# Under-sea cable fault cripples internet in India and the Middle-East



## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday. Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry said a communications cable in the Mediterranean was cut, disrupting 70 percent of the country's Internet network. The ministry said in a statement it was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal. India reported serious disruptions to its services and one Indian Internet service provider linked the problem to the Egyptian outage. "There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet connectivity in India," Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an internet service provider, said in a statement. VSNL said its service had been "largely restored" by diverting to another cable. India said it had lost more than half of its capacity. "There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters. He told the Headlines Today news channel that a "degraded" service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days. Chharia said companies, including some of India's many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.

Source: 



I'm not even able to properly load Speedtest.net to show you how much of a disaster it is.


Unable to connect to my Steam account!
TechPowerUp Forums page takes 35 seconds to load.
Unable to even stream a 64 kbps radio station from London.
Most IM protocols such as JabberLive and AIM fail (with random socket errors)
HTTPS authentication servers fail (timeout). 
< Dial-up speeds when accessing European servers.

The Ministry of communications has leased an alternate route from India-Hong Kong-Internode Austrailia-California but that steps up pings by almost 5000ms and pings usually time out.

Disasters don't have to be loss of life, property etc., as you can clearly see.


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## exodusprime1337 (Jan 31, 2008)

hey man sorry to hear about the internet out there, if your as inclined to be on your computer, i know that it can be really hard on you. i feel you.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

It's less of a disaster for me, more so for businesses that depend on the Internet. I'm sure all the tech-support calls/ email-based tech support will take a hit.

(I can't even see your Avatar or sigpic, only a red "X")


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Jan 31, 2008)

a lot of stuff is sublet to india no?


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

yes, many IT companies from all over sublease their tech-support to India. But the Middle-east is equally affected, and they are equally key on businesses the world over, some of the most crucial banking sectors lie in middle-east nations.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

errr its fine for me?


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> A breakdown in an international undersea cable network badly disrupted Internet links to India and Egypt on Wednesday. Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry said a communications cable in the Mediterranean was cut, disrupting 70 percent of the country's Internet network. The ministry said in a statement it was not known how the cable was cut but that services would probably take several days to return to normal. India reported serious disruptions to its services and one Indian Internet service provider linked the problem to the Egyptian outage. "There has been a cable cut on several cable systems in Alexandria, Egypt which has impacted internet connectivity in India," Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), an internet service provider, said in a statement. VSNL said its service had been "largely restored" by diverting to another cable. India said it had lost more than half of its capacity. "There has been a 50 to 60 percent cut in bandwidth," Rajesh Chharia, president of the Internet Service Providers' Association of India, told Reuters. He told the Headlines Today news channel that a "degraded" service would be activated by Wednesday night, but full restoration will take 10 to 15 days. Chharia said companies, including some of India's many outsourcing businesses, had been affected.
> 
> Source:
> 
> ...



i've been suffering the slow speeds to EU servers. TPU took upto a minute to post my messages (sat there timing out) but its gone now.
Speeds were worst about 24-36 hours ago here.

Must be bad for you guys, if i felt it all the way over here in Au.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

Aussies are helping relay our traffic between Hong Kong and California. maybe that's slowing things down.



xfire said:


> errr its fine for me?



The NIB is relatively less conjested to if  you're using the Indian servers for Google or Yahoo (located in Hyderabad and Pune respectively), you'll see phenominal speeds.


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## PrudentPrincess (Jan 31, 2008)

It's good to be a yank.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

mines a 128Kbps connection and hasn't been affected.


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

PrudentPrincess said:


> It's good to be a yank.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

heres one to egypt


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

xfire said:


> mines a 128Kbps connection and hasn't been affected.



Every connection is doing 128kbps now, including my 8192 kbps (Dn) 512 kbps (Up) line from NIB. I'm not able to load speedtest. I'm sure even I'm doing 128kbps now


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## PrudentPrincess (Jan 31, 2008)

Mussels said:


>



Thats pretty much sums up how foreigners fight. XD


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## aximbigfan (Jan 31, 2008)

Damn.

It's too bad that the cable leading to Nigeria didn't snap instead.

Chris


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Every connection is doing 128kbps now, including my 8192 kbps (Dn) 512 kbps (Up) line from NIB. I'm not able to load speedtest. I'm sure even I'm doing 128kbps now


Mine is 128Kbps and that is what I get usually. Its enough for surfing and downloading but game:shadedshu


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

Some pages from my router:






^Look at the insane number of users to the gateway (NIB shut down its gateways because they're not required anyway)

Even after DNS resolution, you can't load a page because its high ping:





It took my 15 minutes + 4 failed attempts to upload this 
I'm still not able to get to speedtest.net for whatever reason.


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## Ravenas (Jan 31, 2008)

Lol, not so much of a disaster though. Before the cable internet revolution came along, we were all on 56k ...

Who will be fixing this though?


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## Duxx (Jan 31, 2008)

Man, that sounds awful.  On a side note, did anybody else notice how long TPU was taking to load the other day?  Monday/Tuesday i was experiencing like 1 min load times, when everything else worked just fine and speedtest.net was reporting normal numbers.


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## erocker (Jan 31, 2008)

PrudentPrincess said:


> Thats pretty much sums up how foreigners fight. XD



You are the foriegner here racist.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

xfire said:


> heres one to egypt



Speedtest displays distance based on geographical facts, it doesn't calculate it based on the test result. Interesting: Look at the ping, it should be 102ms for me to London under normal conditions, your ping to Cairo being 600+ms tells the whole story.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

Should ping be high or low?
For me everything is normal.
Even TPU loads fine. Yours is BSNL right?
Know if anyother ISP(like tata) is affected.
Mine is Beam Cable btw.


