Internet Problems

[daveb1]

Hi anyone else having problems connecting to uk websites and emails this evening on tot broadband?

-----

Cables cut, Internet access slows

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East and Asia were severely disrupted Friday after three undersea cables were damaged in the Mediterranean, France Telecom said.

"The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear," a statement said, while a spokesman said it was unlikely to have been an attack.

The company said it was sending a ship to fix the lines but that it would not arrive until Monday and that it could take until December 31 until normal service was restored.

Most business to business traffic between Europe and Asia was being rerouted through the United States, the firm said, but regular communications between Europe and several Asian countries has been disrupted since early Friday.

Sixty-five per cent of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan were also severely affected.

The cables are jointly owned by several dozen different countries. One of the cables is 40,000 kilometres (25,000 miles) long and links 33 different countries while a second is 20,000 kilometres long and serves 14 states.

"If there was just one cable down we could have used the other two," said France Telecom spokesman Louis-Michel Aymard. "But all three are down so this puts us in a very difficult situation."

"This is a very rare situation," he said.

The cables might have got caught up in trawlers' nets or there may have been an underwater landslide, said Aymard. One appeared to be fully severed, while the other two seemed to be only partially cut, he added.

Each cable has a "leader" country, he said. Egypt is in charge of the main cable and in this capacity commissioned France Telecom Marine, a subsidiary of the communications giant, to handle the repairs.

The boat with 20 kilometers of spare cable on board will leave very early Saturday and arrive Monday.

In January, five cables in the Middle East and Europe were cut, causing Internet failures in the region.

France Telecomn said it would publish updates on its website on the latest traffic disruption. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, it said.

-- AFP 2008-12-20

Related link:

Check your internet speed here:

http://speedtest.thaivisa.com

[Obiwan]

Some sites: 5 Bits per second.

[Dave the Dude]

Hi anyone else having problems connecting to uk websites and emails this evening on tot broadband?

Yes, got bored waiting for BBC websites 2night

Dave

[rgs2001uk]

have had a problem all day, unable to connect to bbc sport uk at all.

[Jdietz]

Difficulties getting e-mails out this evening, sent a bunch through a few different sites with no success. Seems to be cleared up now as my own email account is spammed with all my test messages arriving in a bunch.

So for today, marked as *resolved*

[briley]

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm

Look at this site and the current figures are not good. 32% of packets lost and only 72% of the network in Asia up.

But it is improving .................

[Maverell]

For some reason there are serious Internet problems in the UK. Trace routes reveal that there is up to 100 per cent packet loss on some hops. All within the UK.

Has a backbone provider gone bust ? Or is a foreign power involved in a massive DNS attack

I use a site in Norway 20 times a day and there are no problems there....... the UK is in serious sh*t and its not just the internet !!

Edited December 19, 2008 by Maverell

[jackk]

I had the same problem and just found out why :

Severed Cables in Mediterranean Disrupt Communication

By Malcolm Fried and Lars Klemming

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Internet and telephone communications between the Middle East and Europe were disrupted after three submarine cables between Italy and Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea were damaged.

The failures cut the flow of ``data of various kinds'' between Europe and the Middle East, and there's no timeframe for when communications will be restored, said Sanjeev Gaur, director of assurance at Reliance Globalcom Ltd. in India. France Telecom SA, which plans to send a maintenance boat to fix the problem, said the situation should be back to normal by Dec. 31.

Three cable systems carrying more than 75 percent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America have been damaged, according to the U.K.'s Interoute Plc, which operates a fiber- optic data network connecting 92 cities. The cables run from Alexandria in northern Egypt to Sicily in southern Italy. In January, an anchor severed the cables outside Alexandria after bad weather conditions forced ships to moor off the coast.

``The information we have is a bit sketchy, but chances are that it will have been an anchor again,'' Jonathan Wright, Interoute's director of wholesale products, said in a telephone interview. ``Close to 90 percent of all the data traffic between Europe and the Middle East is carried on these three cable systems.''

Interoute said the January incident brought down 70 percent of the Internet network in India and the Middle East.

