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Last undersea Internet cable connecting Vietnam with the world breaks down

173 points by teddyh 4y ago

lawrenceyan 4y ago
Starlink is the future here right? You can’t sever a satellite link like you can with a cable. Well, actually I guess you technically can. But it’s definitely way more difficult.
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Shower(-ish) thought: such cables are lasting and obvious artefacts for the future. These cables will stay where they are for eons. These Starlink satellites are like dragonflies. Once they are no longer continuosly replenished by new launches, they will disappear.
- acuozzo 4y ago
  You can lower the SNR to the point at which it's unusable. A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel would be roughly equivalent to "cutting an undersea cable", I believe.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    > A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers I don't see how a system that likely would need to be larger that the Duga-1 "Russian Woodpecker" can be hidden, and the Duga-1 wasn't even particularly powerful enough at jamming radio stations - well, it was a over-the-horizon radar, not a jammer, but the power and size requirements for an actual effective jammer are still there.
  - peter_d_sherman 4y ago
    >You can lower the SNR to the point at which it's unusable. This would be the equivalent to blotting out an AM or FM radio channel by outputting white (or other) RF noise on a given frequency -- or frequency range. >A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel would be roughly equivalent to "cutting an undersea cable", I believe. Roughly equivalent, yes... 100% exactly equivalent, well, maybe not... I don't know if Starlink is capable of frequency hopping or not -- nor the range of frequencies it is permitted to hop around in if it is -- but, if, let's say (for the purpose of discussion) that the following things were true: a) Starlink can and does frequency hop; b) The range of frequencies that Starlink is permitted to frequency hop in was infinite (1 HZ - infinite HZ) -- not true obviously, but if that that was the case, then: >A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel would be roughly equivalent to "cutting an undersea cable", I believe. Yes -- but it would have to simultaneously broadcast white (or other) noise RF on all RF frequencies simultaneously -- and it would have to use a sh-tload of power to accomplish that. The state-sanctioned jammers might have a lot of power to back them up -- but remember that the power of an RF signal falls away according to distance according to the inverse square law, that is, it does not fall off linearly, it falls off exponentially (like the light of an incandescent light bulb) -- so again, it would need one hell of a lot of power to block each and every Starlink (or other satellite) subscriber in a given country... If Starlink only uses one set frequency -- then blocking would be a whole lot easier (no need to expend unnecessary power blocking multiple RF frequencies) -- so perhaps the "system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel" -- with enough power, could in fact work...
    - Anarch157a 4y ago
      > one hell of a lot of power Which is much easier to generate/store on land than on space. > RF signal falls away according to distance according to the inverse square law On land, a state actor, operating on its own territory, could put jammers every 50 km, which is much closer to the receivers than satellites that orbit at 550 km. Even if the jammers transmitted at the same power as a Starlink sat, being 10x closer would mean jamming signal 100x stronger.
      - peter_d_sherman 4y ago
        >being 10x closer would mean jamming signal 100x stronger. At a specific frequency. The effect is similar to how a nearer radio station at a given frequency -- will typically block out others that are at the same frequency, yet farther away... But does a strong radio station nearby mean that all other radio stations at all other radio frequencies are simultaneously blocked? No -- someone can simply turn the dial and tune in to a different radio frequency, and listen to another "unblocked" / "unjammed" station... If Starlink frequency hops, that is, automatically changes its frequency if bands of the RF spectrum are blocked -- then it will be much more difficult for the state actor to block all of them at the same time -- especially if each individual Starlink subscriber could frequency hop with no pre-set pattern, that is, independent of all of the others...
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > You can’t sever a satellite link like you can with a cable. What do you mean? China, Russia, India and the USA have anti-satellite weapons around if they really want, and "destroy everyone's stuff with a kessler syndrome collisional cascading" works very well when the USA is the one with the most to lose.
  - postingawayonhn 4y ago
