Boat anchor takes out Internet on 2 continents

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
You do know that most of the Nigerian scams come from London, UK right?

Source?

 

[OdiN]

Drop Anchor on the FAILBOAT!

 

[rpanic]

Wonder if it was done on purpose.

Years ago a professor told me his brother that has been doing R&D on Fiber since the early 80s use to go out with the navy and pull up the cables to practice tapping into them, maybe someone screwed up.

 

[Fritzo]

I can see Rodney Dangerfield on that ship right now. "CRASH!! HEY! You scratched my anchor!!!"

 

[pcnerd37]

I always knew something like this would happen. Im curious to see how long this takes to get repaired.

 

[biggestmuff]

There are at least two fiber cable bundles that have been severed. Several ships were in choppy water waiting to port at Alexandria, Egypt. To stabilize their ships, they dropped anchor. The Alexandria Port Authority advised them to move to deeper water as the weather was not subsiding. To help stabilize their ships, the boats slowly moved to deeper water while dragging their anchors. Guess what happened next?

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: ShotgunSteven

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.

Ja, I remember dat too. More recently I saw Inside Killer Sharks (with James May from Top Gear) and the response was demonstrated in a fenced-in pool filled with young sharks. They would actually snub scent based bait in favour of a small electrical one precisely from a 9 Volt battery.

 

[Jeff7]

Horray for redundancyacy.
The World Wide Web - it's great, except that some BIG sections are connected with only a single strand of silk.

Kind of like the stupid term, "Power grid." Grid implies multiple redundant links. Usually when one tree hits one line, power's out for a lot of people for a long time. The only "multiple links" part of that lies in the fact that it's usually multiple lines that are taken out at the same time.

 

[tranceport]

I'm sure they are prepared for it.. But isn't Haliburton's HQ in Dubai now?

 

[AlienCraft]

Sounds like a reasonable cover story.

More likely US Special Forces / NSA put some hardware in place.

 

[freegeeks]

I'm in Bahrain and we are back to dial-up speeds because of this. Business here is hurting. It takes like 20 minutes just to send an e-mail through the company VPN. It sucks

 

[nageov3t]

are those cables like run on the ocean floor, or are they just hanging out there?

 

[rockyct]

Here's a photo of them where they come onto land: http://www.wired.com/culture/a...n?slide=10&slideView=7

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: rockyct
Here's a photo of them where they come onto land: http://www.wired.com/culture/a...n?slide=10&slideView=7

That's just a few cables at a landing point of over a dozen cables that hit the east coast. There are several landing points on each of the US coasts.

 

[ForumMaster]

we're unaffected! we're connected to italy.

 

[RaistlinZ]

Heh, this is the first image that popped into my head after reading the article.

 

[KK]

Originally posted by: biggestmuff

Originally posted by: rockyct
Here's a photo of them where they come onto land: http://www.wired.com/culture/a...n?slide=10&slideView=7

That's just a few cables at a landing point of over a dozen cables that hit the east coast. There are several landing points on each of the US coasts.

I've been in a few of the east coast international offices, looked like any other office. Hopefully I'll get to go to the west coast ones sometime.

 

[keird]

Update.

3rd internet cable severed. CNN.

Internet cafes typically full of teenaged gamers are nearly empty with speeds still frustratingly slow.

"I felt like beating the ... modem, throwing it away, because we compete on the Internet and it feels really bad," said Aman Khurana, 13. Roffles!

 

[FoBoT]

it is now four cables, i can't see this being an accident, one of them is a brand new cable, and two of them haven't had ship traffic in the area


http://www.iht.com/articles/20.../technology/cables.php

 

[Skunkwourk]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
it is now four cables, i can't see this being an accident, one of them is a brand new cable, and two of them haven't had ship traffic in the area


http://www.iht.com/articles/20.../technology/cables.php

All I can say is Sharks...Sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads!!! or maybe ill tempered Sea Bass.

 

[BoomerD]

Does my internet still work?

HEY! yes it does...
(elimnates any reason for me to care)

 

[manowar821]

Turns out it wasn't a boat anchor at all. Lemme find the article...

http://ukpress.google.com/arti...wTD66nvWdTAQw20SaFI_GQ

This is CANNOT be coincidence. I also read that Iran/Tehran had a 100% drop in Internet traffic since the damage, according to an global Internet traffic/bandwidth tracking site.

 

[Nik]

I wonder what's to stop the turrrrists from roaming around at sea dropping anchor in random places, hoping to cripple other countries...

 

[biggestmuff]

Originally posted by: manowar821
Turns out it wasn't a boat anchor at all. Lemme find the article...

http://ukpress.google.com/arti...wTD66nvWdTAQw20SaFI_GQ

This is CANNOT be coincidence. I also read that Iran/Tehran had a 100% drop in Internet traffic since the damage, according to an global Internet traffic/bandwidth tracking site.

That's bunk. Trust me.

The Port of Alexandria, Egypt is trying to save face. During rough seas, the port authority instructed ships to deeper water. In doing so, the cables were damaged.

 

[Icepick]

Interesting