Is the internet going down? Undersea sub-cables have just broken...

Breaking news: something's happening to the internet, right now. We're just not quite sure what.

Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

These carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America. It's hard to gather what this actually means - is it that the internet is down or (more likely) significantly slower than usual between the Middle East and America? (If you're reading this, let's face it, the internet has not shut down altogether)

But, according to the company, there is a domino effect taking place. Interoute says it is:

hearing that offices have lost their entire private network connectivity. As a result, users are unable to do their daily job over the internet and are turning to their mobile phones to communicate across the globe. This is having a knock on effect on the domestic voice networks, which are getting a surge of calls needing to be routed internationally. These calls need to be routed onto international gateways that pass voice traffic in longer directions around the world to avoid the cable breaks – causing more quality issues and risk more call failures, in turn causing more calls to be placed and increasing the pressure on local voice networks.

What (I think) this means is that companies' private internet services have gone down. So, if they can get access, they have had to go on the public internet and mobile phones, like the rest of us average joes, to get their work done. That results in more strain on mobile phone networks, which means more phone calls go down and the internet becomes slower.

Here's the big problem right now:

Finance companies [are] looking to settle trades on European and American exchanges. This cable outage means there is no real-time access to, for example, trading ticker services. This means branch offices are compromised when trying to place trades. As private networks are being affected, these organisations are forced to rely on public internet services that may have more latency and may not update as quickly. The loss of time even precious seconds is hugely important to trading exchanges. These public internet services are now struggling to cope with peak in demand – leading to increased latency, and further compromising the integrity of the trading data.

I'm told that these major sub-sea cables break once a year. So companies have developed a fall-back plan. If one sub-sea cable is out, traffic is re-routed onto a second cable. In theory, a dual break, where both cables go out at once, is incredibly rare. Prior to January this year, it had not happened before.

The problem with all of this is that it's hard to see the impact, or its significance, until something disastrous happens. So, we're keeping an eye on it and like we said, er, something's happening to the internet.

UPDATE: AP report mass outages in Egypt

UPDATE: India suffers massive internet disruption after undersea cables break

Comments

[Ryan]

The internet is indeed down. I am posting this with my mind.

[Tyler]

"But the company say what's is happening is that there is a domino effect taking place, Interoute tell me they are:"

Grammar please.

[Bill]

It's Godzilla

[wookie]

This has got to be the worst-written article I've ever read. Dude, stop torturing us with your bad writing and idiot ideas about the internet!

[kolef88]

I imagine the cable breakage was caused by undersea earth tremors or quakes or by giant aquatic animals.
-- Dr. Moreau

[Murad Ahmed]

For all those who are interested, this blog was written in an awful rush. It has been adjusted repeatedly since. Sorry.

[TDPro]

Is someone doing this deliberately or is someone to cheap to fix these and/or do maintenance?

[willie b]

Oh yeah, that's just great-some other mega-disaster to worry about. Let's not forget the peaceful religion of islam just waiting in the wings to help move the world forward?

[Herb]

I am currently in the Middle East and we have a 95% work stop state due to this outage. I cannot make any cell calls to the US and we are unable to keep our VPN connection up to the US. I will be surprised if this message even gets posted. This is BIG!

[JOJOJO]

What caused (causes) the breaks?

[David]

This blog is so full of rubbish, I suggest you take it down and start again.

[Reality Check]

"For all those who are interested, this blog was written in an awful rush. It has been adjusted repeatedly since. Sorry."

And you still have this many errors?

I take it English is not your first, second or third language?

[Rodger]

I'm surprised that some of you Obama-Clinton-Castro-Chavez-Marx worshippers haven't tried to blame this on President Bush....

[texster]

Good riddance! Maybe it will lead to the end of somali scams, chinese hacking and russian spam. What a loss that would be! Frankly I don't know why though uncivilized SOB's are even connected to the internet.

[John]

The cables in this instance are located in the Mediterranean Sea, not between Asia and North America.

[WAR HAWK]

...the bombing starts in fifteen minutes. Goodbye Iran.

[TinfoilHat]

A similar thing happened last year when several cables mysteriously all went at the same time. Do a google search and you will find it. A magazine called "The Week" had a blurb about the incident. Point is there are alot of tin foil hat conspiracy people that feel it is all connected. Have fun.

[Joe the Plumber]

This never would have happened if McCain was elected.

[WAR HAWK]

...the bombing starts in fifteen minutes. Goodbye Iran.

[Jdub]

The internet is a WANT! It is not a need and that is the problem.

All humans on earth are falling into the American trap of not being able to discern wants from needs. I hope something happens to wake people up. We need good air, water, and food. Then we need to love our neighbors. THEN and ONLY THEN, do we need cars, microwaves, and maybe a camera-computer-easy bake oven phone.....then internet. Until then, do you notice how the air, water, food, love thing is failing?

