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I wonder if we should design infrastructure that is resilient to cables being cut, I’m pretty certain everything would break right now if the Atlantic cables we

I wonder if we should design infrastructure that is resilient to cables being cut, I’m pretty certain everything would break right now if the Atlantic cables were cut. Does anyone know of an easy way to test this? Would cloudflare or AWS go down for example? What about my local bank?

7373737373 2y ago
It's a great shame that our devices and operating systems don't support "connectionless" and intermediate-infrastructure-less https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network by default.
rogerrogerr 2y ago
I know of a way to test it… But realistically, I would think the US/Americas would be approximately fine. Most, if not practically all, services people on the NA continent use are based in the US from both a corporate and technical perspective. The command+control stuff for distributed systems is probably in the US. Across the pond(s), yeah, I’d expect more disruption.
- Swizec 2y ago
  When I was in high school, our cable out of the country got cut on the border with Austria. For a few hours we could only access domestic websites, which was a pretty interesting experience. 20 years later I wonder how many of those are hosted on AWS/GCP/Azure and would break anyway. Probably all but the biggest.
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    An interesting thought experiment is what would happen to each region’s internet culture if cut off like this from one another? It would be like a speciation event like when animals get cut off from one another by continental drift etc.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - rogerrogerr 2y ago
      EU Internet would be dominated by cookie banners, which I regard as an invasive species they exported to other continents.
- andy_ppp 2y ago
  I understand the US would be fine! Europe would struggle I think.
yuliyp 2y ago
What kind of resiliency are you hoping to achieve? For most routes, there are many dozens of cables starting at many different locations and taking many distinct paths across the ocean. The companies using these cables take great pains to ensure redundancy for critical paths: they'll validate minimum distances between the cables, ensure that they have a variety of landing points, ensure that they have enough spare capacity to handle a certain number of cables all being out for repair simultaneously. Alternatives to cables would be either land-based wireless (radio, point-to-point microwave) or satellite, both of which have much lower throughput capabilities and also are vulnerable to sabotage of transmission/receiver locations. While the number of cables is not large enough to put it out of the reach of many nations, it's also something that no group with the capability of doing it would really want to do: it's a surefire way to invite retribution from basically the rest of the world, while not really achieving much militarily: armies almost invariably have their own communication systems (satellite, microwave, transoceanic fiber whose location is secret, etc).
chgs 2y ago
We do have resiliency - the internet reroutes around these cuts l. Knock out every Atlantic cable and traffic from NY to London would route via LA and singapore. I see this all the time on traffic from far east to Europe when a Red Sea cable dies, and I’ve seen it from India to Europe too (and seen traffic rerouted via South Africa and up the west coast a fair bit) Latency is higher, but on the whole things continue to work. Until there’s enough damage - problems tend to be if you cut enough that cables and the routers they are connected to start to bottleneck.
araes 2y ago
Sure, which of the 24 Atlantic cables are you going to cut with their 5-15 day repair time estimates? Or maybe the 20+ routing the other way around the Earth. (See map linked above)
- taneliv 2y ago
  Where do you get these repair time estimates? I couldn't find a good source, but for example [1] says that, yes, one to two weeks to repair, but two to three weeks to get the ship from Europe to West Africa. [1] https://www.channelstv.com/2024/03/16/internet-disruption-submarine-cable-repair-may-take-two-weeks-says-mainone/ https://www.channelstv.com/2024/03/16/internet-disruption-su...
  - araes 2y ago
    Reference quoted by news articles on the subject on how long it was estimated to take for the C-Lion1 to get repaired. However, you likely have a point, that the mid-Atlantic probably add some % to the on-site repair time and ++ on time to arrive. Much further away than Sweden to Lithuania.
    - taneliv 2y ago
      Right, Baltic Sea has considerably shorter distances on average. I imagine weather conditions might change the equation, though, if you need to send icebreakers first to open up some dozens of kilometers of passage. Right now the sea is still open, except for the coastal areas in the very north.[1] [1] https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/ice-conditions/ https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/ice-conditions/
AzzyHN 2y ago
Hypothetically you could test this by forcing your connections to avoid certain data centers... how you would do this, I'm unsure. It's been a while since I've taken a course on it but I swear CompTIA Network+ covered this