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

ping should be low. i get 200-250ms to the USA from here, so anything above that... you get the idea.

LAN is 1-10ms, internet to other users of your ISP should be 30-50, and average net 50-150 in the same country.


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

I tested into India and it was decent speeds


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

xfire said:


> Should ping be high or low?
> For me everything is normal.
> Even TPU loads fine. Yours is BSNL right?
> Know if anyother ISP(like tata) is affected.
> Mine is Beam Cable btw.



Yes, it's NIB (National Internet Backbone, bills paid to BSNL, DataOne Business 8Mbps) Tata is affected even worse, it owns VSNL. Cables such as Beam, Hathway, etc. are all proxy clients of NIB under (ITSN)


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## flashstar (Jan 31, 2008)

Lmao, I get a ping of 0 ms to this CS:S surf server. 

Fiber optics ftw.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> I tested into India and it was decent speeds



What does the upload speed and ping tell you?


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

flashstar said:


> Lmao, I get a ping of 0 ms to this CS:S surf server.
> 
> Fiber optics ftw.



either you'd be hosting it, or your ISP is. 0ms... seems off since a 1m gigabit cable gives me 1ms.

But hey, its fibre optic! i got no experience with that.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

forget fibre optics, even a local server on your own system will give you a 5ms ping in CS:S. If you use a 1 metre criss-cross cable to connect your PC to your notebook and start a CS:S session between the two, you'll still have 5~10 ms ping. 0ms ping sounds unreal.


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> forget fibre optics, even a local server on your own system will give you a 5ms ping in CS:S. If you use a 1 metre criss-cross cable to connect your PC to your notebook and start a CS:S session between the two, you'll still have 5~10 ms ping. 0ms ping sounds unreal.



could be a broken reading? ah well its off topic anyway.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

Talked to the BSNL customer support, can't expect things to improve at least till the next week or so.


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

i have a few friends in the london area experiencing crapped out net - local things work international (EU/US) doesnt, or works erratically.

Whats the odds on this being involved? (im bad at geography, and dont know what these links would actually affect)


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

Muzz, the world is a one large token-ring network, with the connection between two nodes blanking out, it distubs the whole fabric in some way or the other. Routes have to be diverted and something like a India-Egypt cable breakage might sound insignificant but it affects several other nodes as India is a very massive user of the internet.

This is what our cable-network looks like:







Do you see a line branching out of India into the Persian Gulf, Arab penisula and to NE Africa and another coming down to Oz? that line seems to be choked now as some lines in the Mediterranian are at fault.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

This should give you time to catch up on some single player gameing.
Beams optical fibre too and like I already said no effect on my speed. I'll try too see if any 2mbps users of beam find it slowing down.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

I can't even start a game without internet. Almost all my games are on the Steam platform. Steam itself isn't authenticating...no single player gaming either 

Hey....Resurrection of Evil (unfinished )


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## Triprift (Jan 31, 2008)

Is it any better now bta i would of posted earlier but damn werk and mussels i was gettin some crap times loadin pages here earlier ended just gettin out and returning later.


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

Triprift said:


> Is it any better now bta i would of posted earlier but damn werk and mussels i was gettin some crap times loadin pages here earlier ended just gettin out and returning later.



it was better... its taking about 30s to post messages now


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## Triprift (Jan 31, 2008)

Yeah just about to make a cuppa be posted by the time i make it and dont laugh americans


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

I am currently trying to finish Halo 1 in legendary ASAP and get back to studying for my finals.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

It's about to get peak-hours here in India for internet usage, interesting to see how other nodes slow down.


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> What does the upload speed and ping tell you?



for sure, but the ping isnt terrible considering im 8000 miles away


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Talked to the BSNL customer support, can't expect things to improve at least till the next week or so.



hey atleast you still have internet, it could be worse and they have no signal at all!!!


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## Triprift (Jan 31, 2008)

Update bta ya getting better speeds or still crappy?


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> for sure, but the ping isnt terrible considering im 8000 miles away



Your upload speed being  < 100 kbps implies the Indian server is downloading from you at < 100 kbps, right? The inbound traffic for Indian servers/users has taken a hit.

Under normal conditions, I connect to Counter Strike servers in California at ~250 ms ping and that's more than 8000 miles away.



Triprift said:


> Update bta ya getting better speeds or still crappy?



Slightly improved thanks to the Australian Internode.


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

yah that does suck, sorry to hear, hope all turns around quickly for yah.  I dont know how I could if I handle crippling slow internet.  Ive had TPU take 30 secs at work to post(thats when our network is bogged down from to much traffic) and its horrible.

Get this, this is funny - we have about 35 employees who are on the web at all times, and this is our connection
Dont laugh, I know its horrible


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## Triprift (Jan 31, 2008)

Heh i rekon thats just about the average speeds for ozzie broadband or narrowband as i like to call it thankfully i do better tho.


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

Triprift said:


> Heh i rekon thats just about the average speeds for ozzie broadband or narrowband as i like to call it thankfully i do better tho.



hehe, Im working on gettin us on a 30mbs down and 5mbs up.  Verizon Fios offers it locally here for under $100 a month!  The last few days I had to wait to get back on TPU until I get home because of how slow it loads.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

Those are very decent speeds for WI. A certain other TPU user from WI is stranded in a hilly area with a wireless connection that's both expensive and slow.

2.4 Mbps is ample if your employees aren't listening to SomaFM or any audio/video content when you're not looking.


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## Triprift (Jan 31, 2008)

24mbs here not sure up bet its good and bta im with Internode India jacking my isp i no its not that but sounds good to me


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Those are very decent speeds for WI. A certain other TPU user from WI is stranded in a hilly area with a wireless connection that's both expensive and slow.
> 
> 2.4 Mbps is ample if your employees aren't listening to SomaFM or any audio/video content when you're not looking.



