Tag Archives: InternetPerils

Syria and Yemen: 29 November 2012

At 10:30 AM GMT yesterday, 29 November 2012, routing to Yemen suddenly changed from London to Dubai through FLAG to New York to Dubai through ETISALAT, as shown in the animation here and detailed in the PerilWatch from InternetPerils. That timing closely matched the 10:26 AM GMT Syrian disconnect time reported by Renesys. This is very reminiscent of Mubarak disconnecting Egypt 22:30 GMT 20 January 2011. This tactic didn’t help Mubarak’s regime in Egypt, and it probably won’t help Assad’s regime in Syria; rather the opposite: people don’t like their Internet being turned off. And it tends to cause the international community to rally around the rebels.

-jsq

NANOG: Submarine adopts 40G and 100G

Per Hansen of Ciena at NANOG 50 talked about growing capacity not by adding more data cables under the sea, rather by increasing spectral density. Eventually new cables will be needed, but meanwhile he thinks we can get up from about 2 bits to to 5 or 6 bits per Hertz. It does require more power: same energy per bit, but more bits.

Plus mesh networks for rerouting, even if it means rerouting backwards around the world, he notes. We’ve observed that sort of emergency backwards routing as long ago as January 2008, in the U.A.E. Cable Cut.

-jsq

Iranian Internet Disturbances

iran20090615.gif Here’s an example of some Internet routing in Iran, in this case on the way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday 15 June 2009. Normally, routing and latency don’t change much. Starting Saturday 13 June, the day after the election, routing and latency have become increasingly disturbed. More here.