Today's MIT Technology Review newsletter contains an article by John Borland,
aided in large part by Tim Strong of Telegeography Research, covering the recent
spate of submarine cable failures in the ME:
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
By John Borland | Feb 5, 2008
MIT Technology Review
Multiple fiber cuts to undersea cables show the fragility of the Internet at its
choke points.
Good article; thanks. My own summary is at
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2008-02/2008-02-04.html
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
There is an important point to make here. The word ‘cut’ is misleading as it suggests that someone cut it.
The correct terminology is ‘non-operational cable’. Shakespeare faces no competition from my industry …
Most cable failures occur when deep ocean currents rub the cable against rocks and erode the cladding until water hits the copper that carries power through the cable to the undersea repeaters. At that point the individual fibers have little protection and it is not long before those fibers are cut or sufficiently bent by pounding against a rocky surface to degrade the signal to the point where it is useless.
In other words, the very terminology we use tends to suggest misleading that there had to be an agent - a doer.
And as noted, all it really takes is bending a fiber sufficiently to knock it out.
Roderick S. Beck
Director of European Sales
Hibernia Atlantic
1, Passage du Chantier, 75012 Paris
http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com
Wireless: 1-212-444-8829.
Landline: 33-1-4346-3209.
French Wireless: 33-6-14-33-48-97.
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rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com
rodbeck@erols.com
``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.’’ Albert Einstein.
Analyzing the Internet Collapse
"analysing press sensationalist hyperbole"
not bad. but no new insight and facts differ from other reports (marsailles).
randy