So is this cause for concern or just "business as usual" with respect to the daily operations of USFO cables? Seems somewhat out of place to have four within five days but then it might be only slightly abnormal and amplified by the media paying more attention. -----Original Message----- From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 8:22 PM To: Marcus H. Sachs Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i03tUdyj8wf2Xa9P4trWEjqAJdyQ DOHA (AFP) . An undersea telecoms cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged, disrupting services, telecommunications provider Qtel said on Sunday, the latest such incident in less than a week. The cable was damaged between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das on Friday, Qtel's head of communications Adel al Mutawa told AFP. On Sun, 3 Feb 2008, Marcus H. Sachs wrote:

Sean, do you have any URLs with additional info on the new cut? Questions are being asked.

Marc

-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 6:52 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)

A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates.

This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables.

Afer reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexanderia, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.

On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 22:56:39 -0500 (EST) Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:

Caution: upon further research it appears there may be some language misscommunication in some of the reports; and some of the outages may be multiple reports of the same incidents.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February115.xml§ion=theuae Confirming international media reports, an Etisalat official yesterday told Khaleej Times that the cable network was not completely severed, though the damage slowed down the already affected system. He did not give any further details regarding the cause of damage. [...] This is the third incident of its kind in the area since January 30 since the cables were first damaged in the Mediterranean and then off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to Internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and south Asia.

FLAG restoration update information: http://www.flagtelecom.com/media/PDF_files/Submarine%20Cable%20Cut%20Update%...

http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21567&email=html is probably as authoritative a source as one can find for what happened. It says there were two cuts in the Mediterranean (SEA-ME-WE 4 near Marseille) and Flag Telecom's Europe-Asia cable near Alexandria. The Flag Telecom Falcon cable was cut between UAE and Oman, and the Qatar-UAE cable failed due to a power issue. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Todd Underwood wrote:

there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US prelude to war with iran. while i don't claim to know much about whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job:

An extremely poor job if that was the intent. According to SLAC, throughput to Iran actually improved. https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+th... If the intent was to cut off Iran, they're picking the wrong cables. TAE goes across the northern part of Iran http://taeint.net/en/network/middle/ FLAG via UAE, SE-ME-WE-3 (not 4), ITOUR and KAFOS Sometimes concicidences are concidences.

On Feb 4, 2008 12:38 AM, Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:

On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Todd Underwood wrote:

...

there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US prelude to war with iran. while i don't claim to know much about whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job:

An extremely poor job if that was the intent. According to SLAC, throughput to Iran actually improved.

https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+th...

If the intent was to cut off Iran, they're picking the wrong cables.

TAE goes across the northern part of Iran

Where are you seeing that? I can only see access to Iran through the Gulf of Oman and Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea doesn't appear to have any cables. The only service to Iran that seems logical, or that I can "see", is via Kuwait City and across the Gulf. Nothing appears to go through the Straight of Hormuz without touchdown in Oman or the UAE. I would hope that there is significant terrestrial cooperation in the region all considered, but I don't know anything about Med terrestrial networks. I agree with Rod Beck as far as the speculations go. It could be terror, but it's just not that interesting and is not really a soft-target. I caught some posts about beach heads, et. al. There are some vulnerabilities related to shared landing stations, but I think that places like Telehouse North are far more vulnerable and "sexy" as a target. Should be interesting to read the RFO's if and when they become public. Best, Marty

I disagree... I think "information warfare tactic" could easily be terrorism, though I can't see why this particular event could/would be terrorism. Disrupting a major network like the Internet WITHIN the US could definitely be a form of terrorism... I think anything which maliciously disrupts a huge portions of a nation's day-to-day activities would be cause for concern for many folk, especially the telecommunications infrastructure. However, I'm not sure what the mindset of the terrorist would be even if they fully succeeded what is proposed would be the terrorist's plan - even if we lost totally connectivity with the middle east, or even what's considered "friendly" countries... as long as the information is flowing at home, nobody's going to be filling their swimming pools full of drinking water. I imagine the mindset would be different if you were a small country loosing a substantial portion of it's communication channels with the outside world... -Patrick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Newton" <newton@internode.com.au> To: "Martin Hannigan" <hannigan@gmail.com> Cc: "Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com>, nanog@merit.edu Sent: Sunday, February 3, 2008 11:12:46 PM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles Subject: Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) On 04/02/2008, at 4:38 PM, Martin Hannigan wrote:

I agree with Rod Beck as far as the speculations go. It could be terror,

Well, no, it couldn't be. Nobody is being terrorized by this. How can it possibly be a terrorist incident? If it's deliberate, it might be described as an "information warfare tactic." But not terrorism. (visions of some guy sitting a in cave with a pair of wet boltcutters laughing maniacally to himself, cackling, "Ha-ha! Now their daytraders will get upset, and teenagers will get their porn _slower_! Die American scum!" Doesn't really work, does it?) Politicians have succeeded in watering down the definition of the word "terrorism" to the point where it no longer has any meaning. But we're rational adults, not politicians, right? If we can't get it right, who will? - mark -- Mark Newton Email: newton@internode.com.au (W) Network Engineer Email: newton@atdot.dotat.org (H) Internode Systems Pty Ltd Desk: +61-8-82282999 "Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton" Mobile: +61-416-202-223

On Feb 4, 2008, at 4:29 AM, Alex Pilosov wrote:

This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism.

Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread.

In all the fuss about terrorism, people may be forgetting that the terrorists have goals *other* than terrorism, and one of those is reducing the influence of the West over the Middle East. Removing internet connections certainly is an effective (and probably necessary) step in that direction. Even if this was accidental, it will have made them more aware of the possibility. Which leads me to my operational question. If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq?

On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Brandon Galbraith wrote:

While reading the hacker tourist article someone posted from Wired many years ago, it mentioned that as the FO cable comes closer to shore, more extreme measures are taken to protect it, including fluidizing the sand underneath the cable to cause the cable to sink under, and then stopping the fluidizing process so the sand compacts above it. I'm unsure how practical this would be along a substantial link of cable though. (Although, burying the cable under compact sand seems like it would protect it from a whole host of dangers).

-brandon

I have spent a few hours on a cable repair ship in the Med. Fascinating - highly recommended. This ship was sent to repair multiple spots of a cable that was cut about 1km from the shore. There was a gas pipeline that was laid across it and they built special concrete bridges in the water that were laid on top the fiber cable so that the fiber cable would be in the tunnel under the mini-bridge and the pipeline was laid on top. Worked well for the first few months. But the weight kept bearing down and the concrete bridge sunk deeper and deeper into the sand - and eventually the bridge tunnel acted as a guillotine and severed the underlying fiber. So much for the best laid plans of fish and men. -Hank

The US Navy will deploy their killer ninja dolphins to bottlenose any wrong doers :@) -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Kee Hinckley Sent: 04 February 2008 17:08 To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE) On Feb 4, 2008, at 4:29 AM, Alex Pilosov wrote:

This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism.

Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread.

In all the fuss about terrorism, people may be forgetting that the terrorists have goals *other* than terrorism, and one of those is reducing the influence of the West over the Middle East. Removing internet connections certainly is an effective (and probably necessary) step in that direction. Even if this was accidental, it will have made them more aware of the possibility. Which leads me to my operational question. If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq?

My experience is that a lot of the BB providers route through NAPs/MAEs when they have local peering. The Internet IS more brittle than it needs to be, because routing seems to be a lot more static than it should be.

-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Steve Gibbard Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 12:39 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: [admin] Re: Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)

On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Kee Hinckley wrote:

...

Which leads me to my operational question.

If you know that someone wants to cut your cables. What defense do you have? Is there any practical way to monitor and protect an oceanic cable? Are there ways to build them that would make them less discoverable? Some way to provide redundancy? A non-physical solution involving underwater repeaters? Or is this like pipelines in Iraq?

The other answer is to be less dependent on the cables.

Some communications need to be long distance -- talking to a specific person in a far away place, setting up import/export deals, calling tech support -- but a lot don't. E-mailing or VOIP calling your neighbors, looking at web sites for local businesses, reading your local newspaper or accessing other local content, or telecommuting across town, all ought to be able to be done locally, without dependence on international infrastructure. Yet we keep seeing articles about outages of "Internet and long distance telephone" networks, implying that this Internet thing we've all been working on is pretty fragile compared to the old fashioned phone networks we've been trying to replace.

The report from Renesys (http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break _part.shtml) looks at outages in connectivity to India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt. I'll assume that those areas probably did keep some local connectivity. India has its NIXI exchanges, although my understanding is that they're not as well used as one might hope. Saudi Arabia has a monopoly international transit provider, which should have the effect of keeping local traffic local. Egypt has an exchange point. I don't know about Pakistan or Kuwait. Unfortunately, little else works without DNS. Pakistan and India have DNS root servers, but Pakistan's .PK ccTLD is served entirely from the US. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt all have servers for their local ccTLDs, but do not have local root DNS servers. Of that list, only India has both the root and their ccTLD hosted locally.

And then there's the rest of the services people use. Being able to get to DNS doesn't help people talk to their neighbors if both they and their neighbors are using mail services in far away places, for instance.

-Steve

Alex Pilosov wrote:

This conversation is quickly spinning into discussion of politics and terrorism.

Reminder to all, please stick to the *operational* aspects of this thread.

-alex [NANOG MLC Chair]

Agreed. In December of 2005, for reasons entirely personal, I read every paper available at the Dudley Knox (Naval Post Graduate School) and the Air University (Maxwell AFB) Libraries mentioned in Greta Marlatt's 06/00 IO bibliography -- Information Warfare & Information Operations (IW/IO). A Bibliography, Documents, Theses & Technical Reports. This is a snap-shot of where IO was five year ago. People who want to flesh out a modern IO reading list please mail me (off-list) your URLs. In a nutshell, there were many, many operationally unsophisticated and more-dangerous-to-self-then-other ideas in these papers, in addition to alot of "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) Wonder-Cruft, and a lot of it was blatent fund-me stuff. My two beads worth, Eric