Boat anchor takes out Internet on 2 continents

[Kaido]

Awesome.

Large swathes of Asia, the Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.

One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.

An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was believed that a boat's anchor may have caused the problems, although this was unconfirmed, AP reported. He added that it might take up to a week to repair the fault.

Besides the Internet, the outage caused major disruption to television and phone services, creating chaos for the UAE's public and private sectors.

To think that millions upon millions of people could be without Internet, Phone, and Television...all because some random boat put its anchor down in the wrong place. Single point of failure ftl?

 

[spidey07]

LOL! Billy backhoe strikes again!

 

[SunnyD]

Meh... just means less pr0n available on the net for a bit.

 

[Specop 007]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Awesome.

To think that millions upon millions of people could be without Internet, Phone, and Television...all because some random boat put its anchor down in the wrong place. Single point of failure ftl?

Transoceanic cables are expensive. Not entirely suprised its a single point of failure.

 

[Krazy4Real]

Ouch, was it caused by a failboat's anchor?

 

[keird]

Looks like you don't have to just be aboard the failboat to lose. "Fail from above!"

 

[DnetMHZ]

I thought my spam filter was less busy today!

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: DnetMHZ
I thought my spam filter was less busy today!

:thumbsup:

 

[BabaBooey]

Originally posted by: DnetMHZ
I thought my spam filter was less busy today!

:laugh:

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Specop 007

Originally posted by: Kaido
Awesome.

To think that millions upon millions of people could be without Internet, Phone, and Television...all because some random boat put its anchor down in the wrong place. Single point of failure ftl?

Transoceanic cables are expensive. Not entirely suprised its a single point of failure.

Didn't read this one, but I think I read the AP release yesterday on it. Wasn't this cable in the Mediterranean? Significantly less expensive...

 

[Steve]

No wonder I'm still waiting for that guy in Nigeria to get back to me about that money...

 

[SludgeFactory]

I propose that we get together enough Paypal donations to outfit this guy with a boat with 50 cable-cutting anchors and permanently station him along the Nigerian coast.

 

[hypn0tik]

Set sail for fail?

 

[keird]

Originally posted by: SludgeFactory
I propose that we get together enough Paypal donations to outfit this guy with a boat with 50 cable-cutting anchors and permanently station him along the Nigerian coast.

re-route it to some Himalayan whistle-kids.

 

[spidey07]

Call all the technical support phone numbers for MS, dell, HP, etc. "we're sorry, all lines are busy...but we'll be glad to provide you somebody who can't speak english later"

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: SludgeFactory
I propose that we get together enough Paypal donations to outfit this guy with a boat with 50 cable-cutting anchors and permanently station him along the Nigerian coast.

You do know that most of the Nigerian scams come from London, UK right?

 

[guyver01]

Now i'm thinking THIS is a necessity for fishing boats in the middle of the ocean.

 

[buck]

Originally posted by: guyver01
Now i'm thinking THIS is a necessity for fishing boats in the middle of the ocean.

Wow, thats freaking cool.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: Steve
No wonder I'm still waiting for that guy in Nigeria to get back to me about that money...

you too?

 

[Modelworks]

I was watching a documentary on the ocean fiber cable lines and how they repair them.
They use a gps to locate about where the line is located.
They drop a hook in the water and drag it on the bottom back and forth until they snag the line.
Next they pull the line up to the boat, do the repairs, which is a pain because its fiber and you have to splice it very carefully.
Then they just lower it back down.

They said its a year round job becuase for some reason, they don't know why, the cables attract sharks, that like to chew and bite on the cables.

They have several crews for each cable and they said they never get a day where there is nothing to be repaired.

 

[Canai]

Originally posted by: buck

Originally posted by: guyver01
Now i'm thinking THIS is a necessity for fishing boats in the middle of the ocean.

Wow, thats freaking cool.

