Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/third-undersea-cable-reportedly-cut/story.aspx?guid={1AAB2A79-E983-4E0E-BC39-68A120DC16D9} "We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones. The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added. etc etc. On Jan 31, 2008 10:05 PM, Martin Hannigan <hannigan@gmail.com> wrote:
On Jan 31, 2008 11:20 AM, Rod Beck <Rod.Beck@hiberniaatlantic.com> wrote:
http://www.kisca.org.uk/Web_SWApproaches.pdf
And if you enlarge the map, you can see little dots on the lines representing the cables that denote repairs.
Lots and lots of repairs. Treacherous waters.
The distances are consistent with repeaters/op amps. And the chart legend notates the same.
Coincidentally, Telecom Egypt announced a new cable to be built by Alcatel-Lucent this morning. TE North, which looks like it's going from Egypt to France, is an 8 pair system (128 x 10Gb/s x 8).
Thanks for your input.
-M<
-- Suresh Ramasubramanian (ops.lists@gmail.com)
There's an interesting article at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html on cable chokepoints.
On Feb 1, 2008 11:43 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
There's an interesting article at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html on cable chokepoints.
"NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick where they lie on the ocean floor." This article is somewhat "misleading". Semantics, but it set the tone of the article for me and probably most of the public. The cables are able to have their physical characteristics changed by the ability to splice joints into the cable and connect two physically disparate ends to serve specific purposes related bottom geologies, depth, and other dangers. Different cable types are deployed to mitigate different risks such as fishing, quakes, slides, etc. The lightweight cable may be thinner, but is used in less risky settings like massive depths. When you get to something like heavy weight armored on the edge of a fishing ground or winding through a treacherous bottom geology, your're talking much larger diameters and much more weight, as Rod Beck had mentioned previously. There are many variables that go into route selection and cabling which impact type. Cost is one. -M<
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu on behalf of Martin Hannigan Sent: Fri 2/1/2008 5:01 PM To: Steven M. Bellovin Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption On Feb 1, 2008 11:43 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
There's an interesting article at http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Internet-Outages-Cables.html on cable chokepoints.
"NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick where they lie on the ocean floor." This article is somewhat "misleading". Semantics, but it set the tone of the article for me and probably most of the public. The cables are able to have their physical characteristics changed by the ability to splice joints into the cable and connect two physically disparate ends to serve specific purposes related bottom geologies, depth, and other dangers. Different cable types are deployed to mitigate different risks such as fishing, quakes, slides, etc. The lightweight cable may be thinner, but is used in less risky settings like massive depths. When you get to something like heavy weight armored on the edge of a fishing ground or winding through a treacherous bottom geology, your're talking much larger diameters and much more weight, as Rod Beck had mentioned previously. There are many variables that go into route selection and cabling which impact type. Cost is one. -M< Weight is a bigger issue than most people realize. In order to lift a cable out of the water and onto the deck of a Global Marine or Tyco Submarine ship, it has be cut and the two segments lifted out of the water, spliced, and then a 'joint' is placed at the splice point. The weight of even a thin cable is too great to be lifted without being cut in two.
Weight is a bigger issue than most people realize.
perhaps folk would benefit from [re]reading Neal Stephenson's wonderful classic bit of gonzo journalism in Wired, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html>. randy
perhaps my favorite magazine article of all time. On Feb 1, 2008 1:13 PM, Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
Weight is a bigger issue than most people realize.
perhaps folk would benefit from [re]reading Neal Stephenson's wonderful classic bit of gonzo journalism in Wired, <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html>.
randy
Dorn Hetzel wrote:
perhaps my favorite magazine article of all time.
the original came with pictures <sigh>. i tried the wayback machine, but could not find a version with them. :( i guess i should wget the great ones with pics before they fade. but i just can't archive everything. and there are copyright issues anyway. randy
Randy Bush wrote:
Dorn Hetzel wrote:
perhaps my favorite magazine article of all time.
the original came with pictures <sigh>. i tried the wayback machine, but could not find a version with them. :(
i guess i should wget the great ones with pics before they fade. but i just can't archive everything. and there are copyright issues anyway.
randy
An interesting line from page 10 of the article: "Diversity is not needed in the deep ocean, but land crossings are viewed as considerably more risky." This philosophy should probably be rethought somewhat, as we may have discovered this past week. -- Jeff Shultz
An interesting line from page 10 of the article:
"Diversity is not needed in the deep ocean, but land crossings are viewed as considerably more risky."
This philosophy should probably be rethought somewhat, as we may have discovered this past week.
All the recent cuts were littoral, near shore or shallow water. Which is the historical pattern, by far. Cables do go bad and are damaged in the dark depths of the abysmal plains, but by and large damage is near shore, due to people or shallow water related natural effects (waves, underwater landslides, etc). -george william herbert gherbert@retro.com
"NEW YORK (AP) -- The lines that tie the globe together by carrying phone calls and Internet traffic are just two-thirds of an inch thick where they lie on the ocean floor."
And AFAIK not all kilometers of cables lie on the ocean floor; if the ocean has high depth on a given part of the cable route, the cable simply floats on the water on that run. It's just a matter of having enough pressure to lift it up. Rubens
And AFAIK not all kilometers of cables lie on the ocean floor; if the ocean has high depth on a given part of the cable route, the cable simply floats on the water on that run. It's just a matter of having enough pressure to lift it up.
and for the difficult parts, they pump helium in and get it above flight paths. randy
The Submarine Cable Improvement Group http://www.scig.net/ has plenty of details about trends in submarine cable damage and improvements in submarine cable protection.