    There are far too many Starlink satellites to destroy a meaningful number.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Ironically, very-low-Earth-orbit as used by Starlink (lifepan measured in single-digit years) means that collateral damage from a-sat weapons would likely be limited. E.g., where Kessler Syndrome in even modestly-higher orbits would remain a problem for decades, at Starlink altitudes, most of the debris itself should de-orbit over a relatively short period of years. That could actually increase likelihood of such attacks.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  Starlink is an access technology. The Tier 1 backbone providers of the Internet are still terrestrial which means terrestrial fiber and submarine cables. Starlink still has to buy transit from the people with fiber. I think Starlink purchases transit from GTT, Lumen, Zayo and buncg of others. A fiber cut could still impact Starlink. Think of what happens when your ISP goes down but the Wifi on your routers is still up. It's somewhat similar.
armchairhacker 4y ago
> However, Vietnamese service suppliers said the failures on the five cables will not have great impact on the speed of Internet connection between the country and the world. > The SMW3 cable is outdated and going to be decommissioned, so it has not been used for fixed broadband Internet services, they explained, adding that the latest breakdown didn’t occur in the peak time, and they immediately carried out responding measures to reduce impact on the Internet speed.
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  The article was 6 paragraphs long. I’m not sure citing two paragraphs without commentary adds much value.
  - elil17 4y ago
    How would we read the article if people didn’t put it in the comments? What, by clicking the link? Unthinkable! Please remember this is hacker news, you’re not allowed to click the link /s
  - dvh 4y ago
    It does, I didn't have to read it. Title might as well been "unused internet cable breaks down in Vietnam"
    - Brian_K_White 4y ago
      So you read it here instead of there, and everyone else gets to read it twice. Cool.
  - ortusdux 4y ago
    You would be surprised by the number of people that skip the article and start commenting based solely on the headline.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      Even more surprised by editors who will knowingly mislead with the headline in order to force people to click through and get those sweet, sweet ad (or subscriber) dollars just to find out the “man bites dog” headline was a lie.
ilamont 4y ago
Not many details in this article, but further north there is another threat to undersea cables carrying Internet traffic: On Feb. 2, a Chinese fishing vessel sailing close to the Matsu Islands severed one of the two cables, which connect the islands with Taiwan proper. Then, six days later, a Chinese freighter cut the second cable. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/21/matsu-islands-internet-cables-china-taiwan/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/21/matsu-islands-internet-...
- cld8483 4y ago
  What a truly unfortunate coincidence.
  - macintux 4y ago
    Rather like the Russian elite who keep mysteriously falling out of buildings.
    - chrisdhoover 4y ago
      Defenestration, what was once medieval is hip again.
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      I never thought I'd see the day where buildings become sentient and rise up against their overlords.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tpmx 4y ago
    On the renewed China-Vietnam tensions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Vietnam_relations#2019%E2%80%93present:_renewed_tensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Vietnam_relation...
  - Animats 4y ago
    Is this an effort to force Vietnam to route all their traffic via China? Through the Great Firewall?
v8xi 4y ago
Article gives scant information but found this from 01/30/23: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/internet-slows-to-a-crawl-as-four-undersea-cables-encounter-simultaneous-issues-4564855.html https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/internet-slows-to-a-crawl-... From that article: Vietnam is currently connected with seven undersea cables: SMW3, AAG, IA, APG, AAE-1, SJC2 and ADC. Besides the recent breakage of the IA, problems with the AAE, AAG and APG cables that have been present since 2022 and early 2023 have yet to be fully resolved. The SJC2 and the ADC are yet to be officially operational, while the SMW3 cable is outdated and about to be decommissioned. The fact that Vietnam currently only has one fully functional undersea cable has caused internet speeds between Vietnam and the rest of the world to slow to a crawl.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  >> about to be decommissioned. I presume this means disconnected and forgotten about on the sea floor. Or do they actually do anything to pull them up? I imagine pulling an old cable might be very difficult but I don't like things just being left for the sea to deal with. There is far to much trash on the seafloor already.
  - jagged-chisel 4y ago
    I would think pulling up a cable would be detrimental to any ecosystem that built on and around the cable. I would not be surprised to learn that ecosystems were affected negatively when the cables were laid, too, so I think we probably want to limit damage by letting them lie there.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      Depends on what kinds of substances are present there, that will leach out over time.
