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. http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?nlid=854 -- A few afterthoughts after receiving a number of offlist mailings responding to my earlier post of yesterday concerning the naval submarine, Jimmy Carter: My comments weren't intended as disparagement or as a means of denigrating most of the excellent material that was posted on this subject. They were, instead, merely cautionary in nature, intended primarily for students who frequent NANOG for research and general interest, after noticing some folk lore and widely-held misconceptions being introduced into the thread. Upon re-reading those, however, they turn out to be mostly trivial, at worst. Besides, some would argue that passing down folk lore to the next generation of practitioners is not only a good thing, but a necessary thing, lest we get too caught up in being precise ;) On my posting about the naval submarine Jimmy Carter, that was half-intended as entertainment, although some of the dubious-seeming points made in that article have now been borne out in later releases by Egypt's telecommunications ministry in asserting that, indeed, there were no vessels in the waters surrounding the breaks, as is also noted in the reference MIT TR article above. Frank A. Coluccio DTI Consulting Inc. 347-526-6788