In Vietnam, near every holiday or major event the internet magically slows to a crawl and the Govt run papers declare that sharks have attacked the undersea cables, it is almost comical how well timed the 'attacks' are...<p><a href="https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchors-red-tape-why-it-takes-forever-to-fix-vietnam-s-broken-internet-cables" rel="nofollow">https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchor...</a><p><a href="https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20190528/vietnams-internet-speed-slowed-by-cable-problem-off-da-nang/50125.html" rel="nofollow">https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20190528/vietnams-intern...</a><p><a href="https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20171016/vietnam-grapples-with-internet-cable-problems/42065.html" rel="nofollow">https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20171016/vietnam-grapple...</a><p><a href="https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/city-diary/20170125/save-vietnam%E2%80%99s-internet-sharks/29467.html" rel="nofollow">https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/city-diary/20170125/save-vietnam...</a><p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/sharks-are-eating-the-internet-in-vietnam-9962747.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...</a>
In the mid 2000s I was in the Middle East and used the internet to connect back to the United States for conducting business. One day almost every site became unreachable (anything hosted in the states). It turned out that a naval vessel had dropped anchor and Murphy's Law put the anchor right on top of some undersea fiber cables. It was called a freak accident because statistically was so unlikely to happen.<p>It took a while to figure out what happened, and internet was out for a couple of days. Considering service was restored in 30 minutes in this case, we are getting a lot better at handling severed cables.
many years ago, when i worked at google, we'd joke that every time fiber was 'cut' it was some rando government agency installing a tap. this was before internal traffic was encrypted.<p>of course, we were less than half joking.
> In a statement, the company blamed "multiple simultaneous fibre cuts", which are very rare.<p>Corporate speak for "obvious sabotage"...
Seems like SpaceX's Starlink will have no shortage of business.<p>It seems like a no-brainer to use space as a backbone haul for inter-continent traffic vs. physical cables.<p>It might be slightly faster, it'll probably be cheaper, you can scale the bandwidth by deploying more (very cheap) satellites.<p>Most of all, the traffic cannot be cut, spied on, you can spread access points in multiple locations (i.e. resiliency via distribution vs. single point of failure).
Weird coincidence that the Federal Reserve ACH network has an outage at the same time?<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/federal-reserve-bank-glitch-delayed-bank-account-deposits.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/federal-reserve-bank-glitch-...</a>
Back in 2008 when some submarine cables were cut[1], it had us frantic at work as origin stations had no way to transmit documents to us in the affected countries so we couldn't do our jobs before the freight landed. Until it was rectified they were having to take the physical documents and fly them to a country that did still have a reliable connection and scan them there to transmit to us.<p>Then in 2010 [2] when the volcano in Iceland grounded flights throughout parts of Europe we were similarly like "argh, sorry customers!"<p>Cut a few cables and knock out the 31 GPS satellites and the world would grind to a halt. It's terrifying how dependent we are on technology for virtually ever facet of our lives. Then we rely so much on air travel for delivering persons and freight, modern society is so incredibly fragile.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruption" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruptio...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...</a>
In Northern Canada, it's Wolves apparently that 'attack' our cable: <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northern-fibre-optic-northwestel-threats-1.5222102" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northern-fibre-optic-no...</a><p>"This is a picture of the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic cable. Since it was laid, it's been eaten at by wild animals, struck by lightning, and run over by construction workers."
The first HN thread I saw this morning (CET) about this was deleted, I think, but here's the second one:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21832934" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21832934</a>
Virgin Media in London also has had it's fibre optic cables cut this morning.<p><a href="https://my.virginmedia.com/faults/service-status" rel="nofollow">https://my.virginmedia.com/faults/service-status</a>
I used to work at a military base in San Diego that lost all internet connectivity after construction workers replacing a sewer line accidentally cut the OC-48 line
Hmmm, I've also been experiencing downtime today to nixval and amazon (don't know which region exactly) hosted sites. IDK if it's a coincidence.
Yesterday I could not find a The Pirate Bay mirror site that works. Now I assume that is connected to this issue but the first RARBG mirror I tried worked so I wonder if this is just an anecdote or it gives some insight about the demography of these two sites.
> <i>In a statement, the company blamed "multiple simultaneous fibre cuts", which are very rare.</i><p>In cases where multiple cables are cut <i>simultaneously</i> the simple answer was that it was probably done intentionally.<p>Reminds of 2015 in SF: <i>”At least 11 physical attacks on these cables have occurred in at least 10 Bay area cities”</i><p>I don’t know who these people are, but I bet they play dress up in a black mask and have convinced themselves that the ends will justify their means.<p><a href="https://fortune.com/2015/07/01/cutting-internet-cables/" rel="nofollow">https://fortune.com/2015/07/01/cutting-internet-cables/</a>