      - frosted-flakes 4y ago
        Steel, rubber, and glass? Doesn't seem so bad.
brink 4y ago
Title makes it seem like Vietnam is in an internet blackout. Not the case apparently, they're still connected and are fine.
- ninesnines 4y ago
  But what are the implications of this internet cable being down? Will there be a slowing of internet? Is there an easy fix?
  - toast0 4y ago
    Based on a different article[1] and the submarine cable map [2][3][4]... Asia Africa Europe 1 (AAE-1) is currently broken between Vietnam and Hong Kong, but presumable is functional from Vietnam to the rest of the cable that travels west (landings in much of southern asia and a couple points in southern Europe). Intra Asia (IA) is broken between Vietnam and Singapore, but it also lands in Hong Kong and the Philipines. SMW3 lands in a lot of places, but is reported to be obsolete. So, it seems Vietnam no longer has a direct fiber connection to Singapore, and has reduced capacity to Hong Kong. There will likely be some slowdown as Hong Kong and Singapore are both popular locations for data centers. There's not really an easy fix. Traffic will flow over alternate paths, but repair boats need to go out and locate the ends of the broken cables, bring them up to the surface, splice them back together, and then let them sink again. Terrestrial cabling tends not to get damaged by ships, and is a lot easier to locate for repairs, but it's hard to run it over mountains and through forests, and you can't run a terrestrial cable from Vietnam to Singapore or the United States. [1] https://en.vietnamplus.vn/internet-slows-as-four-out-of-five-submarine-cables-suffer-disruptions-in-unprecedented-incident/247650.vnp https://en.vietnamplus.vn/internet-slows-as-four-out-of-five... [2] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-africa-europe-1-aae-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-afric... [3] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/tata-tgn-intra-asia-tgn-ia https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/tata-tgn-i... [4] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3
    - themoonisachees 4y ago
v3ss0n 4y ago
That's why internet is extremely slow here, I am in Myanmar
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pancrufty 4y ago
  Myanmar has its own cables: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/stations/asia/myanmar https://www.submarinenetworks.com/stations/asia/myanmar Additionally the cable in question comes from Europe, so the Vietnam break shouldn’t affect Myanmar (which also has direct access to it) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEA-ME-WE-3-Route.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEA-ME-WE-3-Route.pn...
- orangepurple 4y ago
  That's probably not why you are having slow internet. If you hear about cable cuts in the Malacca Strait THEN you can worry. Myanmar is not directly connected to Vietnam via sea cables specifically. The major connections to the outside world via the sea are: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-5 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-5 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-africa-europe-1-aae-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-afric... https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/singapore-myanmar-sigmar https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/singapore-...
  - v3ss0n 4y ago
    Thanks. Might be other problem, but the internet slow down happened yesterday, especially to GitHub and a few other side.
- radicaldreamer 4y ago
  Internet infrastructure in Myanmar is still relatively underdeveloped, which is why it's slow. These cables are not heavily used for routing your traffic typically.
lolc 4y ago
Whenever I read of an undersea cable breaking, I worry that the next world war has started. Seeing pipelines getting blown up for presumed geopolitical reasons hasn't reduced this anxiety. I know these cables regularly break for ordinary reasons. And every time I hope it's just that.
- forgetfreeman 4y ago
  There's no point in being scared when running isn't an option.
  - sqeaky 4y ago
    Logically, I know you are correct, but that does nothing to help.
    - forgetfreeman 4y ago
      Probably nothing will, but understand I have significant sympathy for younger folks who are getting their first real taste of zero-sum geopolitics and have nothing to compare it to for scale/threat level. For those of us that grew up in the 80s the days headlines represent a slow news day from our childhood.
      - aziaziazi 4y ago
        If you’re not that young and didn’t try mediation yet you definitely should. It can drastically reduce anxiety of future events, even if it does not reduce “problems” when they happen.
      - avereveard 4y ago
        70s in Italy were wild. Cities were cratered, blood was on the roads monthly in a triple underground war between brigate rosse, neofascisti and the state, with the cia meddling trough gladio. 90-10 were bliss in comparison. Wouldn't claim these are golden age because as the first world stabilized the unaligned world became the proxy for the great powers' wars, to all that it entailed. The proxies are getting nukes now, and so the struggle between great powers is shifting again...