On Feb 1, 2008 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones. The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
this (3 undersea cables in about a week, serving the same geographic area, with two of the cuts happening on the same day!) is leaving the realm of improbability and approaching the realm of conspiracy ... (either that, or the backhoe operators' union has decided there's better money to be made on water than on land.) -- darkuncle@{gmail.com,darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527 http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key
Not at all, there have been cables in the water since 1858 (first TransAtlantic cable - telegraph). Right now there are 80 major cables out there. Give yourself 170 years of undersea cables and calculate the odds. :) 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. AOL Messenger: GlobalBandwidth rod.beck@hiberniaatlantic.com rodbeck@erols.com ``Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.'' Albert Einstein.
On Feb 1, 2008 2:35 PM, Rod Beck <Rod.Beck@hiberniaatlantic.com> wrote:
Not at all, there have been cables in the water since 1858 (first TransAtlantic cable - telegraph). Right now there are 80 major cables out there.
Give yourself 170 years of undersea cables and calculate the odds.
:)
hm. I wonder what the odds are (I don't have enough figures to do the math myself): 80 cables worldwide (first time I'd heard that figure, actually) X square miles of shipping lanes Y ships in those lanes Z square miles of overlap between shipping lanes and cable run # of times, on average, a ship drops anchor outside of a port maybe there's a lot more overlap in shipping lanes and cable runs than I thought ... (or maybe we just got unlucky, and we'll have a nice long period of no undersea cuts following these :)) -- darkuncle@{gmail.com,darkuncle.net} || 0x5537F527 http://darkuncle.net/pubkey.asc for public key
$quoted_author = "Scott Francis" ;
maybe there's a lot more overlap in shipping lanes and cable runs than I thought ...
In confined waters like the Suez, Red Sea et. al. there is a lot of overlap. Which makes three cables cuts in that area during bad weather not such a stretch of the imagination. Open waters like trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific have less overlap with shipping lanes but still need to cross fishing areas etc.etc. But you'd be a little more suspicious if those sites had a similar cluster of cuts unless there was something in common (i.e. same landing station, cuts close to shore). cheers marty -- "Life's Little Mysteries. Noel Hunter of Chippendale is one of many to be confused, and amused, by the pair of professionally produced No Regrets street signs near the corner of Greens Road and Albion Avenue, Paddington. Printed in the same style as No Standing signs, their proximity to the College of Fine Arts may give a clue to their origins. Whatever, having regrets while between the signs is subject to a $144 fine from the NSW Dept of Second Thoughts." [1] [1] - http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/31/1080544560873.html
On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 14:21:00 -0800 "Scott Francis" <darkuncle@gmail.com> wrote:
On Feb 1, 2008 6:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <ops.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones. The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.
this (3 undersea cables in about a week, serving the same geographic area, with two of the cuts happening on the same day!) is leaving the realm of improbability and approaching the realm of conspiracy ...
(either that, or the backhoe operators' union has decided there's better money to be made on water than on land.)
Yah. I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned. The old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but the third time is enemy action". The alternative some common mode failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
On Feb 1, 2008 2:37 PM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
(either that, or the backhoe operators' union has decided there's better money to be made on water than on land.)
Guys named Bubba can get fishing licenses just as easily as backhoe drivers' licenses. One of my customers in the forestry business ran their own cables along their railroad tracks, and every year during hunting season they'd have problems with guys named Bubba shooting at birds on the cables at bridge crossings.
Yah. I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned. The old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but the third time is enemy action".
My business card often says "Technical Marketing", which means I'm supposed to have some wide-grinning explanation about sychronicity of root causes; obviously this is some problem with ship navigation software not using the correct GPS datum, so it's a common-mode operator-interface error that's not the fault of either the telcos or Vendor C's or J's equipment. Funny how Iran's just accidentally fallen off the net, though. I forget the French and Arabic equivalent names for Bubba, but I still think it's him and Murphy. -- ---- Thanks; Bill Note that this isn't my regular email account - It's still experimental so far. And Google probably logs and indexes everything you send it.
More productively, there are real concerns with the cable routing around India and Pakistan. Connections across Egypt have geographical constraints that are probably more significant than the political ones, but having most of the connectivity into western India going into Mumbai and not Cochin or Bangalore and only having one drop into Pakistan are risks that ought to be fixed. In large part they're a heritage of telecomms monopolies, and are theoretically fixable, but both countries are at some risk until they do something about it.
On Fri, 1 Feb 2008, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
Yah. I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned. The old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but the third time is enemy action". The alternative some common mode failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.
It may just be the normal growing pains networks go through as they reach a certain size and those "minor" problems become "major" problems. When the Internet was sparser in the USA, we had similar "concindences." 1997: Backhoes in Concert http://www.nanog.org/nanog-tshirts/nanog11.jpg
On Feb 2, 2008 4:07 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
Yah. I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned. The old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but the third time is enemy action". The alternative some common mode failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.
Quite a few other lists I look at (especially those with a "critical infrastructure protection" type focus - seem to feel the same as you do. And at least one list has already started the "maybe al qaeda is behind this" idea running. The fun part is that quite a lot of these cables are in international waters, so it just might turn into a high level multiple UN agency conference, sooner or later with ideas like a bunch of navy or coast guard cutters tasked to patrol on the borders of cable landing areas and head off shipping that wants to anchor, trawlers that want to drag nets across the ocean floor, bubba driving his backhoe ship .. [and that still doesnt keep away sharks that want to sharpen their teeth on undersea cables...] srs
participants (13)
-
Bill Stewart -
Dorn Hetzel -
George William Herbert -
Jeff Shultz -
Martin Barry -
Martin Hannigan -
Randy Bush -
Rod Beck -
Rubens Kuhl Jr. -
Scott Francis -
Sean Donelan -
Steven M. Bellovin -
Suresh Ramasubramanian