CibbuanoUndersea cables - cut on purpose?
March 4th 2008 08:07
It was big news... five undersea telecommunication cables were broken in the Middle Eat last month, causing major outages to India. People were quick to point fingers and yell 'Conspiracy!' but then the news came out: relax - it's just a ship's anchor snapping the cables.
But the Arabic news was disputing claims, stating that the cuts were in part of the ocean that had little traffic. More people yelled 'Conspiracy!' but they were largely unheeded.
We're still not out of it, though... even Ars Technica is suggesting that it might have been sabotage.
"...but of the five cable cuts, only one (the link between the UAE and Oman) is definitely established to have been an accident. There are doubts regarding the others, as some experts feel that the cables were too deep to be cut and lie outside of normal shipping lanes. The short period of time between the other four failures may also be indicative of deliberate action, as its unusual for multiple critical cable breaks to occur that close together."
Ars Technica also points out that the net effect of this sabotage, if it really was deliberate, is to force the world to beef up redundancy plans and workarounds.
The Internet is already very robust and is capable of on-the-fly self-healing, which is why it's been the model to gain the most traction. If a few more cables were strung out, it'd be tough work indeed to cripple a country's connection.
But the Arabic news was disputing claims, stating that the cuts were in part of the ocean that had little traffic. More people yelled 'Conspiracy!' but they were largely unheeded.
We're still not out of it, though... even Ars Technica is suggesting that it might have been sabotage.
"...but of the five cable cuts, only one (the link between the UAE and Oman) is definitely established to have been an accident. There are doubts regarding the others, as some experts feel that the cables were too deep to be cut and lie outside of normal shipping lanes. The short period of time between the other four failures may also be indicative of deliberate action, as its unusual for multiple critical cable breaks to occur that close together."
Ars Technica also points out that the net effect of this sabotage, if it really was deliberate, is to force the world to beef up redundancy plans and workarounds.
The Internet is already very robust and is capable of on-the-fly self-healing, which is why it's been the model to gain the most traction. If a few more cables were strung out, it'd be tough work indeed to cripple a country's connection.
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