Taiwan Earthquake Knocks out Asian internet connections

[darran 0]

It may seem like a normal natural phenomenon which has just occurred but the reason I am writing this in the 'Vent' forum is because of the consequences it brought together with. This earthquake in Taiwan was measured 6.7 in the Richter scale and it's vibrations managed to damage the underwater cable over here in Singapore, causing us not to be able to surf the internet; maybe not the internet but overseas websites. Non-intranet and local websites were not affected. This spelt a huge amount of inconvenience for us, as I was without Xisto, my email, my football news, Soccervision ... etc, thankfully my blog hosted at Xisto was still able to be accessed and I managed to publish posts just as I would do on normal days. As a result I was not able to access this wonderful forum for a good 3 days, losing 3 credit points for an unforeseen circumstance but no worries, I will make it up.

The reason why I am able to access Xisto after 3 days because as we speak, there are divers at the bottom of the sea re-routing the connection to an alternative cable. At this point of time, 85% of the connection has been re-routed on 27th Decmeber 2006, albeit through a slower connection (at least for the internet service provider i am using). It will take a few more days to completely re-route the connections (hopefully another day would be sufficient) but for repairs to fully complete, it would probably take weeks.

This made things very inconvenient users especially in Asia as this earthquake practically knocked out every single Asian country's access to an overseas website. This immediately brought to mind the thread which I read before in Xisto titled "What would you do if there was no internet", the situation was smacked in my face, I may not have been totally without internet but I could not surf 95% of the sites I visit everyday as a lot of it is based outside of Singapore. Here is the link to the thread:

http://forums.xisto.com/index.php?shoic=6971=

This sudden internet service disruption really had a major impact on users surfing the internet but also business all around Asia especially the stock market, we all know it is a very intensive real-time environment where we need constant internet availability to keep in touch with the latest share raise and drop. Banks and travel agencies also suffered a major drop as a lot of business transactions are done over the net with internet banking accounts as well as debit/credit cards.

This is an indication of the over-dependence on technology and how a mere natural phenomenon can just knock out the infrastructure of a certain region. Imagine if the world was hit by a earthquake of a large scale that it would affect every single region in the world, we would be totally lost in touch with the internet. I am not angry at this earthquake knocking out our internet connection here in Asia but scared at the prospect of all the underwater cables being hit by a massive-scaled earthquake, what would happen to business, transactions and the economy on the whole then? And the prospect of us being without the internet could actually be a not-far hidden reality.

[-[Nero]- 0]

Ah.. you from Asia too? Although many internet users in my country have complained about the internet disruption, but mine was still okay, at least it's still running smoothly and I'm still able to play international online games, eg Guild Wars . Anyways, I was completely saddened by the us asian's mental thinking. I had a conversation with my friend on msn, and this is how it went...Me: Taiwan earthquake... that's sad, my aunt live there...Friend: Yeap! It sucks! Made my internet slow... >.<Me: Haha.... I'm wondering how the citizens are there, hope my aunt is fine.... Friend: I don't give a damn! I want back my internet...Me: Aren't you concern about the injured ppl and the death tolls in Taiwan?Friend: I don't care! I want my internet first! I'm so lost without my internet! Once my internet is okay, then I'll start to be concern about the victims....To be honest, I did a survey in another forum, and most internet users have the same attitude as this friend of mine. How I wish they were the victim! And I received news from my parents that my aunt was also one of those earthquake victims, except she suffered a minor injury. My conclusion is most asians are concerned about the internet than the victim's life... And that really sucks!

[master_bacarra 0]

well, we're pretty much affected as well here in the philippines. the damage really did affect the internet connections. news here said that even international calls are affected. as for the internet, well, i'm still experiencing some troubles connecting to some websites (there were cases that i usually get a timed out response or server not found). it was kinda annoying that there are times that i have to shift to dial-up connection just to get a page loading, but of course if a major isp provider is affected, then most probably the smaller ones are affected as well.right now i'm back to dsl, but due to the intermittent connection, most of my friends weren't online that much (considering that it's vacation). i've got low activity in my website (even visitor count has dropped) because my friends weren't online. but then again, it's totally fine with me.good thing the internet wasn't much of a use to me recently since i have a local server installed. i'm doing some major programming and to compensate for not being able to connect online always, i just installed a local server that helps my app going.

