True Adsl - Slow - Cable Broken In Taiwan...

[Tony Clifton]

Did no see or read anything happening around Taiwan but did see on the net and BBC news that Egypt, India and Pakistan are experiencing severe problems due to cables.

[HDRIDER]

HI

Here is why you dont hear to much about it, maybe in middle East they dont have to many standby cables.

Q. What happens when a submarine cable breaks.

A. The first thing is that the calls on the broken submarine cable are automatically switched to standby lines – this takes less than half a second, so you will hardly notice it. The engineers managing the cable then do tests to find where it’s broken. They then call out one of the fleet of cable ships strategically located round the world to go and fix it – this can take several weeks if the break is a long way from the base port or the weather is bad. Breaks on all undersea cables can be minimized by careful design and route selection, which Howard Communications Ltd. can help with. It is important for the owners to carry the right inventory of spares so repair operations do not get delayed.

[zzSleepyJohn]

Absolutely right, HDRIDER, provided diversely routed standby facilities have been prearranged and paid for by the telecoms operators. But I think the problem here in Asia is that such facilities all cost money and for 99% of the time they aren't going to be used, so cash-strapped ISPs tend instead to rely on overflowing to the already quite well loaded-up mesh network that exists round here.

That means if you get 3 seperate cables broken all at once like we have now, the remaining good part of the mesh gets horribly congested.

I still think a broken cable, even in Asia, is a newsworthy item, and remain puzzled why nothing much seems to have appeared in the media about it.

+ SJ

[HDRIDER]

HI

I have done cable work in Asia for about 4 years, (not anymore) sometimes we had 3-6 cables there was damaged, there is a lot of underwater volcanic activities in Asia, around Japan, Taiwan and to Philippines, and I have never seen 1 of them in the news. Right now Tyco and Alcatel is out working full speed on cables

[HDRIDER]

HI

Here is some of the stuff you never hear about.

Cable Repair Status:

RNAL Segment (Hong Kong - Busan) & Segment (Hong Kong - Toucheng):

- The RNAL cable path between Busan and TongFuk was down at 1243utc 26-Dec.

The other cable path, Hong Kong - Toucheng Taiwan was also down at 1942UTC. It caused the Hong Kong being isolated from the cable system. The fault point of segment HKG - Toucheng is about 731km from Tong Fuk cable station.

- Cable Ship Lodbrog arrived at the repair ground in the afternoon of 28-Dec. Plan-of-Work is not yet available but expected to complete in 5 days if everything goes smooth.

APCN System 1 Segment B17 (Hong Kong branch)

- The traffic on APCN system 1 was down since 1815utc 26-Dec. The fault is in the segment B17 (Hong Kong Branch). Power reconfiguration was completed on 27-Dec evening hence the Korea - Japan and Taiwan were back to service.

- Cable ship Asean Restorer, who is now in Singapore, is mobilized for the APCN SYS1 & SYS2 repair.

APCN System 2 Segment B5 (Taiwan Branch)

- The traffic on APCN system 2 B5 (Taiwan branch) was also down at 2044utc 26-Dec. It made the Taiwan node being isolated from APCN system. The fault location is about 920km from Toucheng cable station.

- The segment will be repaired after the System 1 work.

SMW3 S1.8 (Fangshan - BU4) and S1.7 (BU3 - BU4)

- SMW3 reported that the traffic to Fangshan was lost since 1225utc 26-Dec. It was due to two faults appeared in SMW3 S1.8 and S1.7. The fault point of S1.8 is about 44km from FangShan cable station, whilst the fault point of S1.7 is 459km from Shantou cable station.

- Cable ship Retriever, who is now in Philippine, is mobilized for the SMW3 repair.

APCN2 Segment 7 (Tanshui - Shantou) & Segment 3 (Hong Kong - ChongMing)

- The APCN2 S7 (Tanshui - Shantou) was reported down at 1606UTC 26-Dec whilst the S3 (Hong Kong - ChongMing) was also down at 1801utc. It caused the traffic isolation between Southern Asia (Hong Kong/Singapore/ Malaysia/Philippine) to Northern Asia (Japan/Taiwan/Korea).

