Did The Warranties Just Run Out On Undersea Cables?
from the snapping-left-and-right dept
If you've never read Neal Stephenson's epic article from Wired magazine in 1996 about the laying of undersea fiber optic cable, I highly recommend you set aside some time to do so. Just a warning: set aside a lot of time. The article is almost book length, and it's hard to stop reading once you get into it. He goes into quite a lot of detail about FLAG, the Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe. You'll learn quite a bit about undersea cables and FLAG, which could come in handy, because in the last week, it appears that a bunch of these undersea cables have all started experiencing problems. It started off with reports of two cut cables (one of which is FLAG's) in the Mediterranean, with the explanation being that a boat anchor dragged across them. Yet, late Friday, reports came in of a third cut cable (also a FLAG cable) in the Persian gulf, followed by Egyptian reports denying that the cuts were caused by ships, saying none were in the area. To top that off, on Sunday, reports came in of a fourth cable with problems in the Middle East (it's unclear if this problem is as serious as a full cut cable), causing people to start thinking up conspiracy theories. It certainly is mighty strange to have four separate undersea cables with such problems in the same region within a few days of each other. You hate to ascribe it to malice without further evidence, but unless these cables all just went off of warranty, it's going to have a lot of folks asking similar questions.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: conspiracy theories, middle east, undersea cables
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Ummm,
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Ummmm...
THINK and THINK HARD...
1. you have a fiber optic cable, HOW DEEP do you place it.
2. DO you place WARNING BOUYS NEAR IT??
3. HOW protected "WOULD YOU" MAKE an important connection THAT you DIDNT want to REPLACE, as it would cost you MORE then DOING IT RIGHT, in the first place??
4. OK...Lets say it happens... 1 time... OK...2 times... 3 TIMES??? 4?HuhHuh?? in the SAME WEEK?Huh?
4 MAJOR fiber cables have been CUT....3 KNOWN OF, and the 4th is still NOT WORKING correctly...
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Re: Ummmm...
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Re: Ummmm...
They are mostly redundant systems. Cut a few cables and info gets re-routed without issue. It probably doesn't cost much in the scheme of things to repair the cables.
How do you suggest they "Do it right"? It's impossible to bury them undersea. Running redundant lines over politically unstable lands (ie, Iran and Pakistan to cover the ones that were cut recently) is prohibitively expensive. It has happened once in the x-number of years the internet has gotten to the Middle East. Not exactly a terrible track record.
I'd say this is overreacting. The other cables being cut and being newsworthy is only because the Mideast outage brought a magnifying glass to the cable cutting stories.
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Re: Re: Ummmm...
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Go watch a documentary about the repair crews that have to go out and find and fix the trans-continental fiber-optic cables, and then come talk to me about how difficult and expensive it is to repair cables laid out of miles and miles of ocean floor.
Furthermore, there are only so many such cables, only so many redundancies, and only so much bandwidth to go around. With 4 major cables inoperable, that is putting a very heavy load on the remaining backbone links around the world. Available bandwidth has been drastically reduced, and people and businesses alike are hurting because of it.
In any event, this is not insignificant news. While I will not believe any ridiculous conspiracy theories (unless, of course, a logical explanation does not turn up soon), the fact is that such a widespread outage is not commonplace at all. We need to find out what happened and why, and figure out how to make it never happen again. Please do us a favor, and know what you're talking about before speaking, or typing, whichever term you prefer.
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Hasn't anybody else seen
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Re: Hasn't anybody else seen
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky...try and take over THE WORLD!!"
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2 incidents would be pushing coincidence to it's limit, 4 is a warning i'd say.
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Natural Activity
I heard that that US has at least one sub whose primary job is the installation of monitoring devices onto undersea cables. I've never fully understood how that works. Supposing you install some kind of bugging device that transparently taps the data on the fibre-optic cable, wouldn't you need another fibre-optic cable to transport the signal to a location where the data can be analyzed?