We are a general contrator and alot of media/pics get passed through and it really cripples the speeds.  Also every empolyee thinks its their right to listen to internet radio, and we all love to share funny videos and stuff.  It wouldnt be bad if our Email server was inhouse but we outsource that.  So it gets real bad here sometimes.  Hell my connection at home is 8 times faster!


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## Mr.President (Jan 31, 2008)

am in Pakistan and facing slow browsing issue as well bcuz of massive traffic. thank GOD my ISP in on TWA-1, but internet is crap in day timings :S


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

that "SomaFM is my birthright" is something I've noticed spreading. I like SomaFM too 

But I'm not able to catch even the 64kbps stream from CA now 

Winamp 5 > Play URL > http://somafm.com/groovesalad48.pls

Your upgrading the connection would give them more room to fool around with. With the current connection + frustrating speeds, you hit two birds with an arrow: 1. Employees give up internet radio else they can't use the bandwidth for real work 2. their giving up trivial use of your connection steps up productivity + save your investment in a connection


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## Triprift (Jan 31, 2008)

thanks for link bta somafm runs sweet as


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> that "SomaFM is my birthright" is something I've noticed spreading. I like SomaFM too
> 
> But I'm not able to catch even the 64kbps stream from CA now
> 
> ...



This company runs on the ability for the empolyees to check their email and listen to radio if we choose.  We have a heavy work load and we work hard, but when you have a sec your more than welcome to do your own thing.  Thats kinda the beauty of it here.  

And we have a satellite office that has no permanent employees and we have a 10mbs down and a 2 mbs up.  Its just been a matter of, its not broke, dont fix it here.  Its slowly breaking


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## Solaris17 (Jan 31, 2008)

Duxx said:


> Man, that sounds awful.  On a side note, did anybody else notice how long TPU was taking to load the other day?  Monday/Tuesday i was experiencing like 1 min load times, when everything else worked just fine and speedtest.net was reporting normal numbers.



ya i noticed that too granted im in the us and i think theirs a tpu server here..page uploads and refreshes were taking forever and a couple other web sites i go to were failing to load all together.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

Triprift said:


> thanks for link bta somafm runs sweet as



Listen to it for a whole working day and you will be addicted to it. That's why they named it 'Soma'-FM


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## Solaris17 (Jan 31, 2008)

lol i live in NH too...gotta love how the breakage of a wire 1 foot wide disrupts and impacs severely or not telecommunications around the world...i feel it in my little house in New Hampshire usa...ppl feel it in aussie etc etc.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

If you cant do without multiplayer try Gunz. It has an Indian client and requires 64kbps net connection. Should work well.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

new form of terrorism: snap underwater cables, crash economies. 

nope, dont get such ideas.
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/undersea-cables-snap-in-egypt-internet-slows-down/57812-11.html



			
				CNN IBN said:
			
		

> *New Delhi*: If you are facing problems with your broadband Internet connection, that's because several undersea cables have snapped in Alexandria, Egypt. Snapping of undesea cables through the Mediterranean has affected communication links *and slowed down Internet services across continents*. In India too, users faced problems after the cables snapped. The cable network belonging to the Flag Telecom and SMW-4 project are the ones badly affected. SMW-4 is a submarine cable system linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian Sub-Continent and Middle East. Indian telecom operators Bharti and VSNL own stakes in SMW-4. While restoration work at Reliance owned Flag telecom is on, the traffic has been routed through alternate bandwidth sources, slowing down connectivity.



A TV channel just aired a story of a ship running over the cables here?


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

im suprised they cannot get people out there faster to get this taken care of right away!


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

I finally got Speednet to work, and it fails in both IE and Firefox but loads in Opera. 





^Hyderabad to Cairo on my line, look at the ping and my upload speed (speed at which the Egypt server is downloading from me). My packets are doing "Around the world in 1124ms"



edit: damn. stopped working again


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

Which one(T.V channel).
Oh and you do realize your pic is anti-windows?
Also your had to use opera


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

xfire said:


> Which one(T.V channel).
> Oh and you do realize your pic is anti-windows?
> Also your had to use opera



IBN? They were telling about a ship anchor snapping the cables?
No my avatar shows Quake III to perform better in Linux than Windows which is true (when using NVidia GLX, ALSA drivers for the sound, latest openQuake launcher). Yes, I have realised Opera works brilliantly on slow connections.


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## xfire (Jan 31, 2008)

I'm sure if one of you guys would get their hands on the guy who threw the anchor, then you would rip him like the anchor did the cable.
There's always koti where you can games for *ahem*cheap*ahem* until its repaired and do try gumz its pretty good.


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> IBN? They were telling about a ship anchor snapping the cables?
> No my avatar shows Quake III to perform better in Linux than Windows which is true (when using NVidia GLX, ALSA drivers for the sound, latest openQuake launcher). Yes, I have realised Opera works brilliantly on slow connections.



I remember my days of dial up and when Opera used to cost money, Opera was the best client, it did a great job of optimizing the connection, and that sucks about the boat anchor, is there and estimated time of when it will be fixed?


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## twicksisted (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I can't even start a game without internet. Almost all my games are on the Steam platform. Steam itself isn't authenticating...no single player gaming either
> 
> Hey....Resurrection of Evil (unfinished )



hey dude, you can start steam in offline mode... i did that a while back when my net was dead


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

I finally managed to go online for a while. But how do you start Steam in offline mode assuming your connection is out?

Try this. Close steam in its original state (online), disable your network, try starting it, it won't start.


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## Solaris17 (Jan 31, 2008)

just made this pretty good sum up i think.


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

^  bravo Solaris17 bravo


asb2106 said:


> I remember my days of dial up and when Opera used to cost money, Opera was the best client, it did a great job of optimizing the connection, and that sucks about the boat anchor, is there and estimated time of when it will be fixed?



Work should _begin_ next week, could take another 10~15 days to fix:
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/fixing-the-web-crawl-might-take-1215-days/57851-11.html


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## asb2106 (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> ^  bravo Solaris17 bravo
> 
> 
> Work should _begin_ next week, could take another 10~15 days to fix:
> http://www.ibnlive.com/news/fixing-the-web-crawl-might-take-1215-days/57851-11.html



bummer


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## twicksisted (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I finally managed to go online for a while. But how do you start Steam in offline mode assuming your connection is out?
> 
> Try this. Close steam in its original state (online), disable your network, try starting it, it won't start.




heres a link to use for offline mode 
http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=213


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## btarunr (Jan 31, 2008)

^but to do that you have to start steam and you can't if there's no server authentication.


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## twicksisted (Jan 31, 2008)

aaah ok, then i dunno... sorry... i just remember my net was down and i used offline mode months ago... sorry man


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## pt (Jan 31, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I finally got Speednet to work, and it fails in both IE and Firefox but loads in Opera.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



opera buggy with speednet, i have 600 ping to lisbon in opera, 50 with ff, download and upload equal tho
and this happens to lots more ppl and every day of the year 


(to cairo)



seems fine

(rhyad)



download sucks, upload fine
sort of high pings

(karachi)



higher pings than rhyad, lower than india
sucky download and upload

edit: (to india)



huge pings even with ff today, upload and download seems fine tho


conclusion: your'e fked for a week


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## 3991vhtes (Jan 31, 2008)

that really sucks dude. I would go crazy if that happened in the states


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## Mussels (Jan 31, 2008)

twicksisted said:


> aaah ok, then i dunno... sorry... i just remember my net was down and i used offline mode months ago... sorry man



basically you have to have all games/apps at 100% updated (not possible with flaky net) and then go offline while you still HAVE net... at LAN's we noticed that lots of peoples offline mode would stop working and nag to go online, and without net you couldnt use offline mode.
Quite daft.


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## Triprift (Feb 1, 2008)

My nets quite pacy now no 30 sec waits to post hopefully ppl in India and the middle east are gettin better peeds now.


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## spud107 (Feb 1, 2008)

try starting steam with net disconnected, it should ask to start in offline mode,
but in steam settings for account make sure the "dont save account credentials on this computer" box at bottom is unchecked,


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## btarunr (Feb 1, 2008)

3991vhtes said:


> that really sucks dude. I would go crazy if that happened in the states



I know man, thanks. But it won't happen to the US. The submarine lines between east-coast US and the EU are so strong and so many, you can almost send a hippo across the Atlantic at light speeds through those cables. Look at the cables map in some earlier posts, thanks again.



spud107 said:


> try starting steam with net disconnected, it should ask to start in offline mode,
> but in steam settings for account make sure the "dont save account credentials on this computer" box at bottom is unchecked,



When I do that I get an empty progressbar of the "Steam is Updating" but I managed to get online.


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## xfire (Feb 1, 2008)

Just try gunz its free for ever MMO. http://www.gunzonline.co.in/
So now youre able to browse but unable to steam?


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## btarunr (Feb 1, 2008)

Steam is now online but that's just it. I'm absolutely NOT able to join my Nuclear Fallout servers for "too high ping". Funny though is joining Hyderabad Gaming or CS:H (Counter Strike.HYD) servers I'm getting the lowest ping ever of ~20 ms. Still no Speedtest. The page is loading but not the main flash application.

KhojHyderabad is loading as though the whole website is locally cached on my PC


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## ShadowFold (Feb 1, 2008)

Took me a minute to find india(lol..) but I got the speed test from where I am and to india
Omaha to Norfolk




Omaha to India




I tried a few others that were pretty far and India was the worst lol


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## Triprift (Feb 1, 2008)

Adelaide to Mumbai







distance is 5700 miles


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## ShadowFold (Feb 1, 2008)

18? Dang thats pretty bad


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## btarunr (Feb 1, 2008)

Triprift said:


> Adelaide to Mumbai
> 
> 
> 
> ...



That more than explains how much the lines between Chennai and Perth are conjested ATM. More interesting are the pings and the Mumbai server's download speeds from Triprift's PC. 18 kbps.

Try loading an Indian website, note it's time.


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## Triprift (Feb 1, 2008)

Heres what it is for adelaide


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## btarunr (Feb 1, 2008)

www.cricketnext.com

how long does it take to load it? Indian website


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## ShadowFold (Feb 1, 2008)

btarunr said:


> www.cricketnext.com
> 
> how long does it take to load it? Indian website



Loaded in under 2 secs for me


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## Triprift (Feb 1, 2008)

A few seconds for me bta nice site btw.


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## pt (Feb 1, 2008)

btarunr said:


> www.cricketnext.com
> 
> how long does it take to load it? Indian website



9 secs with 2mb/s


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Feb 1, 2008)

I feel ya btarunr. Good thing nothing is wrong here in New Zealand.


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## xfire (Feb 5, 2008)

2 more wires cut.Source: Daily tech.
What are your speeds now?


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## Triprift (Feb 5, 2008)

What speeds ya getting now bta xfire update?