- The HKG to Singapore/Malaysia/Philippine traffic was still working fine in the southern Asia region.

- The fault point of S7 is about 905km from Tanshui cable station, whilst that of S3 is about 2091km from ChongMing cable station.

CS KPL (Japan) will be mobilized for the repair of APCN2 S3 & S7

- China-US segment W1 (Shantou - ChongMing) & Segment S1 (Shantou - Okinawa/SLO)

- China-US segment W2 (Spur to Fangshan) was isolated since 1227utc 26-Dec. Fault point is about 9.7km from FangShan

- At 1859UTC, another cable fault developed on China-US segment S1, 502km from Shantou cable station.

- At 0207utc 27-Dec, the segment W1 (Shantou - ChongMing) was also down that made the Shantou node being isolated from China-US cable system. The fault point is about 452km from Shantou cable station.

- CS KDD Ocean Link (KOL) will be mobilized for the repair of CHUS.

FLAG FEA Sub-System 8 (Hong Kong - Shanghai - Korea)

- FLAG FEA reported that the Sub-system 8 had suffered cable fault at 2056UTC. The fault point is between Repeater 9 and Repeater 10 near Hong Kong.

- Currently no any repair schedule for the FEA repair.

[Jimbo]

Just chatting to friends in Singapore and none have seen any slow speeds so I guess the cable breakage has had no effect on Singapore. I am trying to use a few US sites for work and it is taking me 10 minutes to finish loading a page if I am lucky.. It just keeps loading and then ends up with errors or does not finish loading. I love Thailand and love living here but these constant internet connection issues are insane. Its been like this for days now.

Edited February 2, 2008 by Jimbo

[kmart]

Not too much choice with ADSL here in my part of Rayong. It's TOT or the highway here. Utterly shambolic and inconsistent all the time; broken cables or no... It's actually costing us business losses, not to mention embarrassing excuses to clients.

[GmB]

I cannot find anything on the net about the taiwan cables but only about egypt one.

I am with TOT 2048/512 in Phuket and the speed in the last days is really a problem.

My router now syncs like this

Up Stream

96 (Kbps.)

Down Stream

2048 (Kbps.)

96Kbps.

I do not believe much in the cables problem as i do not see what Penang should have to do with cables in egypt or taiwan.

I hope that everything will be fixed but i am scared that it's only a matter of BAD SERVICE of Thais ISP

It's a shame

[StrongView]

I have a True SME 2.5 Mb connection and the speeds have been quite erratic. I'm located in Nonthaburi, and this is what I get when running a speedtest on www.speedtest.net from...

BKK to NYC:

BKK - San Fran:

Edited February 3, 2008 by StrongView

[zzSleepyJohn]

HI

Here is some of the stuff you never hear about.

Cable Repair Status:

RNAL Segment (Hong Kong - Busan) & Segment (Hong Kong - Toucheng):

- The RNAL cable path between Busan and TongFuk was down at 1243utc 26-Dec.

*SNIP*

FLAG FEA Sub-System 8 (Hong Kong - Shanghai - Korea)

- FLAG FEA reported that the Sub-system 8 had suffered cable fault at 2056UTC. The fault point is between Repeater 9 and Repeater 10 near Hong Kong.

- Currently no any repair schedule for the FEA repair.

The above information appears to refer to faults which occured in December 2006 and which were fixed in January 2007. They were well publicised at the time.

What I find very strange is that reports on the current faults which are equally causing us all a lot of disruption are limiited to the two broken fibres in the Middle East, and there's apparently no mention in the media of any other fault in Asia that's contributing to the present troubles.

HDRIDER, can you give any reason why Asian cable faults were considered newsworthy a year ago, but similar incidents this year aren't?

Is it just possible that someone has mixed up their years and has been mistakenly reporting last year's faults thinking they are current now?

+ SJ

[astral]

Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with the Egypt's communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe.

The line in question runs under the Mediterranean, from Palermo in Italy to Alexandria in Egypt. It is not clear what caused the break. The cable is one of only a handful of connections, and part of the world's longest undersea cable, 24,500 miles long, running from Germany, through the Middle East and India before terminating in Australia and Japan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/...ed=networkfront

It really is amazing the BS these journalists write.

