This isn't Hetzner's own cable, and it's not just "any" cable - it's an Alcatel-Lucent + Cinia + EU project, with 150 terabits worth of bandwidth. It's a high profile target, but it's just as likely that it's just an anchor accident.
When I lived in Cayman, the main fiber link (Maya-1[0]) was down for about a week (anchor drag, I think). Most of the island Caribbean has limited backup connectivity. The whole island only has one fiber line (around the whole western/southern Gulf of Mexico) and a crappy backup copper line to Jamaica. For a while, it was like being on a modem again. Forget about streaming anything.<p>This outage Hetzner is reporting isn't a big deal due to robust backups, but these things can cripple a small island outpost.<p>0: <a href="https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/maya-1" rel="nofollow">https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/maya-1</a>
Bitten by a shark, or snagged on a russian submarine? Whichever the case, I just ran an ansible deployment over our cluster that's spread over their Frankfurt and Helsinki datacenters, and I didn't notice any difference. I guess that's to be expected, their line between those datacenters is just an optimization, the internet is still functioning as it always is and maybe Hetzner gets a slightly larger egress bill from their ISP as the inter-dc traffic gets rerouted the general internet.
If any part of this interests you, you must read "Mother Earth, Motherboard" by Neal Stephenson. It's epic longform from the early Wired.<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/</a>
Happens quite often to subsea cables. I was renting a number of them and every now and again you'd get a break. You can follow the NOC's update emails:<p>Break detected<p>Ship has been commissioned<p>Ship is at harbor<p>Ship has sailed out to the cut<p>Fusing the ends<p>Service restored
Best guess this is the cable based on Hetzner investment and landings:<p><a href="https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/c-lion1" rel="nofollow">https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/c-lion1</a>
> Recovery of the service is in progress
(Last update: 2022-05-24 05:49 UTC+0)<p>> There is currently an ongoing fibercut at our subsea cable. Our cable provider is working on fixing this.
There is currently no ETA.
(Last update: 2022-05-23 14:09 UTC+0)
When something like this happens, does the traffic get distributed on other operational fibers that have sufficient unused bandwidth or do the operators fire up some dark fibers to carry the load? Or maybe it’s both?
If, like me, you didn't know how these get cut I'll save you the trouble. The most likely cause is improper boat anchoring. Never shark bites.