[Thomas]

Did you try rebooting?

[AnthonyF.]

How can this be verified?

[Akmed]

Does anyone know specifically which cables have failed? Should I be dumping at&t stock? Are the days of cheap long distance rates over.

Three of four cables failing at the same time smells like a conspiracy. Does anyone know where Dick Cheney was at the time?

[Samarah]

OMG!! Does this mean I wont be able to get into Openlife to my Castle?? I wont be able to work on my cave or my prim hair? Will my scripts still work afterwards? I wont even be able to TP to my friends region or send IMs to anyone??? Goodbye World!!!

[Retardican]

I thinks it is the obamas adminstriaghtshen that is involved. Rush said this wuld happening and it is.

[Buck Rogers]

The internet is over, Obama ordered it so............

[Terry]

"The internet is indeed down. I am posting this with my mind.- Posted by: Ryan | Dec 19, 2008 4:07:35 PM "

WOW! I have ESP!

[Retardican]

don't you blame this on dick cheney. hes a good americans. unlike the communits obamas. they want to put the US in the dark age again.

[Terry]

"The cables in this instance are located in the Mediterranean Sea, not between Asia and North America.-
Posted by: John | Dec 19, 2008 4:58:34 PM"

Hence it being an "under-SEA" cable and not an "under-ocean" cable. At least until Obama changes the name of the Pacific to the "Pacific Sea" withy all of the other change he is promising.

[mascmen7]

I get hundreds of Russian spam a day so keep the cables cut for a while but I will miss my Athens friends.

[Zanzan]

I was in Dubai setting up a new office when this same thing happened back in Jan/Feb. I had just gotten everything working and connected to the corporate network, and suddenly the link went down. DU (one of the major Dubai carriers) confirmed the outage, and I later found out about the cable breaks in the links that make landfall in Alexandria. We were down for about 2 days before DU got stuff rerouted.

[Random]

I CAN'T FIND MY PANTS!

[Trucker Teddy]

Blago did it. His excessive use of hairspray has had a negetive effect on the ocean water, which has caused a blue whale to die and it fell across the cables, severing them. Global warming in action LOL!!!!

[zzz]

It's all caused by George Bush's failure to stop Global Warming ...ooops! I mean "Climate Change". Just get Al Gore to fix the problem. Hell, he INVENTED both the Internet and Climate Change.

[Miff]

Talk about bad grammar, info,...etc try reading some of your own posts.

AP is reporting the Mediterranean undersea cables were cut.

BTW, the internet is slow, VPN's in many instances are completely down.

[Scott]

Who will support my Dell computer and take my credit card info?

I thought Al created two internets..

[Jose Garcia]

This is the sort of thing that happens before war breaks out.

[Anon]

Obviously it could be a terrorist attack, or a submarine earthquake. The latter should be reported by the USGS and other geological and seismic agencies. Where are the physical locations of the breaks, if known?

Could this be the beginning of an Iranian attack on Israel?

[Quiet iku]

maybe it's the Somali Pirates looking for scrap copper

[wing nut]

Seems fishy to me .... CitiGroup & Vancouver stock market computers went down a few days ago . Dow has margin calls today and you know what that means .....

[Ashley B]

This topic was covered recently in the BBC programme 'Spooks'. I think it was those sneaky Russians.

[Rick]

Murad, good info and nice start to the blog. I hope you ignore the whiners...

Curious what causes 3 cables to break in the same week - are they run in the same areas or are they greatly seperated? What undersea phenomenom might have caused it and was anything detected?

[Samarah Nightfire]

OMG!!! Does this mean I wont be able to play Open Life and get to my castle??? How will I IM my friends or work on my cave?? WIll I loose my prim hair?

[Kaptain Kremen]

See, the thing is, the internet is a series of tubes. When they break under the ocean water rushes in. This causes bubbles, and the tubes get bent.

I know this, because I've seen tubes, and water is wet.

[Yephora]

Murad Ahmed, thank you for posting this information -- and ignore the ungrateful grammar police.

[Kell G]

May be this will also slow down Al Qaeda, the druglords, and other enemies of humanity to be shut down for awhile as well.

[Tim]

Verification:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ayPbWf_7l17w&refer=europe

And for crying out loud lay off the grammar correction posts. Jeez. Give the guy a break.

[Scott]

So, I take it they can't even call tech support in India to get help with this...

[BS]

I'm sure this is a result of the cables simply disintigrating, and has nothing to do with technological warfare.

Since the internet is about the only place to find informaiton about what is really taking place in the world it would make sense to cut those ties (point intended), and let people tune into the magical propoganda box in their family rooms for updates on what's going on.

[Barnyard Patrol]

The internet is a WANT! It is not a need and that is the problem.

Posted by: Jdub | Dec 19, 2008 5:03:37 PM

====Jdub...please go hug a tree. It'll make you feel better.