An undersea cable, running through Germany..................

[CobraSnakeNecktie]

Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with the Egypt's communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe.

The line in question runs under the Mediterranean, from Palermo in Italy to Alexandria in Egypt. It is not clear what caused the break. The cable is one of only a handful of connections, and part of the world's longest undersea cable, 24,500 miles long, running from Germany, through the Middle East and India before terminating in Australia and Japan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/...ed=networkfront

It really is amazing the BS these journalists write.

An undersea cable, running through Germany..................

It says running FROM Germany and Germany does have North Sea frontage north of Holland and south of Denmark near Hamburg.

Here is a diagram showing the major cables.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Tec.../SeaCableHi.jpg

[HDRIDER]

HI

Here is some of the stuff you never hear about.

Cable Repair Status:

RNAL Segment (Hong Kong - Busan) & Segment (Hong Kong - Toucheng):

- The RNAL cable path between Busan and TongFuk was down at 1243utc 26-Dec.

*SNIP*

FLAG FEA Sub-System 8 (Hong Kong - Shanghai - Korea)

- FLAG FEA reported that the Sub-system 8 had suffered cable fault at 2056UTC. The fault point is between Repeater 9 and Repeater 10 near Hong Kong.

- Currently no any repair schedule for the FEA repair.

The above information appears to refer to faults which occured in December 2006 and which were fixed in January 2007. They were well publicised at the time.

What I find very strange is that reports on the current faults which are equally causing us all a lot of disruption are limiited to the two broken fibres in the Middle East, and there's apparently no mention in the media of any other fault in Asia that's contributing to the present troubles.

HDRIDER, can you give any reason why Asian cable faults were considered newsworthy a year ago, but similar incidents this year aren't?

Is it just possible that someone has mixed up their years and has been mistakenly reporting last year's faults thinking they are current now?

+ SJ

Hi

Try to look back and see what I wrote before, why should they tell everybody when something is wrong/broken cable, it’s just normal work out there, there are ships there do this work all year round, I worked in cable business for 9 years, nothing new, try to see how many cable ship there is in the world, it’s not only the broken cables, Thailand have <deleted> all cables out of Thailand, that’s where your problem is, forget a few broken cables, I have tried my best to explain it.

[HDRIDER]

Is it just possible that someone has mixed up their years and has been mistakenly reporting last year's faults thinking they are current now?

+ SJ

NO way, i know the people working up there, get mail from them every other day and i look at the ships web site every day.

[nikster]

Good article on the BBC here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7222536.stm

Total of three major cables are down.

Inlcudes a paragraph that may explain Thailand's very slow internet:

As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

If Singapore is not affected, that's maybe because Singapore alone has something like 6 times the capacity of Thailand. And Singapore is a whole lot smaller than Thailand. They have bandwidth out the wazoo, basically.

[nikster]

Try to look back and see what I wrote before, why should they tell everybody when something is wrong/broken cable, it’s just normal work out there, there are ships there do this work all year round, I worked in cable business for 9 years, nothing new, try to see how many cable ship there is in the world, it’s not only the broken cables, Thailand have <deleted> all cables out of Thailand, that’s where your problem is, forget a few broken cables, I have tried my best to explain it.

LOL - That's a nice and short summary right there

[daxbr]

Ships did not cut internet cables: Egypt

Posted Mon Feb 4, 2008 10:05am AEDT

Ships are not responsible for damaging undersea internet cables in the Mediterranean, Egypt's Government says.

Two cables were damaged earlier this week in the Mediterranean sea and another off the coast of Dubai, causing widespread disruption to internet and international telephone services in Egypt, Gulf Arab states and South Asia.

A fourth cable linking Qatar to the United Arab Emirates was damaged on Sunday causing yet more disruptions, telecommunication provider Qtel said.

Egypt's transport ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables showed no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

"The ministry's maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area," a statement said.

"The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships."

Earlier reports said that the damage had been caused by ships that had been diverted off their usual route because of bad weather.

A repair ship is expected to begin work to fix the two Mediterranean cables on Tuesday.

- AFP

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

[nikster]

Must have been a giant octopus then...

[marquess]

Must have been a giant octopus then...