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## btarunr (Feb 5, 2008)

Some very amusing findings:

Greece:




The Netherlands:




Egypt:




West Coast, USA:




Oz Oz Oz!:


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## xfire (Feb 5, 2008)

Its about the same. Havent checked speed test but browsing is the usual speed. I'll do it later. Have practicals today.


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## Triprift (Feb 5, 2008)

Heres my latest Mumbai one did just before i went to werk


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## xfire (Feb 5, 2008)

WTH
http://www.dailytech.com/The+Game+i...net+Cable+Cut+in+Middle+East/article10576.htm


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## btarunr (Feb 5, 2008)

I know xfire. I'm angry at so many cables getting mysteriously cut. I smell a conspiracy. See for yourself what my upto-8 Mbps line got rendered to. The Aussie line shows a low reading because the lines to Oz are hevily loaded, I guess. The NIB is split between telecom circles in India. The only Speedtest.net server we have is in Mumbai and that belongs to a different branch of the fibre network. South links to Australia from Chennai, North links to the west from Mumbai. I still don't have an explaination to the Dutch server coming up with higher bandwidth despite its distance/ping ratio. The Californian server has a low ping and that's good news for me.


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## asb2106 (Feb 5, 2008)

are they working to repair it yet??


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## Azazel (Feb 5, 2008)

my cousins in egypt where not very happy about it


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## Azazel (Feb 5, 2008)

asb2106 said:


> are they working to repair it yet??



emm...they said it should be all fixed in 2-3 days for egypt...


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## asb2106 (Feb 5, 2008)

well thats a good sign, I hope they get that fixed soon


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## Gam'ster (Feb 5, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I know man, thanks. But it won't happen to the US. The submarine lines between east-coast US and the EU are so strong and so many, you can almost send a hippo across the Atlantic at light speeds through those cables. Look at the cables map in some earlier posts, thanks again.



 sorry but the hippo thing cracks me up, but still that map is really interesting to see makes the world look small, like running a cable from my sat dish to my t.v quite unreal, thx btarunr ill save that img


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

so is everything fine now


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## xfire (Feb 6, 2008)

I am unaffected but bta is.
and did you try gunz bta?


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

weird?, you guys using a different isp?


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## xfire (Feb 6, 2008)

Yes. My ISP uses fibre. I think his has started to move.
Even though mine works now its actually pretty bad. Earlier I used to face severe disconnections with my ISP. Now its reduced though.
His is government run.
Edit:- Just realised yahoo.co.in isnt loading while yahoo.com is loading(co.in is india server)


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

The number of cables cut is now up to five.
Latest is to Iran.


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## btarunr (Feb 6, 2008)

craigwhiteside said:


> so is everything fine now



It isn't. Craig 

I am supposed to have a 2~8 Mbps (dn) ; 512 kbps (up) ADSL connection but look what it's rendered to. Xfire didn't feel the pinch because he uses a 128 kbps line and a bandwidth crash wouldn't affect his already low bandwidth. On the other hand, my 2048 kbps is down to ~380 kbps. Mine comes directly from the national internet backbone, a Government ISP. Smaller ISP's take their bandwidth from this ISP. 



Kreij said:


> The number of cables cut is now up to five.
> Latest is to Iran.



This is terrorism. Five cables cut is too much of a coincidence. I'm more than sure of foul-play.


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

btarunr said:


> This is terrorism. Five cables cut is too much of a coincidence. I'm more than sure of foul-play.



It would definitely appear to be saboetage, by who and for what reason?

One thought was that if you want to place a tap on a cable, cut the cable and install the tap somewhere else. When the cable is repaired and baseline measurements are done it will include the tap and all will appear normal (As they cannot be sure what the baseline would be after repair, tap or not).

However, these are multi-channel cables. You would have to tap all the channels to get reliable data as some portions of the data will be split betwen channels.

If this is what is happening it sounds a little old school as I am pretty sure our NSA could tap the lines without detection or having to resort to cutting them. 

It has now happened in both the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf.

Since most of the traffic is re-routed, I am not sure why someone would do this, unless the re-route was the reason. If the traffic is forced to re-route over single channels, it is much easier to tap.

Ok, I'll take off my tinfoil hat now.   Coinspiracy theories are fun to talk about though.


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## btarunr (Feb 6, 2008)

:shadedshu

This way they'll never fix them. Afterall, 2/5 cables are owned by Indian telecom companies and it's part of the international grid. The moment the lines cut, people from as far as Australia felt erratic services. All of a sudden everything blanked out as if someone pulled the ethernet cable off the PC. It was next day's news that informed us. By next morning the ISP re-routed lines from another zone of our country's network, that of Chennai and its lines going to the east through the Bay of Bengal, eventually to Perth, Australia. All lines were capped at 64kbps in my network and well it really did set panic. A lot of businesses got hit. So yes this looks more of a sabtage. India isn't the only victim, it includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Oman, etc. Anyway the news shows there are several teams of engineers/students from the IIT dispatched to repair it in a jiffy with locally made materials. There's a boom in the electronics industry here, you know? We're slowly starting to say no to Chinese junk


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

btarunr said:


> It isn't. Craig
> 
> I am supposed to have a 2~8 Mbps (dn) ; 512 kbps (up) ADSL connection but look what it's rendered to. Xfire didn't feel the pinch because he uses a 128 kbps line and a bandwidth crash wouldn't affect his already low bandwidth. On the other hand, my 2048 kbps is down to ~380 kbps. Mine comes directly from the national internet backbone, a Government ISP. Smaller ISP's take their bandwidth from this ISP.
> 
> ...



sad to hear 
i wonder who/what are cutting those cables?

maybe its a sea monster


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## btarunr (Feb 6, 2008)

craigwhiteside said:


> maybe its a sea monster



No, LOLrus on a summer vacation gone mad for having lost his bukkit


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

btarunr said:


> No, LOLrus on a summer vacation gone mad for having lost his bukkit



LOLOL!!! 