latchkey 4y ago
The problems with Vietnam's internet have been going on for a long time now. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2872728/dont-blame-sharks-for-asian-internet-problems.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2872728/dont-blame-sha... https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchors-red-tape-why-it-takes-forever-to-fix-vietnam-s-broken-internet-cables https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchor... https://vietnaminsider.vn/apg-undersea-internet-cable-which-connects-vietnam-to-the-world-broke-down-again/ https://vietnaminsider.vn/apg-undersea-internet-cable-which-...
- hummus_bae 4y ago
  [dead]
- esperent 4y ago
  I've lived in Vietnam for the last five years and I read lots of reports like this. The local joke is always "sharks" biting the undersea cables, where the sharks are the Chinese I guess. The reality doesn't match though, except for during huge storms there's rarely connection issues. The fastest speed five years ago was about 100mb, I now get 300mb for the same price. I'm still getting that speed right now (testing on speedtest.net to Singapore).
  - latchkey 4y ago
    The joke was more that the VN govt was slowing down internet during holidays and blaming it on sharks... since that is when it always got slower... except that doesn't take into account that more people needed internet during holidays. Nice to hear the speeds have increased over time. It was pretty bad when I was living there. That said, the 4G LTE coverage was amazing... literally the entire country, even in the most remote areas. Another reason to look forward to going back some day.
    - esperent 4y ago
      It's amazing what you can do when you don't need to apply for planning permission to put a 4g mast. They're everywhere - people rent out their rooftops to internet companies. The blessing and curse of Vietnam: you can get away with nearly anything, but so can other people. It's a beautiful country though and changing incredible fast, mostly for the better. There's a huge and somewhat successful anti corruption drive going on in high level government over the past few years. If you've been away even for five years you'll see changes.
topicseed 4y ago
Having been in Vietnam for long periods of time a few years back, "broken undersea cables" were at least quarterly occurrences.
no_protocol 4y ago
I am assuming the "SMW3 cable" mentioned is SEA-ME-WE 3, which was mentioned multiple times in "Mother Earth Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson (1996, Wired) [0]. It was noted as a competitor to FLAG, the cable Stephenson was mainly following. That seems like a very long lifespan. [0]: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
AbusiveHNAdmin 4y ago
[dead]
meltyness 4y ago
Perhaps it would be appropriate to stop the hug of death on the whole country, and instead link to a working source with complete information.
peplee 4y ago
I used to live in Vietnam circa 2016, and the joke every other month when the internet went out was that some sharks ate the cable again. Seems those sharks are still eating good!
quux 4y ago
Obligatory link to "Mother Earth Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson for anyone wanting a deep dive into the fascinating world/history of undersea telecommunications cables: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
Tit for tat. You take out nord stream we take out internet. /s?
Daub 4y ago
The first time this happened the official explanation was that the cable had been bitten by sharks. The Vietnamese loved this, so now every time the internet is slow we just say ‘sharks’.
destroy-2A 4y ago
This is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam state run news agency reporting on the annual Tet holiday internet "outage" caused by "cable failure" it has gotten better over the years. Instead of complete blackout they slow social down to a total crawl or dead, my guess is they do it to stop the ability for any kind of organized public uprising, protest or civil unrest. It is normal in Vietnam to have nation wide internet blackouts leading up to some politically important moment, holidays or maneuver. The authorities always blame some upstream fault and there is silence from government on it (apart from injecting some press about undersea cable failure. One year they put an article about sharks developing a penchant for internet cables which is now the running joke), the expat forums in Vietnam have pretty frequent and humorous complaints about it. My colleagues in Vietnam frequently get cut off for days and just laugh that the "shark ate cable again" Vietnam cant be connected by only undersea cables, they have land borders with China, Laos and Cambodia, whilst *mostly third world countries their internet is doing just fine during these Vietnamese internet outages. Not far away is Singapore - an island, with an AWS, Azure and GCP regions and they do not have shark eating cable internet outages. TLDR this article is total BS