[Joe 2]

Blame it on George Bush. He causes everything.

[Pierre]

Last post?

[John K]

The impacted cable systems are the SMW4 cable, also known as SEA-ME-WE 4, SMW-3, also known as SEA-ME-WE 3, and Falcon. Customers may experience a loss of service or latency on their services to the Middle and Far East.

[Semaj]

I see dead people.

[Jib]

no, we don't know where Dick Cheney was but we do know where Obama and Nancy Pelosi was.

[Troublemaker]

It is all Gearge Bush's fault, right?

[007]

heard that it could be man made by some country's "secret services" for national security reasons.

[USA]

Calm down. It is just the start of Obama's new deal. We don't need the rest of the world and we are cutting you off!

[Greg]

Wow. So poorly written. Learn a new trade and put someone who knows how to write in your position. You must face reality: Your writing sucks!

[John Campbell]

What I can't understand is how, in spite of this happening to now more than just two undersea cables in relative proximity globally, that we are still being told this is accidents and natural disaster type events. Has anyone bothered to think about the placement of these cables and the possibility that such breakages might be intentional? Possibly a form of warfare?

[Borat]

OMG! If the internet is lost, what shall I do? I may need to interact with actual humans and maybe read a book instead of being hypnotized by the 'net...

[Fish_Kungfu]

Needs more cowbell.

[BlueDale]

Several pieces of information are missing from this article:

1) Where are the cables located -- Pacific Ocean? Mediterranean sea?

2) What is the likely or typical cause of the breaks?

3)I read of other recent breaks in Mediterranean cables -- traced to a ship's anchor dragging. Is this the most likely cause of these breaks?

4) When will service be restored?

5) How much is this impacting global business, if at all? What businesses are most affected?

[chris]

why would i care what the author thinks about something he is totally unqualified to answer, kill yourself and spare the world. just the facts

[Capt Nemo]

Do you people know what it takes to break an undersea cable? It's a lot more than a pair of scissors. I think it's the US navy seals per order of pres.Bush. it's all desgined to make pres. obama look bad and to get even with the islamic world.

[Barrett Lyon]

According to BitGravity's backbone team, there are three major cable systems SMW3, SMW4 and FLAG FEA have all been cut near Alexandria.

Our CDN operations cannot be impacted from the cuts, but we monitor them anyway, thought this might be helpful:

SMW3: Fault Status: Suspected Problem in SWM3 between Alexandria and Mazara. Restoration of restorable bearers is currently in progress and non-restorable bearers are down.

SWM4: Fault Status: Suspecting some problem Problem in SWM4 Seg 4 between Alexandria and Marseille.

FLAG:Fault Status: FLAG FEA Cable system traffic between Alexandria (Egypt) and Palermo (Italy) is affected since 08:06GMT on dated 19th
December 2008. Reliance Globalcom Marine team closely working with Alexandria & Palermo landing stations to investigate the fault and Reliance Globalcom is unable provide restoration because other cables SMW3 & SMW4 cables also failed on same segment about 07:50 GMT.

[Sphere]

It's the revenge of Michael Crichton. He wrote about this in his lifetime ("Sphere"), and now, look, Sphere is here.

[Poster]

sorry to burst the conspiracy bubble but it was most likely a fishing trawler or some yokle with back hoe slicing through the cables. There might be three of them but they all have to go from the same place to the same place so they are likely laid close enough together for this to happen

[hayduke]

Once a year?

Sounds like someone attempted a tap and screwed it up. Twice.

[IT Person]

Turn it off, keep it off for 2 minutes, then power it back on. You can also stick a pin in the back to reset it, if need be. Cheerio!

[Rich33527]

Under Obama's plan,these cables wont have to work. So get used to it.....

[sara]

i am telepathic, and call recive signals in my mind,im typing in a lap-top,on the North Pole!

Forget cables!

LOL

[kb]

It's just Al Gore. He has taken the cables down for cleaning. They are tubes after all. Wouldn't want them getting all clogged up!

[Dr. Botkin]

No! It was Bush and Cheney again. Up all night severing the cables.

[IT Geek]

Maybe they should just go wireless..

[styrgwillidar]

Undersea communications cables are vulnerable to several things, depending on their depth. They can be cut by fishing trawlers outerboards. This used to occur at shallower depths but has been occurring deeper as fishing trawlers have worked deeper. To protect against this cables are armored (wrapped with hard steel wires around the communicatino cable), armoring can be Light, Medium or Heavy. Typically Heavy is used in shallow depths, light at depth. Addtionally, cables are buried where possible, i.e. if sand mud bottom exists where cable is run. A water-jet on a towed sled gouges a trench the cable goes into, mud and sand then erode back over the cable. Since several cables broke in the same area, it's likely it was caused by a fishing trawler. The cables do appear on nautical charts, but accidents do occur.

