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Just tangentially related to the topic at hand, but I have a question to ask HN. The main trans-Pacific cable connection between Vietnam and the US tends to be
by NhanH 7y ago
Just tangentially related to the topic at hand, but I have a question to ask HN.
The main trans-Pacific cable connection between Vietnam and the US tends to be damaged several times a year (3<n<10 is my guess), which severely slow downs any connection to the outside of Vietnam during the time it is under maintenance. This always happens suspiciously during major political holiday (Independence day and the likes), so Vietnamese has just assumed that is a blatant censorship attempt. The wiki page has an outage section you can read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia-America_Gateway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia-America_Gateway , it doesn't list anything beyond 2018, but the situation is the same.
So my question is, how likely it is that the cable system are just really shitty? Or is the assumption of bald-faced censorship correct?
- callamdelaney 7y agoThe main issue iirc is that people keep stealing their undersea cabling [1] meaning that their speeds are often significantly reduced. [1] http://texyt.com/vietnam+internet+cable+stolen+by+thieves+00096 http://texyt.com/vietnam+internet+cable+stolen+by+thieves+00...
- netsharc 7y agoWhich country's independence day/holidays? Imagine if your job is to drive the tractor on the beach that would "chop" the cable up once or twice every year...
- NhanH 7y agoVietnam has an Independence day, and a National Day, which are the two holidays that always get the outages.
- lonelappde 7y agoWhat better way to celebrate independence than to cut the cord to the rest of the world!
- phonon 7y ago"State media at the time blamed the slowdown on maintenance to undersea cables, and state telecoms firms apologized for unstable access to Facebook."
- londons_explore 7y agoUndersea cable is pretty unreliable. Most major cables expect to break every few years. Usually breaks are caused by humans (ships pulling anchors, sabotage/spying). Sometimes they're natural (caused by wildlife, ocean floor movement, flaws in the cable design). Fixes usually take a few hours if they happen at the endpoints, or weeks if they happen somewhere under the ocean. Interestingly, spying breaks always involve three simultaneous breaks in the cable. The cable is broken at two points, and then broken at a third point in the middle to put spy equipment. They do this so the people operating the cable can't tell where the spy equipment was inserted, since otherwise you can tell where a cable is broken or being tampered with by sending light down the cable and seeing how long before light reflects off the broken bit and comes back to the end. Using statistical methods, you can see how frequently you'd expect a cable to break at different points along it's length simultaneously, and it happens a lot more than raw chance would suggest.
- anthony_doan 7y ago> caused by wildlife Can you further explain this part? It sounds so out there with undersea cable. The only thing I can think of is that wildfire cause erosion in soil which wash off into the sea and damage the end point?
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago> Most of the outages have been located at the intra-Asia segments between Hong Kong and Singapore, with most problems occurring in the Vietnam section, while the segment between Hong Kong and the Philippines seems to have fewer problems. The segments between the Philippines and the United States are quite stable. If you can go thousands of miles across the Pacific and be "quite stable", and a shallower, shorter run through similar ocean floor and ship traffic conditions between HK and the Philippines suffers fewer outages than one to Vietnam, yeah, censorship seems like a pretty reasonable conclusion.
- alephnan 7y agoHong Kong has a large financial sector. IIRC, Vietnam did not have a derivatives market until a few years ago, and a few months in only had $20 million in trading volume.
- jawngee 7y agoI have Viettel fiber and I very rarely feel the effects of cable disruptions. Most times I wouldn't even notice until someone complains about it on an expat or neighborhood group. This is less the case for people using other providers.
- a012 7y agoThey throttle the throughout on evening. Checked the internet at night and day is literally night vs. day where the internet goes down to Kbps but at morning goes up to 100Mbps normally. It's totally bullshit.
- nipinium 7y ago>throttling This is silly, the internet at night is slow simply because there are too many people are using it at the same time. Bandwidth is not limitless, and they are shared for the same neighborhood. Also, having a 100Mbps internet plan doesn't mean you will be guaranteed to have 100Mbps download/upload all the time. There are reason why in VN companies like netnam and cms are selling 50Mbps leased line for 1000+ dollars.
- missedthecue 7y agoHigher traffic might take speeds from 100mpbs to 70mpbs. Not 100mpbs to kpbs.
- nipinium 7y agoYou will get 70mbps for accessing domestic websites. Again, this is just bandwidth issue. Try to download some highly seeded torrents at the "throttled hours" to see for yourself.
- user5994461 7y agoPlot twist: Fishermen are purposefully collecting underwater cables and selling them for scrape. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2541664/fishermen-pull-the-plug-on-vietnam-s-web--steal-cable-for-scrap.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2541664/fishermen-pull... Of course there are also accidental breakages and other things. That is to say there are many root causes, not necessarily intuitive.