Egyptian Outage

``Customer services and some mobile-phone customers'' at Vodafone Group Plc's Egyptian unit are affected by the cable failure, said Simon Gordon, a spokesman for the U.K. company. Egypt is the only country where the company is aware of any problems linked to the failure, he said. Most mobile-phone calls are routed through fixed-line cables at some point.

Portugal Telecom SGPS SA, Portugal's biggest phone company, has redirected traffic through other cables in the region and therefore the ``impact is very small,'' said a company official. Sonaecom SGPS SA, Portugal's second-biggest fixed-line phone company, also said that is diverting traffic to other routes.

France Telecom's Orange mobile-phone unit said the cable failure ``greatly disturbed'' the traffic between Europe and parts of Asia. At one point as much as 55 percent of voice traffic in Saudi Arabia, 52 percent in Egypt and 82 percent in India was out of service, according to Orange.

Traffic `Congestion'

The Internet traffic ``from Mumbai to London has now been re-routed via Hong Kong which may lead to congestion and increased latency on this route,'' Reliance said in an e-mailed ``traffic disruption update,'' adding that it is working with the affected customers to restore all services.

The company said it will publish another update on its Web site tomorrow.

``You can re-route the data through other cables, but that increases traffic and can potentially create bottlenecks,'' Interoute's Wright said. ``So Internet connections may slow down and some phone calls could get disrupted.''

Some of Interoute's clients in the U.K. and Southern France are probably ``affected'' by the failure, Wright said.

``It's difficult to forecast how long it will take to fix the problem as it depends on the weather and sea conditions in the Mediterranean,'' Wright said.

A fault is affecting the SMW4 cable near the Alexandria cable station, the FLAG FEA cable is down and the SMW3 cable system is also affected, according to information received from Telstra. Flag Telecom Group Ltd., a Reliance Globalcom unit, operates FLAG FEA and the other cables are owned by groups of phone companies across the regions.

Fixing Problem

Reliance Globalcom doesn't know exactly what happened and engineers are working on the problem, said Anurag Joshi, head of the company's global network operations center.

The SMW4 cable, also known as SEA-ME-WE 4or South East Asia- Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable network, connects 12 countries: Pakistan, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.

France Telecom said one of its maintenance boats in the Mediterranean area will cast off tonight at 3:00 local time for a relief mission with 20 kilometers of spare cable on board.

Priority will be to recover the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable, then the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable, France Telecom said, adding that Sea Me We4 could be operating by Dec. 25 and that the situation should be back to normal by Dec. 31.

[briley]

jackk - isn't this last years news?

Or can you give a source.

ADDED

Must look at the news before posting.

Same problem as last year but you are correct, a new occurrence.

Edited December 20, 2008 by briley

[nikster]

TIT and people have internet problems more often than not.

And yep this is the same thing as last year though I think last year only two went down simultaneously, this time it's three to go down at the same time. So much for redundancy!

Edited December 20, 2008 by george
Formatting /mod

[khaowong1]

I use Ipstar through TOT, and most of my (if not all) my e-mail traffic is between here (Thailand) and the U.S. I am having no problems.

[LivinLOS]

Not yet seeing any slowdowns on Maxnet premier ??

Speedtests fine and sites seem normal.. Specific sites / servers or a general issue ??

[geovalin]

Excellent to USA

Very good to France

TRUE ADSL 2.5

[Phuket Stan]

I use Ipstar through TOT, and most of my (if not all) my e-mail traffic is between here (Thailand) and the U.S. I am having no problems.

Getting 1700kps here in Phuket from TTT

[george]

Three undersea cables cut: traffic disturbed between Europe and Asia

3 cables cut this morning (Sea Me We3 partly + Sea Me We4 + FLAG)France Telecom Marine cable ship about to depart

PARIS: — France Telecom observed today that 3 major underwater cables were cut: “Sea Me We 4” at 7:28am, “Sea Me We3” at 7:33am and FLAG at 8:06am. The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear.

