The relative severity has gone up though for two reasons. First, there is more fiber than ever in the ground and that which is in the ground is carrying more traffic than it used to. So a single cut can cause lots of people problems. Also, because of the increase in internet use, the visibility of such cuts has gone way up.

Doesn't any one else get a chuckle when they hear a *single* cut can cause lots of people problems when referring to the Internet, given the mythological history of the Internet's design goals? Looking over logs for the last few years, the same causes why the application user has problems show up over and over again. Here they are in order.... 1. Congestion 2. Operator/Software error 3. Telcom facility outage (fiber/cable cut or telco 'virtual' service frame/atm/smds/etc failure) 4. Power failure 5. Hardware failure Its difficult to distinguish between operator errors and software errors, since most cases of operator/software failure often involve a failure by both. Also it is sometimes difficult to tell what the true cause of an outage was. It may be more convient to blame the usual suspects, than to admit your own mistakes. I've noticed some 'fiber cuts' have later turned out to be switch or DACS programming errors. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation