* Jean-François Mezei:
Did western europe ever really have a primary route via the USA to reach asia ?
It depends where you buy transit from. For instance, I see Baidu through AT&T, and the traffic is routed through the U.S. Some Singaporean banks and a few Koran government sites are routed through Level3, also via the U.S West coast. For sites in Thailand and Vietnam, the picture is a bit unclear (no visible IP hop in the U.S.). On another network, I reach Baidu through Telia, and it's still routed through the U.S. West coast. Both networks appear to see IIJ through a peering in San Jose. Anyway, at times, the more apt question would have been: Is Europe reachable from Europe without crossing the U.S.? I can't read the NYT story, but it seems highly unlikely to me that risk of eavesdropping on behalf of democratically elected governments is a factor in public Internet routing decisions.