6 ms·

What exactly would this do to the US internet? I don't intuitively understand - if I am in NYC and the server is in VA, how would a broken undersea cable impact

What exactly would this do to the US internet? I don't intuitively understand - if I am in NYC and the server is in VA, how would a broken undersea cable impact my internet?

giantg2 5y ago
Probably shouldn't in most cases.
speedgoose 5y ago
Not everyone lives in America on this website.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  GPs reply doesn't imply that, it just seems they're asking about their own consequences. Will you reply "not everyone lives in Ireland" if someone else asks about what would happen to Ireland?
bettynormal 5y ago
It goes without saying that you would have to have traffic that went over one of these cables.... having said that somethings have strange dependencies that only come to light when there is a problem.
iam-TJ 5y ago
First and foremost would be financial transactions, especially banks, that if these links were lost might be unable to make settlements and reconcile daily balances with overseas subsidiaries, partners, and correspondents. That would have an immediate impact on any business that relies on making or receiving international payments to/from suppliers/customers - think SWIFT [0]. Secondly is the affect on 'cloud' services (AWS, Azure, Goggle) with their complex inter-dependencies across services and geographical regions. We've seen several instances over the last couple of years where even a minor failure in one system has a knock-on effect to tens of thousands of other organisations that rely on it. Also, consider the reliance that AWS globally appears to have on US-East. If AWS Europe data-centers loose their link to US-East there could be major disruption of many services hosted on AWS, even those that use multiple availability zones. Third would be the knock-on effect of switching to other routes (BGP) and the consequent 'traffic jam' as traffic between North America and Europe attempts to use alternate routes - maybe via Latin America and Africa or Asia. Fourth, telecommunications ('phone) and VoIP services linking North America and Europe, Africa, and Middle East. Fifth, and possibly the hardest to mitigate, is the by-product due to extensive use of CDN 'edge' services (Cloudflare, etc.). Most web sites nowadays have many dependencies on externally hosted services. Many are behind CDN edge servers. If the origin servers for those are on the other side of a major break then suddenly services you'd expect to be fully local will break in unexpected ways. [0] https://www.swift.com/ https://www.swift.com/

What exactly would this do to the US internet? I don't intuitively understand - if I am in NYC and the server is in VA, how would a broken undersea cable impact my internet?

giantg2 5y ago

Probably shouldn't in most cases.

speedgoose 5y ago

Not everyone lives in America on this website.

seattle_spring 5y ago
GPs reply doesn't imply that, it just seems they're asking about their own consequences. Will you reply "not everyone lives in Ireland" if someone else asks about what would happen to Ireland?

bettynormal 5y ago

It goes without saying that you would have to have traffic that went over one of these cables.... having said that somethings have strange dependencies that only come to light when there is a problem.

iam-TJ 5y ago

First and foremost would be financial transactions, especially banks, that if these links were lost might be unable to make settlements and reconcile daily balances with overseas subsidiaries, partners, and correspondents. That would have an immediate impact on any business that relies on making or receiving international payments to/from suppliers/customers - think SWIFT [0]. Secondly is the affect on 'cloud' services (AWS, Azure, Goggle) with their complex inter-dependencies across services and geographical regions. We've seen several instances over the last couple of years where even a minor failure in one system has a knock-on effect to tens of thousands of other organisations that rely on it. Also, consider the reliance that AWS globally appears to have on US-East. If AWS Europe data-centers loose their link to US-East there could be major disruption of many services hosted on AWS, even those that use multiple availability zones. Third would be the knock-on effect of switching to other routes (BGP) and the consequent 'traffic jam' as traffic between North America and Europe attempts to use alternate routes - maybe via Latin America and Africa or Asia. Fourth, telecommunications ('phone) and VoIP services linking North America and Europe, Africa, and Middle East. Fifth, and possibly the hardest to mitigate, is the by-product due to extensive use of CDN 'edge' services (Cloudflare, etc.). Most web sites nowadays have many dependencies on externally hosted services. Many are behind CDN edge servers. If the origin servers for those are on the other side of a major break then suddenly services you'd expect to be fully local will break in unexpected ways. [0] https://www.swift.com/ https://www.swift.com/