173 points by teddyh 4y ago

Starlink is the future here right? You can’t sever a satellite link like you can with a cable. Well, actually I guess you technically can. But it’s definitely way more difficult.

actionfromafar 4y ago
Shower(-ish) thought: such cables are lasting and obvious artefacts for the future. These cables will stay where they are for eons. These Starlink satellites are like dragonflies. Once they are no longer continuosly replenished by new launches, they will disappear.
acuozzo 4y ago
You can lower the SNR to the point at which it's unusable. A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel would be roughly equivalent to "cutting an undersea cable", I believe.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  > A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers I don't see how a system that likely would need to be larger that the Duga-1 "Russian Woodpecker" can be hidden, and the Duga-1 wasn't even particularly powerful enough at jamming radio stations - well, it was a over-the-horizon radar, not a jammer, but the power and size requirements for an actual effective jammer are still there.
- peter_d_sherman 4y ago
  >You can lower the SNR to the point at which it's unusable. This would be the equivalent to blotting out an AM or FM radio channel by outputting white (or other) RF noise on a given frequency -- or frequency range. >A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel would be roughly equivalent to "cutting an undersea cable", I believe. Roughly equivalent, yes... 100% exactly equivalent, well, maybe not... I don't know if Starlink is capable of frequency hopping or not -- nor the range of frequencies it is permitted to hop around in if it is -- but, if, let's say (for the purpose of discussion) that the following things were true: a) Starlink can and does frequency hop; b) The range of frequencies that Starlink is permitted to frequency hop in was infinite (1 HZ - infinite HZ) -- not true obviously, but if that that was the case, then: >A system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel would be roughly equivalent to "cutting an undersea cable", I believe. Yes -- but it would have to simultaneously broadcast white (or other) noise RF on all RF frequencies simultaneously -- and it would have to use a sh-tload of power to accomplish that. The state-sanctioned jammers might have a lot of power to back them up -- but remember that the power of an RF signal falls away according to distance according to the inverse square law, that is, it does not fall off linearly, it falls off exponentially (like the light of an incandescent light bulb) -- so again, it would need one hell of a lot of power to block each and every Starlink (or other satellite) subscriber in a given country... If Starlink only uses one set frequency -- then blocking would be a whole lot easier (no need to expend unnecessary power blocking multiple RF frequencies) -- so perhaps the "system of distributed, hidden, state-sanctioned jammers doing C&C over a unaffected back channel" -- with enough power, could in fact work...
  - Anarch157a 4y ago
    > one hell of a lot of power Which is much easier to generate/store on land than on space. > RF signal falls away according to distance according to the inverse square law On land, a state actor, operating on its own territory, could put jammers every 50 km, which is much closer to the receivers than satellites that orbit at 550 km. Even if the jammers transmitted at the same power as a Starlink sat, being 10x closer would mean jamming signal 100x stronger.
    - peter_d_sherman 4y ago
      >being 10x closer would mean jamming signal 100x stronger. At a specific frequency. The effect is similar to how a nearer radio station at a given frequency -- will typically block out others that are at the same frequency, yet farther away... But does a strong radio station nearby mean that all other radio stations at all other radio frequencies are simultaneously blocked? No -- someone can simply turn the dial and tune in to a different radio frequency, and listen to another "unblocked" / "unjammed" station... If Starlink frequency hops, that is, automatically changes its frequency if bands of the RF spectrum are blocked -- then it will be much more difficult for the state actor to block all of them at the same time -- especially if each individual Starlink subscriber could frequency hop with no pre-set pattern, that is, independent of all of the others...
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
> You can’t sever a satellite link like you can with a cable. What do you mean? China, Russia, India and the USA have anti-satellite weapons around if they really want, and "destroy everyone's stuff with a kessler syndrome collisional cascading" works very well when the USA is the one with the most to lose.
- postingawayonhn 4y ago
  There are far too many Starlink satellites to destroy a meaningful number.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Ironically, very-low-Earth-orbit as used by Starlink (lifepan measured in single-digit years) means that collateral damage from a-sat weapons would likely be limited. E.g., where Kessler Syndrome in even modestly-higher orbits would remain a problem for decades, at Starlink altitudes, most of the debris itself should de-orbit over a relatively short period of years. That could actually increase likelihood of such attacks.
bogomipz 4y ago
Starlink is an access technology. The Tier 1 backbone providers of the Internet are still terrestrial which means terrestrial fiber and submarine cables. Starlink still has to buy transit from the people with fiber. I think Starlink purchases transit from GTT, Lumen, Zayo and buncg of others. A fiber cut could still impact Starlink. Think of what happens when your ISP goes down but the Wifi on your routers is still up. It's somewhat similar.

