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I spent a few years supporting these from the financial end. Modern cables are built in a loop so that they automatically fail-over. For instance, most Trans-

I spent a few years supporting these from the financial end. Modern cables are built in a loop so that they automatically fail-over. For instance, most Trans-Atlantic cables have pops in New York, Florida, England, and mainland Europe. If there is a cut in one segment, traffic automatically switches to the other. Most customers these days are also on products that mux across these cables. So, if your Trans-Atlantic cable has two simultaneous outages, your traffic would automatically route itself across the Pacific. Your latency would go up, but your service would continue. When I was there, construction was beginning on SMW-4, which had the dubious honor of being the first billion dollar cable. They are typically incorporated via international treaties between states and companies that are roughly about 100 pages long. Each partner has to cover maintenance on the part between the main cable and their drop, while everyone chips in on the main part. It really is fascinating; outages are typically caused by boat anchors close to shore or large earthquakes. Once a guy in Hawai'i cut the Southern Cross wire with a pair of clippers while doing yardwork.

iSloth 12y ago
Also have the privilege of still working on these types of networks; one of the things that fascinated me was the money and effort that telecoms companies are spending these days on tracking boats/ships/fishermen by their transponders. There dedicated people, equipment and networks just to track these offenders, as the telecoms obviously want to work out who to send the bill onto once they've fixed the cable, or which insurance company ;)
- analyticsjam 12y ago
  Yeah, the other funny thing is that there are only a few boats in the world that can repair breaks. So if there are too many outages, you just have to wait for them to finish and then sail across the world.
  - iSloth 12y ago
    Then you can have them bobbing up and down for days or weeks because of the weather, very frustrating ;)
Havoc 12y ago
>Modern cables are built in a loop so that they automatically fail-over. I know of a company that did this on a regional network - ring physical layout. Only to discover that murphy's law never fails to deliver and the SLAs suffered as a result. They switched to multiple interlocking rings soon thereafter.
MichaelGG 12y ago
So if someone can cut them with their clippers by accident, certainly a malicious actor could wreak tons of havoc? Why does this not seem to occur? Even from a juvenile "hey I turned off the Internet lol" kind of level?
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  As I recall there have already been cases of cutting cables to move traffic to other cables which have better monitoring capability. But as for the lulz, I expect that even the most naive of folks who might do this understand that it would get them some serious prison time, and there would be a huge amount of effort put into catching them and making an example out of them. Not quite worth it I'd expect. That said, we've had folks take sniper shots at power substations in California[1], which can cut power to big chunks of real estate. [1] http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26419083/pg-e-substation-san-jose-that-suffered-sniper http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26419083/pg-e-substat...
- lstamour 12y ago
  Overloading the 512K BGP tables was a fun way for people to toss a monkey wrench into the Internet. But then, it didn't affect everyone easily and nor would cutting a cable, which not only doesn't affect everyone, but, I imagine, is rather hard to do. It's much easier to mess with the Internet using software, and by doing so remotely, you've a better chance of not getting arrested for it, I imagine.
MichaelGG 12y ago
So if someone can cut them with their clippers by accident, certainly a malicious actor could wreak tons of havoc? Why does this not seem to occur? Even from a juvenile "hey I turned off the Internet lol" kind of level?

iSloth 12y ago

Also have the privilege of still working on these types of networks; one of the things that fascinated me was the money and effort that telecoms companies are spending these days on tracking boats/ships/fishermen by their transponders. There dedicated people, equipment and networks just to track these offenders, as the telecoms obviously want to work out who to send the bill onto once they've fixed the cable, or which insurance company ;)

analyticsjam 12y ago
Yeah, the other funny thing is that there are only a few boats in the world that can repair breaks. So if there are too many outages, you just have to wait for them to finish and then sail across the world.
- iSloth 12y ago
  Then you can have them bobbing up and down for days or weeks because of the weather, very frustrating ;)

Havoc 12y ago

>Modern cables are built in a loop so that they automatically fail-over. I know of a company that did this on a regional network - ring physical layout. Only to discover that murphy's law never fails to deliver and the SLAs suffered as a result. They switched to multiple interlocking rings soon thereafter.

MichaelGG 12y ago

So if someone can cut them with their clippers by accident, certainly a malicious actor could wreak tons of havoc? Why does this not seem to occur? Even from a juvenile "hey I turned off the Internet lol" kind of level?

ChuckMcM 12y ago
As I recall there have already been cases of cutting cables to move traffic to other cables which have better monitoring capability. But as for the lulz, I expect that even the most naive of folks who might do this understand that it would get them some serious prison time, and there would be a huge amount of effort put into catching them and making an example out of them. Not quite worth it I'd expect. That said, we've had folks take sniper shots at power substations in California[1], which can cut power to big chunks of real estate. [1] http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26419083/pg-e-substation-san-jose-that-suffered-sniper http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_26419083/pg-e-substat...
lstamour 12y ago
Overloading the 512K BGP tables was a fun way for people to toss a monkey wrench into the Internet. But then, it didn't affect everyone easily and nor would cutting a cable, which not only doesn't affect everyone, but, I imagine, is rather hard to do. It's much easier to mess with the Internet using software, and by doing so remotely, you've a better chance of not getting arrested for it, I imagine.

MichaelGG 12y ago