Yeah it is. I wish there was a larger version than their 'Large version' that was free

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I was watching a documentary on the ocean fiber cable lines and how they repair them.
They use a gps to locate about where the line is located.
They drop a hook in the water and drag it on the bottom back and forth until they snag the line.
Next they pull the line up to the boat, do the repairs, which is a pain because its fiber and you have to splice it very carefully.
Then they just lower it back down.

They said its a year round job becuase for some reason, they don't know why, the cables attract sharks, that like to chew and bite on the cables.

They have several crews for each cable and they said they never get a day where there is nothing to be repaired.

How deep are some of those lines?

 

[Modelworks]

Sharks and cables.
LOL

according to the article up to 2500 meters.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f...F932A25755C0A961948260

''We were surprised,'' said James M. Barrett, deputy director of international engineering for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. ''We had laid 55,000 or 60,000 miles of undersea cable all over the world with no problem. There had not been a single case of a shark biting one of the old cables,'' which were made of copper.

After further instances of having cables damaged by shark bites, A.T.&T. officials now say they are confident that by wrapping the cable in double layers of steel tape they can prevent future damage. But the cause of the ''Jaws syndrome,'' as one telephone company spokesman called it, remains a mystery.

The fiber-optic cables look essentially the same as copper cables, except that the newer cables are less than an inch in diameter - mere dental floss to a big shark - while the older ones are as thick as an arm. Both also have armored jackets and contain copper wires that carry electrical power to amplifying stations along the way.

''Hundreds of sharks have been caught,'' said Mr. Barrett of A.T.&T. On one expedition, he said, ''about a dozen shark experts were out on the boat.'' He went on, ''They got this one big shark on deck and tried to force-feed him samples of cable to see how he'd react. He was not happy about having someone try to shove it down his mouth

Mr. Barrett said the fiber-optic cables would be armored to depths of 2,500 meters to protect against shark bites, and buried in trenches closer to shore to guard against fishing boat anchors.

 

[CPA]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Sharks and cables.
LOL

according to the article up to 2500 meters.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f...F932A25755C0A961948260

''We were surprised,'' said James M. Barrett, deputy director of international engineering for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. ''We had laid 55,000 or 60,000 miles of undersea cable all over the world with no problem. There had not been a single case of a shark biting one of the old cables,'' which were made of copper.

After further instances of having cables damaged by shark bites, A.T.&T. officials now say they are confident that by wrapping the cable in double layers of steel tape they can prevent future damage. But the cause of the ''Jaws syndrome,'' as one telephone company spokesman called it, remains a mystery.

The fiber-optic cables look essentially the same as copper cables, except that the newer cables are less than an inch in diameter - mere dental floss to a big shark - while the older ones are as thick as an arm. Both also have armored jackets and contain copper wires that carry electrical power to amplifying stations along the way.

''Hundreds of sharks have been caught,'' said Mr. Barrett of A.T.&T. On one expedition, he said, ''about a dozen shark experts were out on the boat.'' He went on, ''They got this one big shark on deck and tried to force-feed him samples of cable to see how he'd react. He was not happy about having someone try to shove it down his mouth

Mr. Barrett said the fiber-optic cables would be armored to depths of 2,500 meters to protect against shark bites, and buried in trenches closer to shore to guard against fishing boat anchors.

lol, stupid shark experts.

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I was watching a documentary on the ocean fiber cable lines and how they repair them.
They use a gps to locate about where the line is located.
They drop a hook in the water and drag it on the bottom back and forth until they snag the line.
Next they pull the line up to the boat, do the repairs, which is a pain because its fiber and you have to splice it very carefully.
Then they just lower it back down.

They said its a year round job becuase for some reason, they don't know why, the cables attract sharks, that like to chew and bite on the cables.

They have several crews for each cable and they said they never get a day where there is nothing to be repaired.

Sharks can detect faint electrical fields. Saw a documentary about them one time and they had one in a tank that looped around a room. Every time the shark swam past a certain point, it would run into the wall. They couldn't figure out what was going on until they found some electrical anomaly with a piece of equipment on the other side of the wall. I think they said the field was the equivalent of what a 9 Volt battery might generate.

On sharks and their electrical sensing abilities.

More.