February 1st, 2008
Third undersea cable severed in Mideast
I am not going to parrot the inevitable sky is falling warnings that are sure to come from pundits everywhere regarding the just heard news that a third undersea cable in the Mideast has been cut. Coincidence or well timed targeted attack? will be the question of the day. Most likely it is coincidence. Anchors have an uncanny way of finding cables just as backhoes are the bane of terrestrial fiber.
But, I would like to disagree with Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst with TeleGeography. According to this article:
Schoonover said a similar Internet problem could not happen in the United States.
“We have all the content here,” he said. “It’s not going to be felt other than we won’t get the BBC.”
Nice attempt at calming the waters but network issues have a way of cascading. What if US oil and gas companies that have operations in the Mideast put some back up services there? What if another coincidence shuts down a data center in the US and the backups cannot occur in time because of unreachable storage devices? What about all the “Business Process Outsourcing” handled in India? Try telling Dell, or Microsoft, both companies that rely on Indian support services, that “most of our content is here”.
The US has had its own problems. Backhoes have taken out big chunks of the Internet. Routing flaps, bad route announcements, attacks on Cisco vulnerabilities could all impair our beloved Internet.
It’s one ‘Net now. Anyone relying on the Internet for their business has to be concerned about its inherent vulnerability and prepare for it as best they may.
Richard Stiennon is an industry consultant. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