QUOTED!


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

hmm this is what the cables under the sea look like though will be a lot bigger for bridging continents
even so they look pretty easy to cut, any thoughts?


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## btarunr (Feb 6, 2008)

The cable is so designed as to be flexible, withstand the pressure, corrosion, etc. The actual lumen of those cables (from where the fibres go) is much narrower.


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## spud107 (Feb 6, 2008)

is this the type of cable? pretty tough looking,








http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

The cables are also armored with two layers of stranded steel cable to protect them. (#3 in above pic)
You couldn't just go down there with your pocket knife.

A large ship could break it by dragging an anchor, but to purposefully cut it you would need scuba gear to get down over 220ft and some sort of underwater cutting torch.

Or a ninja could do it.


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

yer it might be able to withstand enviromental stresses, but if say somebody/thing where to cut/chew through it, it will be a different matter 

Edit: just seen posts above 

maybe an oxyacetylene torch or a plasma torch?


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

craigwhiteside said:


> yer it might be able to withstand enviromental stresses, but if say somebody/thing where to cut/*chew* through it, it will be a different matter



Lol ... Giant salt-water cable eating pirhannas?


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

Kreij said:


> Lol ... Giant salt-water cable eating pirhannas?




:O the Giant salt-water cable eating pirhannas are coming for you now!!

LOL!!


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

omg like this xD


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

Those things don't eat the cables. They just use it for flossing.
Maybe it's dentist told it to floss more aggressively to get those pearly white gleeming, and it over did it.

That could happen, you know.


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## spud107 (Feb 6, 2008)

or


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## btarunr (Feb 6, 2008)

craigwhiteside said:


> omg like this xD



That big mouth open at least looks more decent than Monica Lewinsky in the same expression.

I'm sure they'll be done with the work end of next week, let's hope. The cables fixed will also impact on UK and Aus bandwidth.


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

spud107 said:


> or



o0o0o0o0o you just reminded me of a film 

austin powers: the spy who shagged me


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## spud107 (Feb 6, 2008)

could be the ill tempered mutated sea bass,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7bYNAHXxw


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

Interesting placements, no?


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 6, 2008)

is it just me or are they in roughly a straight line?


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## spud107 (Feb 6, 2008)

hmmmm,


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## btarunr (Feb 6, 2008)

They are, HOLY SHIT, SeaMeWe-4a links India to Australia. There are 8 lines in all under the SeaMeWe-4 channel.


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## Kreij (Feb 6, 2008)

It's possible that the SeqMEWe-4 near Malaysia was an accident (trawler or something), but the other 4 sure look orchestrated.


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

craig-it can't be a oxyacetylene torch. Its under water.
This whole incident will bring the cost of internet up. The'll charge the cost of repairing on us the end-users. Just when we started to get 8 Mbps.


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## Triprift (Feb 7, 2008)

I feel for you guys hopefully everythings back to normal soon.


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## Mussels (Feb 7, 2008)

xfire said:


> craig-it can't be a oxyacetylene torch. Its under water.
> This whole incident will bring the cost of internet up. The'll charge the cost of repairing on us the end-users. Just when we started to get 8 Mbps.



there is a torch like that that works underwater. I am unsure if its oxy-acetalyne, but they do exist.

Someone want to post that global map with all the wires, indicating which ones were cut?


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## btarunr (Feb 7, 2008)

xfire said:


> craig-it can't be a oxyacetylene torch. Its under water.
> This whole incident will bring the cost of internet up. The'll charge the cost of repairing on us the end-users. Just when we started to get 8 Mbps.



They can't/won't. By trade laws a company can't charge its customers by making their products/services expensive to cover a financial loss.


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

not oxy-acetalyne. Any oxy works on combustion to produce heat in the form of a flame and all that heat will be taken up by water(high specific heat).
Anyway they should set up submarine patrols.


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

btarunr said:


> They can't/won't. By trade laws a company can't charge its customers by making their products/services expensive to cover a financial loss.


Thats music to my ears
If they do we'll file a case,mums a lawyer.


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## btarunr (Feb 7, 2008)

Mussels said:


> there is a torch like that that works underwater. I am unsure if its oxy-acetalyne, but they do exist.
> 
> Someone want to post that global map with all the wires, indicating which ones were cut?



This is the SeaMeWe-3 network, it connects Europe, Asia and Western Australia.






It has suffered two cuts? There's another SOFC cable network, FLAG Telecom that's not in that map but where the cuts came is in this:


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 7, 2008)

xfire said:


> not oxy-acetalyne. Any oxy works on combustion to produce heat in the form of a flame and all that heat will be taken up by water(high specific heat).
> Anyway they should set up submarine patrols.



here is proof that it does

Thomas Wilson created the oxyacetylene torch in 1903. He combined both pure oxygen (99.5%) and acetylene in proper proportions to yield a flame of about 3,480 degrees Celsius. Oxyacetylene the only gas mixture that will burn hot enough to cut steel. It is particularly useful for welding different metals underwater.

The chemical action of the oxyacetylene flame can be adjusted by changing the ratio of the volume of oxygen to acetylene. Three distinct flame settings are used, neutral, oxidizing and carburizing. Welding is generally carried out using the neutral flame setting, which has equal quantities of oxygen and acetylene. The oxidizing flame is obtained by increasing just the oxygen flow rate while the carburising flame is achieved by increasing acetylene flow in relation to oxygen flow.

