With mysteries abounding about the undersea cables cut in the Middle East, Network Performance Daily talked to Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst at TeleGeography, a market research firm specializing in telecommunications supply, demand, and pricing. We wanted to get to the bottom of what's happening with the undersea cables and widespread network outages, and see if there's any truth to the various rumors floating around.
Network Performance Daily: Could you tell me a little bit about the effects of the undersea Internet cable cuts?
Schoonover: The undersea cables that were cut are part of the global network and in fact a heavily used part of it. And as such when they were cut, it limited the amount of capacity connecting the Middle East to Europe. I'm specifically referring to the cuts on January 30th - the first two. And because of that, the Internet and things that relied on the communications to Europe, you know, phone traffic and business-to-business type communications were severely hampered until the carriers that were affected were able to find alternative routing.
Network Performance Daily: When they were able to find alternative routing - was that immediate? Did the traffic find they couldn't get connectivity and just routed around it, or did someone have to pull a switch somewhere?
Someone had to pull a switch. With this amount of capacity, in terms of percentage, there's not that level of restoration available on the direct route. So, for instance, I know an affected carrier that has been quite vocal about the things they have done to restore capacity to their customers - even to the point of having to enter into some short-term contracts to transit traffic around the other side of the world, you know, via India, Sinagpore, Japan to the U.S.
So it does take a little bit of time. And each carrier that was affected responded a little differently in a little different time as well. So anywhere between a few hours to a few days to get service back, depending on the type of carrier and their relationships with the wholesale providers in the area.
Network Performance Daily: Has this increased network latency for those kind of connections?
Schoonover: Absolutely. Two kinds of factors increasing the latency - anytime you go the other way around the world from the Middle East, it's going to add a little bit of distance and distance equals latency, because of that "physics" thing. The other thing is that 75 percent of the capacity connecting the Middle East to Europe was cut, which, when you try to move that type of demand around, then you're going to create congestion on the remaining line.
Between those two factors there is a higher amount of latency and it does take some creativity on the part of the carriers to keep their business customers operating and keep their voice calls at a higher performance level.
The thing to suffer the most would be the Internet. Because that's not as latency sensitive as voice or real-time business communications, the carriers allow it to be more affected by the problems than the other services.
Network Performance Daily: Is there any basis for any sort of conspiracy theory here at all?
Schoonover: No, I don't think so, really. Cables are damaged with relative frequency, and I think that this is more along the lines of coincidence that there were a few different incidences within a couple days than anything else.
Network Performance Daily: What about the two main lines?
Schoonover: Well the two main lines were close enough that it probably was the same event. Whatever cut one most likely cut the other one as well. I know that the initial speculation was that a ship had dragged anchor across the two cables which would very easily snap them. That was later refuted by the Egyptian regulator. You can then look at things like seismic or geological events, something like that.
But most likely because those cables went down together, and they were so close - most likely that's one event.
The other cable breaks in the gulf - there's two others - were separate events that happened within a few days of the initial one.
Network Performance Daily: So if this stuff happens all the time, what can companies do to preserve mission-critical network connectivity and performance?
Schoonover: Finding restoration paths and having existing agreements for having restoration in place is very important, and many carriers have diversity in route and upstream providers, as well as the option to exercise a backup plan. And as we've seen, even if it takes a few hours to a day to get things back up and running with some amount of regularity, that's a result of having these pre-existing redundant relationships available.
I think businesses are getting smarter about that and I think carriers as well, particularly after the Taiwan Earthquake from December [2006], that cut a significant amount of capacity in the inter-Asia region. A lot of businesses quickly realized that their disaster-recovery plans were not sufficient, and went about getting better ones.
The fact that businesses have been able to recover relatively speedily is indicative of good planning to a large extent.
Network Performance Daily: How important are these sea cables to global communication?
Schoonover: Very. A lot of people don't realize, but undersea cables are the backbone of the global communications network. Obviously Europe has a lot of terrestrial cable as does the U.S., but as soon as you need to cross an ocean, the bulk of the traffic is travelling via submarine cable, not satellite.
Network Performance Daily: Well, why couldn't we just use satellite?
Schoonover: Higher latency, less capacity, and more expensive.
Network Performance Daily: What's the most important thing that people are learning from this incident?
Schoonover: I think there's a fragility to any sort of infrastructure, and I think you can take away that businesses and carriers do need to prepare for the unexpected. With the Taiwan earthquake taking seven of eight cables, and this taking two of three on a particular route, there has to be physical redundancy, both geographical and capacity.
But that being said, the carriers knew that and they're working towards it. There's at least four cables being planned and built on the exact same route that the cables that were cut are on. It'll be another year or two until the new cables are operational, but the demand for this type of thing was known and is being addressed, it's just that the timeline didn't work in the favor of the Internet users in the Middle East.
Network Performance Daily: The whole thing - just to get this whole conspiracy thing out of the way - what would it actually take to knock Iran's communication infrastructure off the Internet?
Schoonover: Well, it would take a lot more than what's been done. Really, when you look at Iran's connectivity, while they have been affected by the cable cuts, they are not the most affected country. They have terrestrial connections to surrounding countries, satellite connectivity, and redundant submarine connectivity.
Really, what's been done, if it were a directed attack, it has not been particularly effective.
Additional Coverage:
- Network World: What those oceanic cable cuts mean to you.
- Wired/Threat Level: Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web
How is your company weathering the cable cuts? If you've been affected, let us know how you got back up and running by leaving us a comment below.
By Brian Boyko