[KR]

Rumour control has issued the following communiqué in the last few minutes:

An Al Qua'eda submarine has been spotted in the mid-Pacific in this afternoon. World Powers Inc. of Washingtom DC estimates that this may have something to do with the current internet outage that is preventing me from replying to this blog.

[Martian Boogy]

We always have carrier pigeons.

[Travis]

No more SPAM!

[Charles]

Cthulu awakens...

[Chipper]

"I'm surprised that some of you Obama-Clinton-Castro-Chavez-Marx worshippers haven't tried to blame this on President Bush...."

I'm surprised that you Bible thumping Bush followers aren't blaming Satan for this....

[David]

Wow, this is a horrible article written by someone who has absolutely no clue about anything.

[Matthew]

I'm from Asia (Malaysia) and Internet is up and running... but at a very slow pace.

ISP: TM (Streamyx)

Matt

[Thaimed]

Thai Internet connections seems to be rather slow....

But all sites I have tried so far have been accessible.

[Jonny]

I love the anti American superficial comments by JDUB.

"All humans on earth are falling into the American trap...We need good air, water, and food. Then we need to love our neighbors. THEN and ONLY THEN, do we need cars, microwaves, and maybe a camera-computer-easy bake oven phone.....then internet. Until then, do you notice how the air, water, food, love thing is failing?"

I agree with the need to love (as opposed to tolerate) others. However, you need to live in the reality of our (the worlds) current situation. We are a global economy dependent on services and shipping and communication utilizing (largely) the internet. To say this is last on the list you gave...I hate to break it to you but you won't have a car to use if your ATM card can't connect to the internet to put gas in it.

Unless you have an unlimited supply of cash in your house (where do you live out of curiousity?) to live indefinitely there is no way to pay for anything in the developing world. The banks rely on the internet to tell you how much money "you" have. With it down, you would be screwed and not able to eat, drink and be merry. Unless you live in a barter/trade society, which I doubt since you are posting on the internet.
That being said, the "internet" is not going to go down. It is a temporary inconvenience at an inconvenient time. They will reroute comms temporarily, find the cut, repair it, and all will go back to normal until the next time something happens and we realize how vulnerable we are to stove-piping all our information thru the internet.

Cheers. Drink a holiday cocktail for me!

[Paul]

Maybe this will prevent these "join our jihad" sites from operating and spewing their hate.

[blameamericafirst]

I hope that they all break and the internet grinds to a halt.. a bit like our economy and national security. Then we can all hold hands and hum along to "change we can believe it" !!!

[Chris]

Who cares about the rest of the world. The internet was started for Americans anyway. As long as Americans have internet service, that is all that really matters !
Everyone else around the world, go back to smoke signals and btw - have a nice day ! :)

[Manick]

We need a back system to address this issues in future.

[Isambard Kingdom]

So let me get this right..the entire world of commerce as we know it is extremely vulnerable to undersea cable breaks due to unknown and unseen forces whether they be naturally occuring seismic activity ,accidental maritime damage or deliberate covert damage by a power with significant deep-sea capability.I think we can safely rule the Taliban and Al-Queda out.Now who would that leave out there..who would be likely to gain the most ?Your starter for ten as Bamber would say..:)

[American]

'Losing contact with India, you say?

GREAT!

[jjTim]

wow news

[xyz]

Such an important service that so carelessly maintained. such risks should be mitigated. As for people making fun of the matter, the internet is not down it just less connected together :)

Are you here to fix everyone's english or reading an article realted to a problem; instead of flaming someone over his grammer/spelling

[Spudster]

I did some tests online, and here were the results:
-----------------
SLC, UT
XMission
1009
125

Atlanta, GA
One Ring Networks
1315
597

London, United Kingdom
Namesco
1312
216

Belgrade, Serbia
VeratNet
1311
341

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
AwalNet
118
34

Lahore, Pakistan
Wateen Telecom
123
21

Hong Kong, China
Mobiwink China
1229
354
-----------------
This shows evidence that something is going on in a localized area. As for the conspiracy theories, there is too much to worry about. Besides, wouldn't "they" have taken everything down?

(key)
location
provider
upload kbps
download kbps

[Tom Dennen]

Gremmar - She daid, dude.

I texted this with my limbic memory

[Foo and Badas Are So Lame]

That tears it. All my investement funds are going into digital buggy whips!

[Dave, Orangevale, California]

The break was masterminded by Osama Bin Laden, after he found out that there are pictures of women on the WWW that aren’t wearing veils.

[Pedro]

This is the outage we have been waiting for. (Obama speak)

[joe]

ITS CTHULU!!!

[Kurt]

I live in Malta, one of our cable connected to the world has been cut! Our Internet connection is extremly slow and hence the cutting of more cables?! What is happening? are there fish nibbling the cable? What can we do?