Oxyacetylene equipment is portable and easy to use. Oxygen and acetylene gases are stored under pressure in steel cylinders. The cylinders are fitted with regulators and flexible hoses, which lead to the blowpipe. Specially designed safety devices such as flame traps are fitted between the hoses and the cylinder regulators. The flame trap prevents flames generated by a flashback from reaching the cylinders.

Anthony Cheedie -- 2002

Source


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

err..
where does it say it can be used under water?
They use the flame to cut. Now how can you have fire under water?


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## btarunr (Feb 7, 2008)

I'm really laughing at your ignorance 












The constant oxygen supply keeps the flame at ~2000 C even under water.

And yes, those dudes are welding underwater, not fetching the angry LOLrus a bukkit to calm him down and safely escort him out of the Indian seas.


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

Ok. I really didn't know that.


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## thoughtdisorder (Feb 7, 2008)

It's that damn El-Niňo!


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## Triprift (Feb 7, 2008)

As long as el nino stays away from ozzy land no buggerin my dl speeds.


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

This d(th)ing is the reason 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vVeVlvX2Jho


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## asb2106 (Feb 7, 2008)

xfire said:


> This d(th)ing is the reason
> http://youtube.com/watch?v=vVeVlvX2Jho



NICE


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## btarunr (Feb 7, 2008)

For a moment I thought it was a serious video pertaining to the subject. :shadedshu

Anyway for the know, here's some news courtesy CNN:

The repair works have kicked off. Says CNN:



			
				CNN Wire said:
			
		

> Repair ships are going to the site of two undersea cables which were damaged this week, snarling Internet and phone traffic across the Middle East and parts of Asia, the cables’ owner said Friday.
> 
> Two days after the problems started, Internet service was still slow, but some areas were starting to see improvements.
> 
> ...



Source


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## btarunr (Feb 7, 2008)

Some more news from ArsTechnica

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...ay-explanation-elusive-on-cable-failures.html



			
				ArsTechnica said:
			
		

> Undersea cables occasionally fail for one reason or another, but the speed and locality of these particular line breaks have led Internet conspiracy theorists the world over to strap on their tinfoil hats. The leading "alternative" explanation is that these particular Internet outages are not the result of an act of God (as defined by your local insurance agency) or any type of accident, *but are the result of a secret US strategy meant to isolate Iran and deprive it of Internet communication*. For the record, Iran's Internet access has not been cut off (though the country has experienced some connection difficulties). The conspiracy theory explanation, while just slightly more plausible than "OMGPONIES," has absolutely no independent evidence to back it up. Whatever else the Trilateral Commission, Illuminati, Big Pharma, Al Qaeda, vaccination campaigns, and the Easter Bunny might be plotting at this moment, they just don't seem to be planning a major assault on the Middle East's ability to watch illicit American Idol broadcasts, conduct business, or surf the Arabic equivalent of YouTube. Reuters is reporting that repairs will be completed this weekend.



Talk about conspiracy theories


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## xfire (Feb 7, 2008)

even my net is starting to get affected
but that is one crazy frog
so it could be possible,get that frog.
edit:- just read the above post.
Weren't you the one who said


btarunr said:


> ...... current President's acting like a chimpanzee sitting on the _nuke_ button accidently........



no need to explain further


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## niko084 (Feb 7, 2008)

Good to hear its on its way to being fixed.... Yes indeed, it is surprising how bad something like that can be, and not only to the end home user, thats a small small piece of it.


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## btarunr (Feb 7, 2008)

xfire said:


> Weren't you the one who said.....




That ain't a conspiracy theory and more of an open fact?


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## Mussels (Feb 8, 2008)

btarunr said:


> That ain't a conspiracy theory and more of an open fact?



its a conspiracy theory unless theres direct evidence of who did it. we aint seen anybody at it, so no evidence.

Also cons piracy - it means with pirates 

So we're looking for pirates who can hold their breath for a long time...


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## btarunr (Feb 8, 2008)

Direct evidence is Iraq, Muzzy , follow that quote which xfire put up to the thread to see in which context I made that statement.

Pirates? nooooo. I thought our LOLrus theory was doing good :shadedshu


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## xfire (Feb 8, 2008)

no crazy frog is responsible. It could also be Jack Sparrow.
or this lady doing karate


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## Mussels (Feb 8, 2008)




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## xfire (Feb 8, 2008)




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## btarunr (Feb 8, 2008)

Solaris17 said:


> just made this pretty good sum up i think.




ok now this is getting into "crazy (cablesnap) picture thread #2", let's take a chill.


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## xfire (Feb 8, 2008)

So bta hows your speed now?


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## btarunr (Feb 8, 2008)

The same, except for that my latency to the Nuclear Fallout servers at ~190 ms.


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## Triprift (Feb 8, 2008)

What about steam is that running better for yas?


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## btarunr (Feb 8, 2008)

It is, in fact I'm getting good latencies with Nuke Fallout servers (Counter Strike: Souce clan server I'm member of, located in California)


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## xfire (Feb 9, 2008)

The more news they bring about it the more I'm thinking WTH.
http://www.dailytech.com/FALCON+Und...ut+By+Abandoned+Ships+Anchor/article10619.htm
They are saying an abandoned ship anchor cut it. How did the anchor move on its own accord?


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## thoughtdisorder (Feb 9, 2008)

Looking at the pictures earlier the breaks seemed to be in a straight line. There has been an amazing amount of plate movement over the last few months. See below: 

Nov 25th, 2007 underwater quake measuring 6.4 off the island of Sumbawa

Dec 5th, 2007 a magnitude 4.7 hit Pakistan

January 7, 2008 a 6.7 magnitude underwater earthquake in the Pacific Ocean 

January 29, 2008 an earthquake 5.1 in Kazakhstan

Feb 3rd, 2008 there was an earthquake measuring 5.9 in Kenya. 