Most of the B to B traffic between Europe and Asia is rerouted through the USA. Traffic from Europe to Algeria and Tunisia is not affected, but traffic from Europe to the Near East and Asia is interrupted to a greater or lesser extent (see country list below).

Part of the internet traffic towards Réunion is affected as well as 50% towards Jordan. A first appraisal at 7:44 am UTC gave an estimate of the following impact on the voice traffic (in percentage of out of service capacity):

Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service

Djibouti: 71% out of service

Egypt: 52% out of service

United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service

India: 82% out of service

Lebanon: 16% out of service

Malaysia: 42% out of service

Maldives: 100% out of service

Pakistan: 51% out of service

Qatar: 73% out of service

Syria: 36% out of service

Taiwan: 39% out of service

Yemen: 38% out of service

Zambia: 62% out of service

France Telecom immediately alerted one of the two maintenance boats based in the Mediterranean area, the “Raymond Croze”. This France Telecom Marine cable ship based at Seyne-sur-Mer has received its mobilization order early this afternoon and will cast off tonight at 3:00 am with 20 kilometers spare cable on board. It should be on location on Monday morning for a relief mission.

Priority will be given to the recovery of the Sea Me We4 cable, then on the Sea Me We3.

By December 25th, Sea Me We4 could be operating. By December 31st, the situation should be back to normal.

Source: France Telecom

[Farma]

From Saudi there’s no noticeable difference in the internet today or yesterday.

BBC, SKY etc open at their usual speed today and yesterday. Websites in Thailand, US and Australia open normally. Emails are coming in as usual. Skype to Thailand is normal.

[george]

3 major cables cut in Mediterranean; Internet, phone traffic disrupted

Three of four major underwater cables have been severed in the Mediterranean Sea, seriously disrupting Internet and telephone service between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Bloomberg reports. The fiber-optic cables handle more than 75% of the traffic between the Mideast, Europe and the United States, and 90% of transmission between Europe and the Mideast.

The BBC reports that 65% of traffic to India is thought to be down, and that Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been hit hard, with Egyptian officials saying nearly all Net service is down. Traffic is being rerouted through the United States, and that will likely cause Internet slowdowns or dropped phone calls. Here's an earlier damage report from France Telecom.

It's not yet know what cut the cables between Italy and Tunisia. A similar outage in January was blamed on a ship's anchor off Egypt, and that may be the case again, according to Interoute, a European Internet Service Provider.

The BBC says that some seismic activity was reported near Malta, where the break apparently occurred, shortly before the cut was detected this morning. The U.S. Geological Survey recorded a magnitude 5.9 undersea quake in the Northern Mid-Atlantic, about 1,100 miles northwest of Portugal, but it's not clear whether the two events are connected.

It might be days before the cables can be repaired, and experts are warning that regional economies may be hit hard. The first repair ship is expected to arrive Monday morning.

The cables are known as SMW 3 and SMW 4, which are owned by phone companies, and FLAG, which is owned by Reliance Globalcom.

-- Agencies 2008-12-20

[indieke]

Well; I live in France and internet is so slow, I can't even read the newspaper. 56 K speed, and I have adsl, 3.9 normally!

[timekeeper]

seems ok to me

i have had no problems with maxnet premier 3gb service

speeds are pretty normal to London

[barryofthailand]

Get two meg in Korat, but with TT&T. TOT sucks all over Thailand. old equipment. got rid of them yrs ago.

Barry

[Mobi]

All my BBC radio sites crashed yesterday for several hours. They came back again in the late afternoon. IpStar was also out for awhile and was very erratic.

My friend in Oz on Skype told me I was popping on and off like a Yo Yo.

Seems to be Ok this morning - BBC running fine.

Download speed 424; upload 50

BTW during the past 2 - 3 months, my IPStar has been better and more reliable than it has been in years. Still get the occasional crashes, but rarely for more than a few seconds, and sometimes it stays connected for many hours without any problems. The best it has ever been

[Gary A]

All my BBC radio sites crashed yesterday for several hours. They came back again in the late afternoon. IpStar was also out for awhile and was very erratic.

