves.
But hey, if you think you can do it without going broke, go for it. 
Constantly shifting ice shelves and glaciers make a terrestrial cable landing very difficult to implement on Antarctica. Satellite connectivity
is likely the only feasible option. There are very few places in
Antarctica that are reliably ice-free enough of the time to make a viable terrestrial landing station. Getting connectivity from the landing station to other places on the continent is another matter altogether.
jms
There's about 1/2 a dozen or so known private and government research
facilities on Antarctica and I'm surprised to see no fiber end points on
that continent? This can't be true.Constantly shifting ice shelves and glaciers make a terrestrial cable
landing very difficult to implement on Antarctica. Satellite connectivity
is likely the only feasible option. There are very few places in
Antarctica that are reliably ice-free enough of the time to make a viable
terrestrial landing station. Getting connectivity from the landing station
to other places on the continent is another matter altogether.
Apparently at least one long fiber pull has been contemplated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2207259.stm
(Note : the headline is incorrect - the Internet reached the South Pole in 1994,
via satellite, of course :
http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/90s/ftp1.html )
As far as I can tell, this was never done, and the South Pole gets its
Internet mostly via
TDRSS.
http://www.usap.gov/technology/contentHandler.cfm?id=1971
Regards
Marshall
Constantly shifting ice shelves and glaciers make a terrestrial cable
landing very difficult to implement on Antarctica. Satellite connectivity
is likely the only feasible option. There are very few places in
Antarctica that are reliably ice-free enough of the time to make a viable
terrestrial landing station. Getting connectivity from the landing station
to other places on the continent is another matter altogether.
The British Antarctic Survey certainly use (used) satellite:
<http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/bas_research/techniques/tech7.php>
They gave a good presentation about it a couple of years ago:
Cheers,
Rob
There's about 1/2 a dozen or so known private and government research
facilities on Antarctica and I'm surprised to see no fiber end points on
that continent? This can't be true.Constantly shifting ice shelves and glaciers make a terrestrial cable
landing very difficult to implement on Antarctica. Satellite connectivity
is likely the only feasible option. There are very few places in
Antarctica that are reliably ice-free enough of the time to make a viable
terrestrial landing station. Getting connectivity from the landing station
to other places on the continent is another matter altogether.Apparently at least one long fiber pull has been contemplated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2207259.stm
(Note : the headline is incorrect - the Internet reached the South Pole in 1994,
via satellite, of course :
http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/90s/ftp1.html )As far as I can tell, this was never done, and the South Pole gets its
Internet mostly via
TDRSS.
hmm antartica. that's very interesting place to deploy internet services
There were INOC-DBA phones at several of the Antarctic stations, for quite a few years. We could see connectivity to them go up and down as the satellites rose above the horizon and set again.
-Bill
we had an instance of "B" root there for a season. connectivity was a problem and
we pulled the node in 2001.
/bill
we had an instance of "B" root there for a season. connectivity was a problem and
we pulled the node in 2001./bill
You should install it on sattelite
dima
Has it been known the exact time of the incident?
I have found an article reporting that the cut occurred in the mid-day of Saturday 25th but nothing more precise.
We would like to use such information for a BGP anomaly detection analysis that we are carrying out in our research centre.
Thanks in advance,
George
It sounds like there were multiple cables that were lost recently.
For the EASSy cable issue in the Red Sea, an ISP in Malawi stated the
issues started at "09:26 on Friday 17 February". I don't know first
hand if that is accurate to the minute or not. I believe this is
separate from the cable off the cost of Kenya that was cut on the
25th.
Oliver