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Cable outages = NBD!

theroachmantheroachman Posts: 362
edited February 2008 in A Moving Train
Well well well. How could such a crazy story warp into such a crazy internet conspiracy mess?

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Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web
By Ryan Singel February 06, 2008 | 4:50:11 PMCategories: Glitches and Bugs, NSA, Spooks Gone Wild
Are underseas telecom cable cuts the new IEDs?

After two underwater cable cuts in the Middle East last week severely impacted countries from Dubai to India, alert netizens voiced suspicions that someone -- most likely Al Qaeda -- intentionally severed the cables for their own nefarious purposes, or that the U.S. cut them as a lead-in to an attack on Iran.

Then two more cables failed in the same area, one in a segment connecting Qatar to an island in the United Arab Emirates, and another in a link between Oman and the UAE. The former wasn't even a cut -- it was a power failure, but you can't keep a good conspiracy theory down; some news sites are even reporting incorrectly that Iran is cut off from the internet, and claiming that there's a fifth cut, which turns out to be an unexceptional cable failure from weeks ago.

Stephan Beckert of TeleGeography Research says it's all a bit much.

"I'm much more worried about terrorists blowing up people than cables," Beckert said. "If you cut a cable, all you are doing is inconveniencing a lot of people."


more:


http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/who-cut-the-cab.html
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

The Tie-Dye Lady is HOT!!!
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • DriftingByTheStormDriftingByTheStorm Posts: 8,684
    So an anchor is still the best "straight story" we have?

    For MULTIPLE cable lines?

    Bridge for sale, any takers?
    :rolleyes:
    If I was to smile and I held out my hand
    If I opened it now would you not understand?
  • MasterFramerMasterFramer Posts: 2,268
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  • KannKann Posts: 1,146
    DriftingByTheStorm wrote:
    So an anchor is still the best "straight story" we have?

    For MULTIPLE cable lines?

    Bridge for sale, any takers?
    :rolleyes:

    Cables were more than 500m deep, I'm still looking for a ship with an anchor that long, let alone 3.
  • OutOfBreathOutOfBreath Posts: 1,804
    It's not like cable cuts in the sense of disruption of service is unheard of. But we'll see if someone had any reason to cut these lines, and how they were cut if they were. In that case it's about the first two that sounds fishy if anything.

    Peace
    Dan
    "YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death

    "Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
  • Sludge FactorySludge Factory Posts: 976
    Who is to say that the other unrelated cuts weren't just done to divert attention from the main reasoning behind the first cuts and make all the people saying something is fishy look like fools?
  • jlew24asujlew24asu Posts: 10,118
    Kann wrote:
    Cables were more than 500m deep, I'm still looking for a ship with an anchor that long, let alone 3.

    how do you know this? if this were the case wouldn't it also be impossible for navy seals to dive down to cut cables?
  • DriftingByTheStormDriftingByTheStorm Posts: 8,684
    jlew24asu wrote:
    how do you know this? if this were the case wouldn't it also be impossible for navy seals to dive down to cut cables?

    i guess the answer must be oversized cable eating dragonfish, huh?

    :D

    I hear you, Jlew.
    There COULD be a perfectly benign explanation for all of this, but i have yet to hear a reasonable one given.

    In light of the enormous tension between the US and Iran ... and given that Iran was probably the main entity affected by this ... and the extremely conicidental timing between these cuts and the alleged start of the bourse ... ???
    If I was to smile and I held out my hand
    If I opened it now would you not understand?
  • jlew24asujlew24asu Posts: 10,118
    DriftingByTheStorm wrote:
    i guess the answer must be oversized cable eating dragonfish, huh?

    :D

    I hear you, Jlew.
    There COULD be a perfectly benign explanation for all of this, but i have yet to hear a reasonable one given.

    In light of the enormous tension between the US and Iran ... and given that Iran was probably the main entity affected by this ... and the extremely conicidental timing between these cuts and the alleged start of the bourse ... ???

    you like to read only what you like to hear. I read that India was the worst effected country. and there has been no official reason (from the companies who own the cables) as to how this happened.

    you and guys like master, are already proclaiming the the US did this. navy seal divers dove down to the bottom of the deep sea oceans and cut cables!!!! :rolleyes:

    there isn't even a clear explanation as to if anything was even cut per se. you are a tech guy, you know that outages like this can have a ripple effect.

    so until an investigation is done by the companies who own the cables, put the tin hat away. everything is just speculation at this point.
  • theroachmantheroachman Posts: 362
    jlew24asu wrote:
    you like to read only what you like to hear. I read that India was the worst effected country. and there has been no official reason (from the companies who own the cables) as to how this happened.

    you and guys like master, are already proclaiming the the US did this. navy seal divers dove down to the bottom of the deep sea oceans and cut cables!!!! :rolleyes:

    there isn't even a clear explanation as to if anything was even cut per se. you are a tech guy, you know that outages like this can have a ripple effect.

    so until an investigation is done by the companies who own the cables, put the tin hat away. everything is just speculation at this point.