My friend in Oz on Skype told me I was popping on and off like a Yo Yo.

Seems to be Ok this morning - BBC running fine.

Download speed 424; upload 50

BTW during the past 2 - 3 months, my IPStar has been better and more reliable than it has been in years. Still get the occasional crashes, but rarely for more than a few seconds, and sometimes it stays connected for many hours without any problems. The best it has ever been

I would guess that Ipstar would be better now that they have lost so many customers.

[thaibkk]

yesterday since 2.30 pm i could not reach any western site anymore... strange that in the 21 century, they still rely on technology with cables... they do not have some solid satellite backup ?

[Mobi]

I would guess that Ipstar would be better now that they have lost so many customers.

I doubt that is true. Almost every time I meet a newly arrived farang living in East Pattaya he is connected to IPStar, and is satisfied with the service. Many of my friends are still connected and have no complaints.

Even in the bad old days, I could usually get my problems rectified by a POLITE call to the service number. They would change my settings and everything would be fine for a while. I haven't had to call them in months.

I don't know how long this will last, but at the moment I am quite satisfied. I can't stream videos, but can download and watch later. Skype is very good now.

[Crushdepth]

"This is a very rare situation," he said...

...In January, five cables in the Middle East and Europe were cut, causing Internet failures in the region.

[tiz435]

Well; I live in France and internet is so slow, I can't even read the newspaper. 56 K speed, and I have adsl, 3.9 normally!

Wow thats slow... Had some issues yesterday here in Hawaii as well. Seems ok today.

[jackk]

It's a bit better today however TOT in BKK gave us new IPs. Instead of the usual 125.25.xxx.xxx we now have 113.53.xxx.xxx and the main problem is that they don't have a reverseDNS. I was wondering why I was quicked out by my own servers while trying to log in via SHH

All that mess is probably just due to an anchor... I'm just wondering what will happen when some wannabe terrorists will play with submarine cables.

[gonzobrains]

since when did the PAD get deep-sea diving equipment?

[ronz28]

By Kim Zetter EmailDecember 19, 2008 | 2:39:13 PMCategories: Glitches and Bugs

Flagmap

Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region.

The cuts are causing traffic to be re-routed through the United States and elsewhere.

Egypt's communications ministry tells the Associated Press that the outage has almost completely killed internet services throughout Egypt.

A second report indicates that the three cables that are out include the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable (also known as SMW4), which went out at 7:28 a.m. local time Friday morning; SEA-ME-WE 3, which went down at 7:33 a.m.; and the FLAG EA cable, which went out at 8:06 a.m. The cables were cut in the region where they run under the sea between Egypt and Italy. They carry an estimated 90 percent of all data traffic between Europe and the Middle East. SMW 3 and SMW 4 are owned by groups of phone companies; FLAG is owned by Reliance Globalcom.

The SMW 4 and FLAG cables were among five undersea cables damaged earlier this year in January and February in the Mediterranean, launching a flurry of conspiracy theories before investigations revealed that at least one of the cuts was caused by a ship's anchor. When those cables went down, SMW 3 was used to re-route traffic. But this time, SMW 3 is reportedly involved in the outage as well.

A France Telecom report listed 14 countries affected by the current problem. The Maldives are 100 percent down, followed by India, which has 82 percent disruption. Qatar, Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates were the next most widely affected areas with about 70 percent service interrupted. Disruptions for Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan range from 51 percent to 55 percent.

UPDATE: As reader Julian Borg Barthet notes in the comments section, a fourth undersea cable went out Thursday evening in the same region. The cable, the Seabone, is operated by GO and runs between Malta and Sicily. According to the Times of Malta, GO transferred traffic to a second cable operated by Vodafone. It was the second time in four months that the Seabone cable had failed.

[jimbeam1]

I use Ipstar through TOT, and most of my (if not all) my e-mail traffic is between here (Thailand) and the U.S. I am having no problems.

Hi All,

I'm using TOT ipstar. Been having problems with download speed all week. Only another 3 months to go, then i'm out of contract. Yippeee

jb1