Probably a giant squid as Octopuses don't go that deep, it seems that the normal crappy service has been restored this evening!

[Upcountry]

When are they going to admit that it's Al Aqua-Qaeda?

[RHCP]

To add my piece. I use Buddy Broadband and have suffered much slower international website speeds over the past few months. In the evenings now or on weekends from late afternoon connections to international sites can often be frustratingly slow or occasionally impossible. In addition, I previously had little problem viewing videos online or making Skype calls but not now.

The problem is clearly a bandwidth issue as I guess more people are switching to Broadband. The question is who is to blame for not providing more bandwidth: the ISPs or CAT? I don’t know enough to make a judgment but speaking to someone quite senior in the telecommunication business a few months ago she had a very negative opinion of CAT describing the organization as full of old style beaurocrats who have little knowledge of modern telecommunications or much interest in being proactive to offer an acceptable service.

I don’t think much will change in the future unless there is much pressure from all involved and affected parties.

It certainly makes the previous government claim that Thailand will become the IT hub of Asia look dubious to say the least.

[Upcountry]

Strange thing, for me, is that I only have trouble now with sending email (smtp) via Eudora. Receiving email. web browsing, and so on, no problem. Even file sharing has been fine (except for Gnutella 1, which may be blocked by TTT (Gnutella 2/eDonkey via Shareaza no problem).

I called TTT about my email problem but despite spending a large amount of time on the phone with me to no avail, and no explanation (denying blockage of port 25 by the way, tests confirm it), the problem has not been solved.

[zzSleepyJohn]

Strange thing, for me, is that I only have trouble now with sending email (smtp) via Eudora. Receiving email. web browsing, and so on, no problem. Even file sharing has been fine (except for Gnutella 1, which may be blocked by TTT (Gnutella 2/eDonkey via Shareaza no problem).

I called TTT about my email problem but despite spending a large amount of time on the phone with me to no avail, and no explanation (denying blockage of port 25 by the way, tests confirm it), the problem has not been solved.

Same here. My Eudora struggles and quite often fails to complete its SMTP sending sequence because the responses coming back are so slow and it times out.

Have tried telnetting from Command Prompt to my mail server in USA which confirms the same problem is on ports 25, 26 and 587, but if I do the same test on port 110, a good response comes back immediately.

I put this down to the ISP (in my case Maxnet) deliberately applying network management controls to try and limit new traffic. Not sure whether this is because so many cable breaks are restricting their available international bandwidth (the trouble started at the same time as the cable breaks) or if they're trying to stop spammers having a field day (which happens quite often).

There have been times over the last few days when this "network management" SMTP blocking, if that's what it is, has been 100%. I've just had to queue my outgoing mail and try again in an hour or two.

Hope those international cable breaks get fixed quickly so that things can return to normal again.

+ SJ

[HDRIDER]

Hi

Have a look

[zzSleepyJohn]

Thanks HDRIDER! Nice Map! But really could do with zooming in to see the detail in the two circled areas and to read the comments associated with them.

Perhaps webcams on the repair cableships as well to check that they're getting on with the job and not just sitting there drinking tea??

+ SJ

[HDRIDER]

HI

You can zoom, not much but try.

Believe me they are working hard to fix it, time is money, big money out there

you have a cable ship with 45-80 people working 24/7. But you need to have the right cable as well, if its deep water its single armor, if its not that deep its double armor and if its rock then its rock armor cable, its not so easy as it sound, there can be 5 different cable types on that cable.

[ade100]

In spite of all these broken cables my speed in Singapore is as fast as usual. Phuket its crawling. Interesting all these broken cables only seem to affect Thailand. It must be because Thailand is the IT hub of Asia; All cables lead to Thailand.

[JetsetBkk]

Let's hope Al-Qaeda don't have any big ships...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/fe...siness.internet

[jck331720]

Hi

Have a look

This is so cool!

[makloey]

In spite of all these broken cables my speed in Singapore is as fast as usual. Phuket its crawling. Interesting all these broken cables only seem to affect Thailand. It must be because Thailand is the IT hub of Asia; All cables lead to Thailand.

Oh, my corporate line on Phuket are not slow. About 95%