    Exactly we are in comple agrement. And I am a loony liberal to boot :)

    Oh and here are a few links on current internet activity in Iran. Seems to be working just fine.

    http://www.presstv.ir/ (server location: Tehran)
    http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/ (server location: Tehran)
    http://www.iran.ir/web/ (server location: near Esfahan)

    Thanks to my friend who is conservative (hes young but learning) and really knows is Middle East issues
    I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
    ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

    The Tie-Dye Lady is HOT!!!
  • DriftingByTheStormDriftingByTheStorm Posts: 8,684
    theroachman wrote:
    Exactly we are in comple agrement. And I am a loony liberal to boot :)

    Oh and here are a few links on current internet activity in Iran. Seems to be working just fine.

    http://www.presstv.ir/ (server location: Tehran)
    http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/ (server location: Tehran)
    http://www.iran.ir/web/ (server location: near Esfahan)

    Thanks to my friend who is conservative (hes young but learning) and really knows is Middle East issues

    Well the outages\cuts story is over a week old!
    And reports were of rerouted\repatched connectivity by like day 2.

    And the original title of my post is a QUESTION.

    :D
    If I was to smile and I held out my hand
    If I opened it now would you not understand?
  • jlew24asujlew24asu Posts: 10,118
    DriftingByTheStorm wrote:
    Well the outages\cuts story is over a week old!
    And reports were of rerouted\repatched connectivity by like day 2.

    And the original title of my post is a QUESTION.

    :D

    so why proclaim the US did this? it makes u loose credibility really fast.
  • ajedigeckoajedigecko \m/deplorable af \m/ Posts: 2,430
    dish network and their covert spec ops team.
    live and let live...unless it violates the pearligious doctrine.
  • Sludge FactorySludge Factory Posts: 976
    How do the cables get put in place in the first place if it is impossible for people to go down that deep? Do they use some sort of device similar to a boring device?
  • jlew24asujlew24asu Posts: 10,118
    Sludge Factory wrote:
    How do the cables get put in place in the first place if it is impossible for people to go down that deep? Do they use some sort of device similar to a boring device?

    I'm sure some of that information is proprietary. but I assume the cables are built out and dropped by a ship. not sure of your question. these cables dont need to be hand placed at the bottom of the ocean.

    The two cables damaged are FLAG Telecom's FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies.

    http://www.flagtelecom.com/index.cfm?page=4053
  • KannKann Posts: 1,146
    jlew24asu wrote:
    how do you know this? if this were the case wouldn't it also be impossible for navy seals to dive down to cut cables?

    I read an interesting article (on a blog) on this but unfortunately it's in french but here are some of the sources he used :
    Iran has other ressources
    piracy of underwater cables is not new
    Undersea fiber-optic cables are sheathed in a thick steel husk and buried in a yard-deep trench. But once the water depth exceeds 1,000 feet, they usually are left to run uncovered along the ocean floor

    The original article was a little too much for me on the conspiracy part. But things do look fishy and dismissing this as a inconvenient accident or some sort of a coincidence is a little too much for me on the naiveness part.
    navy seal divers dove down to the bottom of the deep sea oceans and cut cables!!
    edit : Exactly, accusing the us as soon as something goes wrong in the middle east is not really helping reasonable doubts about this story. Something is wrong but that's not to say it's necessarily the us's fault.
  • jlew24asujlew24asu Posts: 10,118
    Kann wrote:
    I read an interesting article (on a blog) on this but unfortunately it's in french but here are some of the sources he used :
    Iran has other ressources
    piracy of underwater cables is not new
    Undersea fiber-optic cables are sheathed in a thick steel husk and buried in a yard-deep trench. But once the water depth exceeds 1,000 feet, they usually are left to run uncovered along the ocean floor

    The original article was a little too much for me on the conspiracy part. But things do look fishy and dismissing this as a inconvenient accident or some sort of a coincidence is a little too much for me on the naiveness part.


    edit : Exactly, accusing the us as soon as something goes wrong in the middle east is not really helping reasonable doubts about this story. Something is wrong but that's not to say it's necessarily the us's fault.


    questions defintely need to be asked. but I'll wait to see what the investigation from the actual company says. even the US cant intervene in such a thing. too many companies and countries involved for that to happen
  • Sludge FactorySludge Factory Posts: 976
    jlew24asu wrote:
    I'm sure some of that information is proprietary. but I assume the cables are built out and dropped by a ship. not sure of your question. these cables dont need to be hand placed at the bottom of the ocean.

    The two cables damaged are FLAG Telecom's FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies.

    http://www.flagtelecom.com/index.cfm?page=4053


    Okay, thanks for the info.
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