armchairhacker 4y ago

> However, Vietnamese service suppliers said the failures on the five cables will not have great impact on the speed of Internet connection between the country and the world. > The SMW3 cable is outdated and going to be decommissioned, so it has not been used for fixed broadband Internet services, they explained, adding that the latest breakdown didn’t occur in the peak time, and they immediately carried out responding measures to reduce impact on the Internet speed.

diceduckmonk 4y ago
The article was 6 paragraphs long. I’m not sure citing two paragraphs without commentary adds much value.
- elil17 4y ago
  How would we read the article if people didn’t put it in the comments? What, by clicking the link? Unthinkable! Please remember this is hacker news, you’re not allowed to click the link /s
- dvh 4y ago
  It does, I didn't have to read it. Title might as well been "unused internet cable breaks down in Vietnam"
  - Brian_K_White 4y ago
    So you read it here instead of there, and everyone else gets to read it twice. Cool.
- ortusdux 4y ago
  You would be surprised by the number of people that skip the article and start commenting based solely on the headline.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Even more surprised by editors who will knowingly mislead with the headline in order to force people to click through and get those sweet, sweet ad (or subscriber) dollars just to find out the “man bites dog” headline was a lie.

ilamont 4y ago

Not many details in this article, but further north there is another threat to undersea cables carrying Internet traffic: On Feb. 2, a Chinese fishing vessel sailing close to the Matsu Islands severed one of the two cables, which connect the islands with Taiwan proper. Then, six days later, a Chinese freighter cut the second cable. https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/21/matsu-islands-internet-cables-china-taiwan/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/21/matsu-islands-internet-...

cld8483 4y ago
What a truly unfortunate coincidence.
- macintux 4y ago
  Rather like the Russian elite who keep mysteriously falling out of buildings.
  - chrisdhoover 4y ago
    Defenestration, what was once medieval is hip again.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    I never thought I'd see the day where buildings become sentient and rise up against their overlords.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tpmx 4y ago
  On the renewed China-Vietnam tensions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Vietnam_relations#2019%E2%80%93present:_renewed_tensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Vietnam_relation...
- Animats 4y ago
  Is this an effort to force Vietnam to route all their traffic via China? Through the Great Firewall?

v8xi 4y ago

Article gives scant information but found this from 01/30/23: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/internet-slows-to-a-crawl-as-four-undersea-cables-encounter-simultaneous-issues-4564855.html https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/internet-slows-to-a-crawl-... From that article: Vietnam is currently connected with seven undersea cables: SMW3, AAG, IA, APG, AAE-1, SJC2 and ADC. Besides the recent breakage of the IA, problems with the AAE, AAG and APG cables that have been present since 2022 and early 2023 have yet to be fully resolved. The SJC2 and the ADC are yet to be officially operational, while the SMW3 cable is outdated and about to be decommissioned. The fact that Vietnam currently only has one fully functional undersea cable has caused internet speeds between Vietnam and the rest of the world to slow to a crawl.

sandworm101 4y ago
>> about to be decommissioned. I presume this means disconnected and forgotten about on the sea floor. Or do they actually do anything to pull them up? I imagine pulling an old cable might be very difficult but I don't like things just being left for the sea to deal with. There is far to much trash on the seafloor already.
- jagged-chisel 4y ago
  I would think pulling up a cable would be detrimental to any ecosystem that built on and around the cable. I would not be surprised to learn that ecosystems were affected negatively when the cables were laid, too, so I think we probably want to limit damage by letting them lie there.
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Depends on what kinds of substances are present there, that will leach out over time.
    - frosted-flakes 4y ago
      Steel, rubber, and glass? Doesn't seem so bad.