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Re: Natural Activity
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Didn't know
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Re: Didn't know
But as you said, I didn't know these cables were so vulnerable. I thought they would've at least buried them a bit to prevents things like this from happening (if it was really an anchor... which I am not buying at this point).
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Re: Didn't know
If you're a fishing vessel that cuts a fiber optic cable, are you going to fess up considering that most people that cause cuts get a bill for it?
That's if the people cutting it even think about it being a fiber cable. For all they know they snagged some junk and have no idea that there is live traffic on it. Unless they pull up a repeater or something, but even then, they would be housed in protection. It would be a dirty cable of unknown origin likely without bright orange "don't dig" stickers on it.
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Beyond Coincidence
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Re: Re: Natural Activity
No one appreciates anti Semitic comments and nor do i want to get into a discussion. Now stop blaming the Jews for everything that goes wrong, as Israel also depends on the FLAG networks, and has no reason whatsoever to cut these cables.
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Re: Re: Re: Natural Activity
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Not random
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Re:Natural Activity
Steve, it is not anti-Semitic to say that Israel might have done it get a grip.
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hint: the same region
Uh, no.
It would be mighty strange to have separate cables with such problems in different regions within a few days of each other.
When they're in the same region, you look for common causes. Unusually strong winds, the resulting hefty underwater currents that perturb the cables, and more boats dropping cable-slicing anchors as a result of said winds and currents, are just a few that tend to accompany each other.
Logic is your friend. Use it.
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Re: hint: the same region
Nope, winds and storms only affect the top 60 feet of ocean waters (usually only the top 20 feet or so) -- and winds cannot change the underlying currents (below the surface waters) at all.
While I am no expert on the way they lay out the cables in the ocean, they must be >60ft (except when coming on shore) to avoid being sliced by the keels of passing ships.
Short answer: Don't blame the wind for something several thermoclines below the surface of the ocean.
IF it was a natural cause, most likely would be a mudslide, or other erosion caused by undersea currents, not surface wind.
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coild be....
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suspecting israel is not antisemitic
israel will do anything to protect its people and its way of life, their rather bloody history is proof of that.
the mossad (the israeli version of the CIA) is one of the best trained and most active intelligence agencies in the world. their capabilities rival or may actually exceed those of the CIA or britain's MI6, yet israel is smaller than the state of wisconsin.
there is a laundry list of black bag operations that the mossad has pulled, the bulk of which are assassinations, bombings, and air strikes.
suggesting that israel might cut a few cables is not that outlandish and is certainly not antisemitic.
one might also argue that since the cables weren't kidnapped or assassinated, israel clearly wasn't involved.
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The good news is that Israel has not been affected by this as it shares a different cable with Iraq.
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I cut the cables, but I didn't cut no power supply
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Re: I cut the cables, but I didn't cut no power su
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I know what it is!
"Darn all those whippersnappers and their "technology"!"
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This is a Test
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Could be the US Navy...
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We did it
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The Stars are Right?
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Microsoft
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These things happen more often than you think...
Or it could just be the terrorists, terrorists, 9/11, WMDs.
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Who says what Israel has done was bad? Hell, if the US didn't hold them back, they would have done a hell of a lot more, and rightfully so.
Look at Iran today. Just because the US will probably wuss out doesn't mean that Israel should or will.
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Mr Steve is paranoid.
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telecommunications cables, who done it?
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Speak for yourself!
Yeah. Like people were talking about the terrible "accident" when the first plane hit the first tower. Sorry, but sometimes it pays to be a bit paranoid and ascribe something to malice early on. While other people were wondering "how could this happen?" I was thinking "oh shit, we're under attack. And I was right. This feels the same way, although who the attacker might be, and what their objective is, I'm not at all sure.
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http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529826.html
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Re: good nsa article
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Demands
Into this swiss bank account,..CH-9/112001.
You have one week,..
If you do not meet this deadline,..
I will start cutting lines into the US.
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