Monday, 4 February 2008

How One Clumsy Ship Cut Off The Web For 75 Million People

Last Wednesday, a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather accidentally damaged two internet cables with its anchor, reducing internet capacity in Asia by 75%.

A flotilla of ships may have been dispatched to reinstate the broken submarine cable that has left the Middle East and India struggling to communicate with the rest of the world, but it took just one vessel to inflict the damage that brought down the internet for millions.

3 comment(s):

Anonymous said...

I'll bet there were some pissed-off World of Warcraft players in Asia!

Gerard said...

Oh yeah!

Minnesotastan said...

The story may be more complex than that. More recent reports indicate disruption of multiple cables in multiple locations

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/04/2153455.htm

http://mathaba.net/rss/?x=580589

Egypt reports no [surface] ships in the area where a cable was disrupted in its waters -

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2008/February/theworld_February77.xml§ion=theworld&col

So the disruption could have ominous implications -

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=JES20080202&articleId=7980

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_2004_July/ai_n6142317/pg_2

(or it could all be a coincidence...)