brink 4y ago

Title makes it seem like Vietnam is in an internet blackout. Not the case apparently, they're still connected and are fine.

ninesnines 4y ago
But what are the implications of this internet cable being down? Will there be a slowing of internet? Is there an easy fix?
- toast0 4y ago
  Based on a different article[1] and the submarine cable map [2][3][4]... Asia Africa Europe 1 (AAE-1) is currently broken between Vietnam and Hong Kong, but presumable is functional from Vietnam to the rest of the cable that travels west (landings in much of southern asia and a couple points in southern Europe). Intra Asia (IA) is broken between Vietnam and Singapore, but it also lands in Hong Kong and the Philipines. SMW3 lands in a lot of places, but is reported to be obsolete. So, it seems Vietnam no longer has a direct fiber connection to Singapore, and has reduced capacity to Hong Kong. There will likely be some slowdown as Hong Kong and Singapore are both popular locations for data centers. There's not really an easy fix. Traffic will flow over alternate paths, but repair boats need to go out and locate the ends of the broken cables, bring them up to the surface, splice them back together, and then let them sink again. Terrestrial cabling tends not to get damaged by ships, and is a lot easier to locate for repairs, but it's hard to run it over mountains and through forests, and you can't run a terrestrial cable from Vietnam to Singapore or the United States. [1] https://en.vietnamplus.vn/internet-slows-as-four-out-of-five-submarine-cables-suffer-disruptions-in-unprecedented-incident/247650.vnp https://en.vietnamplus.vn/internet-slows-as-four-out-of-five... [2] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-africa-europe-1-aae-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-afric... [3] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/tata-tgn-intra-asia-tgn-ia https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/tata-tgn-i... [4] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3
  - themoonisachees 4y ago

v3ss0n 4y ago

That's why internet is extremely slow here, I am in Myanmar

deleted 4y ago
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pancrufty 4y ago
Myanmar has its own cables: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/stations/asia/myanmar https://www.submarinenetworks.com/stations/asia/myanmar Additionally the cable in question comes from Europe, so the Vietnam break shouldn’t affect Myanmar (which also has direct access to it) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEA-ME-WE-3-Route.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SEA-ME-WE-3-Route.pn...
orangepurple 4y ago
That's probably not why you are having slow internet. If you hear about cable cuts in the Malacca Strait THEN you can worry. Myanmar is not directly connected to Vietnam via sea cables specifically. The major connections to the outside world via the sea are: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-5 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-5 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-africa-europe-1-aae-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/asia-afric... https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/seamewe-3 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/singapore-myanmar-sigmar https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/singapore-...
- v3ss0n 4y ago
  Thanks. Might be other problem, but the internet slow down happened yesterday, especially to GitHub and a few other side.
radicaldreamer 4y ago
Internet infrastructure in Myanmar is still relatively underdeveloped, which is why it's slow. These cables are not heavily used for routing your traffic typically.

lolc 4y ago

Whenever I read of an undersea cable breaking, I worry that the next world war has started. Seeing pipelines getting blown up for presumed geopolitical reasons hasn't reduced this anxiety. I know these cables regularly break for ordinary reasons. And every time I hope it's just that.

forgetfreeman 4y ago
There's no point in being scared when running isn't an option.
- sqeaky 4y ago
  Logically, I know you are correct, but that does nothing to help.
  - forgetfreeman 4y ago
    Probably nothing will, but understand I have significant sympathy for younger folks who are getting their first real taste of zero-sum geopolitics and have nothing to compare it to for scale/threat level. For those of us that grew up in the 80s the days headlines represent a slow news day from our childhood.
    - aziaziazi 4y ago
      If you’re not that young and didn’t try mediation yet you definitely should. It can drastically reduce anxiety of future events, even if it does not reduce “problems” when they happen.
    - avereveard 4y ago
      70s in Italy were wild. Cities were cratered, blood was on the roads monthly in a triple underground war between brigate rosse, neofascisti and the state, with the cia meddling trough gladio. 90-10 were bliss in comparison. Wouldn't claim these are golden age because as the first world stabilized the unaligned world became the proxy for the great powers' wars, to all that it entailed. The proxies are getting nukes now, and so the struggle between great powers is shifting again...