Feb 6th, 2008 underwater quake 4.7 off coast of New Zealand

One might wonder if there is some serious shifting in the tectonic plates causing these issues. One might also wonder if there a "big one" coming in that region. Any thoughts?


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## Triprift (Feb 10, 2008)

Theres a thought could well be if there was a major quake hopefully it doesnt bring massive loss of life. Update fellas speeds back to normal or not still getting better.


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## Mussels (Feb 10, 2008)




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## zatblast (Feb 10, 2008)

http://www.moorlandschool.co.uk/earth/tectonic.htm






just another random image for the plates theory


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## BXtreme (Feb 10, 2008)

mine's working fine, i'm recently on 256kbps....from bsnl *cough*. ugh, i miss my old 4mbps connection


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## btarunr (Feb 10, 2008)

NIB? What's your location?


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## BXtreme (Feb 10, 2008)

btarunr said:


> NIB? What's your location?



Kolkata.


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## xfire (Feb 10, 2008)

BXtreme where's your location. Also try other servers like Cairo.


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## btarunr (Feb 10, 2008)

BXtreme said:


> Kolkata.



"Kolkata, India" sounds better than "paradise of...." but well, your choice.


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## xfire (Feb 10, 2008)

Another Indian found.
That makes it 4 Indian subcontinent users.


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## BXtreme (Feb 10, 2008)

btarunr said:


> "Kolkata, India" sounds better than "paradise of...." but well, your choice.



hehe, for the past year and before that i used that 'paradise...', just wanted to be anonymous a bit...


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## BXtreme (Feb 10, 2008)

xfire said:


> Another Indian found.
> That makes it 4 Indian subcontinent users.



good,
erm, whose the 4th one ? me, btarunr, you and who else ?


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## btarunr (Feb 10, 2008)

BXtreme said:


> good,
> erm, whose the 4th one ? me, btarunr, you and who else ?


smartali89 from Karachi

There's another from Karachi, I don't remember his username.


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## xfire (Feb 10, 2008)

4th one is smart ali or something like that. He's from Pakistan.


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## BXtreme (Feb 10, 2008)

cool, and when i came here i was the only one from IN hehe, glad more ppl r comin 
@speedtest - Cairo has 243kbps down, and 210upload. The rest have almost the same speeds, just with a horrible ping. I'm using Safari/Firefox in Mac OS X so my browsing speed is much lower than that speedtest result  tweaking xp or linux was easy but in mac os x it's a bit different....In XP/ Vista, I got 340kbps down/247upload in Mumbai,server. You won't believe me but i'm using that BSNL UL900 scheme...it's horrible for pings, but gives enough speed and unlimited bandwidth.

EDIT: changing the MTU with a neat tool called cocktail did the trick now pages loading normally, and speeds\test speeds are 262kbps/247kbps now


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## Triprift (Feb 10, 2008)

Great win for yas in the cricket now be nice to mee


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## Ben Clarke (Feb 10, 2008)

My connection is starting to feel hte strain of rerouted traffic... my connection speed is fucked up... 6mbps one second, then 128kbps the next...


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## xfire (Feb 12, 2008)

Forget under water
The cable comming from my ISP to my house got cut yesterday and took him until now to fix it.


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## Mussels (Feb 12, 2008)

xfire said:


> Forget under water
> The cable comming from my ISP to my house got cut yesterday and took him until now to fix it.



jesus... they ARE after you.


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## xfire (Feb 12, 2008)

Mussels said:


> jesus... they ARE after you.



to the guys who are after me
Go after bta he has a 8mbps connection. All I have is a slow 128kbps connection.


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## btarunr (Feb 12, 2008)

Me, Dan, Morgoth and Ben played Doom 3 online last night so my connection is recovering, I had a ~200 ms ping to Dan's server.


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## xfire (Feb 13, 2008)

All pages are loading super slowly.
There seems to be large packet loss.





check the pic usually theres more packets recived than sent.
utorrents running fine though


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## btarunr (Feb 13, 2008)

Packets received = data received by your system sent = sent. Naturally we receive more data than we send?


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## xfire (Feb 13, 2008)

Take a closer look I am sending more than I am recieving and thats what I am pointing out


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## btarunr (Feb 13, 2008)

Naturally since you're using a bittorrent client. You download/upload at the same time and browse less because your torrent client is using the bandwidth.


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## xfire (Feb 13, 2008)

no while my dwnload does 10KBps my upload is set to max at 3KBps, cause uploading slows the downloading badly on my 128kbps.


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## BXtreme (Feb 16, 2008)

same went for me, my isp was dead...it took 3 days, meh, now it's back to full speed...tho this disconnection was quite helpful for 14th hehe...so i did spent some time away from the evil/dark room of mine


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## thoughtdisorder (Feb 24, 2008)

I'm curious guys, how have your speeds been?


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## btarunr (Feb 24, 2008)

Like it's 11:50 PM right now, past 12:00 AM the line begins to act up. The ADSL line drops and only by about 5:00 AM it's back. Perhaps they're working on the lines? I don't know, something doesn't fit. But on the whole they are slightly improved. When I ping someone from The Netherlands it comes up as less as 110 ms. When the lines were all right, I would get a good ping when playing on London based servers. To the US, I'm able to get a lower ping to the west coast (San Jose, CA) than to a friend's PC that's in west Palm Beach, FL.

The bandwidth is about the same.


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## thoughtdisorder (Feb 24, 2008)

Things that make you say hmmmmm. Well it sounds like overall you're better off than back in January, and for that I'm glad!


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