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Update on Middle East Cable Cuts

Here are some updates on the cable cuts affecting the Middle East, which are the focus of much discussion and speculation.

The cable cuts affecting the Middle East continue to be the focus of much discussion and speculation in the blogosphere and the network operator community. Here are some updates focusing on what we know, as well as some discussion of the outages:

  • Effects of the Fibre Outage in the Mediterranean: A thorough review of the network data from the first set of cable disruptions from the SLAC (wonder if they used their Blackbox to crunch the numbers).
  • Attention: Iran Is Not Disconnected: An update from Renesys, which monitors border routing, and says a report that Iran is disconnected is incorrect. The report, which got attention on Slashdot and the Internet Traffic Report, has fueled some of the rumors about these incidents.
  • Four International Cable Breaks In A Week: A useful summary from TeleGeography of what is busted and where. There have been some conflicting reports about this based on translations of non-English news sources.

  • Who Cut The Cables? Nick Carr at Rough Type reflects on the rumors and what the outages tell us about the Net: "Whatever the cause, or causes, the cable breaks reveal both the vulnerability and the robustness of Internet service."
  • The North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) maintains a mailing list that has been actively discussing the outages, their implications, and the recovery process.