latchkey 4y ago

The problems with Vietnam's internet have been going on for a long time now. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2872728/dont-blame-sharks-for-asian-internet-problems.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2872728/dont-blame-sha... https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchors-red-tape-why-it-takes-forever-to-fix-vietnam-s-broken-internet-cables https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchor... https://vietnaminsider.vn/apg-undersea-internet-cable-which-connects-vietnam-to-the-world-broke-down-again/ https://vietnaminsider.vn/apg-undersea-internet-cable-which-...

hummus_bae 4y ago
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esperent 4y ago
I've lived in Vietnam for the last five years and I read lots of reports like this. The local joke is always "sharks" biting the undersea cables, where the sharks are the Chinese I guess. The reality doesn't match though, except for during huge storms there's rarely connection issues. The fastest speed five years ago was about 100mb, I now get 300mb for the same price. I'm still getting that speed right now (testing on speedtest.net to Singapore).
- latchkey 4y ago
  The joke was more that the VN govt was slowing down internet during holidays and blaming it on sharks... since that is when it always got slower... except that doesn't take into account that more people needed internet during holidays. Nice to hear the speeds have increased over time. It was pretty bad when I was living there. That said, the 4G LTE coverage was amazing... literally the entire country, even in the most remote areas. Another reason to look forward to going back some day.
  - esperent 4y ago
    It's amazing what you can do when you don't need to apply for planning permission to put a 4g mast. They're everywhere - people rent out their rooftops to internet companies. The blessing and curse of Vietnam: you can get away with nearly anything, but so can other people. It's a beautiful country though and changing incredible fast, mostly for the better. There's a huge and somewhat successful anti corruption drive going on in high level government over the past few years. If you've been away even for five years you'll see changes.

topicseed 4y ago

Having been in Vietnam for long periods of time a few years back, "broken undersea cables" were at least quarterly occurrences.

no_protocol 4y ago

I am assuming the "SMW3 cable" mentioned is SEA-ME-WE 3, which was mentioned multiple times in "Mother Earth Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson (1996, Wired) [0]. It was noted as a competitor to FLAG, the cable Stephenson was mainly following. That seems like a very long lifespan. [0]: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

AbusiveHNAdmin 4y ago

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meltyness 4y ago

Perhaps it would be appropriate to stop the hug of death on the whole country, and instead link to a working source with complete information.

peplee 4y ago

I used to live in Vietnam circa 2016, and the joke every other month when the internet went out was that some sharks ate the cable again. Seems those sharks are still eating good!

quux 4y ago

Obligatory link to "Mother Earth Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson for anyone wanting a deep dive into the fascinating world/history of undersea telecommunications cables: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

Tit for tat. You take out nord stream we take out internet. /s?

Daub 4y ago

The first time this happened the official explanation was that the cable had been bitten by sharks. The Vietnamese loved this, so now every time the internet is slow we just say ‘sharks’.

destroy-2A 4y ago

This is the Socialist Republic of Vietnam state run news agency reporting on the annual Tet holiday internet "outage" caused by "cable failure" it has gotten better over the years. Instead of complete blackout they slow social down to a total crawl or dead, my guess is they do it to stop the ability for any kind of organized public uprising, protest or civil unrest. It is normal in Vietnam to have nation wide internet blackouts leading up to some politically important moment, holidays or maneuver. The authorities always blame some upstream fault and there is silence from government on it (apart from injecting some press about undersea cable failure. One year they put an article about sharks developing a penchant for internet cables which is now the running joke), the expat forums in Vietnam have pretty frequent and humorous complaints about it. My colleagues in Vietnam frequently get cut off for days and just laugh that the "shark ate cable again" Vietnam cant be connected by only undersea cables, they have land borders with China, Laos and Cambodia, whilst *mostly third world countries their internet is doing just fine during these Vietnamese internet outages. Not far away is Singapore - an island, with an AWS, Azure and GCP regions and they do not have shark eating cable internet outages. TLDR this article is total BS