7373737373 2y ago

It's a great shame that our devices and operating systems don't support "connectionless" and intermediate-infrastructure-less https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_ad_hoc_network by default.

rogerrogerr 2y ago

I know of a way to test it… But realistically, I would think the US/Americas would be approximately fine. Most, if not practically all, services people on the NA continent use are based in the US from both a corporate and technical perspective. The command+control stuff for distributed systems is probably in the US. Across the pond(s), yeah, I’d expect more disruption.

Swizec 2y ago
When I was in high school, our cable out of the country got cut on the border with Austria. For a few hours we could only access domestic websites, which was a pretty interesting experience. 20 years later I wonder how many of those are hosted on AWS/GCP/Azure and would break anyway. Probably all but the biggest.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  An interesting thought experiment is what would happen to each region’s internet culture if cut off like this from one another? It would be like a speciation event like when animals get cut off from one another by continental drift etc.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rogerrogerr 2y ago
    EU Internet would be dominated by cookie banners, which I regard as an invasive species they exported to other continents.
andy_ppp 2y ago
I understand the US would be fine! Europe would struggle I think.

yuliyp 2y ago

What kind of resiliency are you hoping to achieve? For most routes, there are many dozens of cables starting at many different locations and taking many distinct paths across the ocean. The companies using these cables take great pains to ensure redundancy for critical paths: they'll validate minimum distances between the cables, ensure that they have a variety of landing points, ensure that they have enough spare capacity to handle a certain number of cables all being out for repair simultaneously. Alternatives to cables would be either land-based wireless (radio, point-to-point microwave) or satellite, both of which have much lower throughput capabilities and also are vulnerable to sabotage of transmission/receiver locations. While the number of cables is not large enough to put it out of the reach of many nations, it's also something that no group with the capability of doing it would really want to do: it's a surefire way to invite retribution from basically the rest of the world, while not really achieving much militarily: armies almost invariably have their own communication systems (satellite, microwave, transoceanic fiber whose location is secret, etc).

chgs 2y ago

We do have resiliency - the internet reroutes around these cuts l. Knock out every Atlantic cable and traffic from NY to London would route via LA and singapore. I see this all the time on traffic from far east to Europe when a Red Sea cable dies, and I’ve seen it from India to Europe too (and seen traffic rerouted via South Africa and up the west coast a fair bit) Latency is higher, but on the whole things continue to work. Until there’s enough damage - problems tend to be if you cut enough that cables and the routers they are connected to start to bottleneck.

araes 2y ago

Sure, which of the 24 Atlantic cables are you going to cut with their 5-15 day repair time estimates? Or maybe the 20+ routing the other way around the Earth. (See map linked above)

taneliv 2y ago
Where do you get these repair time estimates? I couldn't find a good source, but for example [1] says that, yes, one to two weeks to repair, but two to three weeks to get the ship from Europe to West Africa. [1] https://www.channelstv.com/2024/03/16/internet-disruption-submarine-cable-repair-may-take-two-weeks-says-mainone/ https://www.channelstv.com/2024/03/16/internet-disruption-su...
- araes 2y ago
  Reference quoted by news articles on the subject on how long it was estimated to take for the C-Lion1 to get repaired. However, you likely have a point, that the mid-Atlantic probably add some % to the on-site repair time and ++ on time to arrive. Much further away than Sweden to Lithuania.
  - taneliv 2y ago
    Right, Baltic Sea has considerably shorter distances on average. I imagine weather conditions might change the equation, though, if you need to send icebreakers first to open up some dozens of kilometers of passage. Right now the sea is still open, except for the coastal areas in the very north.[1] [1] https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/ice-conditions/ https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/ice-conditions/

AzzyHN 2y ago

Hypothetically you could test this by forcing your connections to avoid certain data centers... how you would do this, I'm unsure. It's been a while since I've taken a course on it but I swear CompTIA Network+ covered this