[salamangkero 0]

It is quite bad enough that I'm a dialup user living on a suburban environment DSL cannot reach and wireless broadband sucks big-time. Now, I have to deal with this slow Internet connection!

 

I've heard that it was two optic cables that were damaged. Also, ISP's are looking westward to Europe for alternate routes, effectively congesting the network and, ultimately, giving me more lag than I'm used to. I'm not sure if we have cables running through the Pacific to the Americas but if we did... well )@mn!

 

By the way, just a side note while we were on the topic of seismic activity, did you know that Tokyo, in the words of Bill McGuire, is a city waiting to die? I've been reading a chilly e-Book, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson well into the chilly winter nights and, honestly, it's not exactly the material for pleasant dreams. Anyway, an excerpt:

 

Tokyo stands on the boundary of three tectonic plates in a country already well known for its seismic instability. In 1995, as you will remember, the city of Kobe, three hundred miles to the west, was struck by a magnitude 7.2 quake, which killed 6,394 people. The damage was estimated at $99 billion. But that was as nothingwell, as comparatively littlecompared with what may await Tokyo.

 

Tokyo has already suffered one of the most devastating earthquakes in modern times. On September 1, 1923, just before noon, the city was hit by what is known as the Great Kanto quakean event more than ten times more powerful than Kobes earthquake. Two hundred thousand people were killed. Since that time, Tokyo has been eerily quiet, so the strain beneath the surface has been building for eighty years. Eventually it is bound to snap. In 1923, Tokyo had a population of about three million. Today it is approaching thirty million. Nobody cares to guess how many people might die, but the potential economic cost has been put as high as $7 trillion.

I dunno, the thought just popped into my head, what will happen if it does rock Tokyo? Will it affect a lot of other countries as well? How many Internet dependent individuals like me will be severely inconvenienced? How many mirror sites in Tokyo will go down? How many aunts of other people will die? Why am I talking in questions nobody can answer for sure?

 

One thing's for sure; I do agree with the aforementioned author when he said, "we live in a world that doesnt altogether seem to want us here."

[master_bacarra 0]

I dunno, the thought just popped into my head, what will happen if it does rock Tokyo? Will it affect a lot of other countries as well?

hmm... we'll probably be affected considering that we're also located near the pacific ring of fire. and a huge earthquake will surely cause a huge tsunami, but that would be directed towards the west.

How many Internet dependent individuals like me will be severely inconvenienced? How many mirror sites in Tokyo will go down?

that's rather selfish, don't you think?

One thing's for sure; I do agree with the aforementioned author when he said, "we live in a world that doesnt altogether seem to want us here."

well, it's rather oblivious of the people regardless of the kind of natural phenomenon that is occurring. and if it does get affected because of human intervention, then what the author said holds true.

[garbage 0]

I know this is a few weeks old but I was just wondering did they ever get the connections back to standards. for you folks out there.Or are you fellas still have some bad connections...

[darran 0]

It is pretty simple really, they simply re-route the connections underwater, by no means are the connections fixed. An alternative connection if you will. It will take weeks, probably months, I do not know how extensive the damage to the data cables are. Although it is not significant that the speed is slower when we surf websites, but when you play MMORPG, you can see the difference, it takes like 3 secs for it to respond to every action you make with your character, in the past, it wasn't even 1 sec before there is some response from the server. So hopefully they fix it quickly

[salamangkero 0]

It is pretty simple really, they simply re-route the connections underwater, by no means are the connections fixed. An alternative connection if you will. It will take weeks, probably months, I do not know how extensive the damage to the data cables are.

A notification I received (and the the foresight to save) from my local ISP on the first few days of the disruption in services

Several International cable facilities Including the system that our MAIN PROVIDER is using, specifically APCN2 and its secondary route have experienced major cable breaks due to the recent earthquake in Taiwan measuring 7.2 in the Richter scale. As a result of this, majority of our services with international connectivity have been seriously affected and are currently unavailable. Presently, the international consortium operating the cable system has already mobilized cable ships to repair the affected segments of APCN 1 & 2, EAC, SEMEWE and GP-China US; C2C and restoration work will be conducted round the clock.

By the way, only two cable ships have been deployed, so far. So yes, they are repairing, not re-routing. ISP's have already been re-routing since this all began, which is why the connection is so slow.

[arnz 0]

Some slight indirect effects overseas considering the Singapore-owned optus in Australia had their broadband connections slowed slightly as a result. It has since been fixed.

[intmun 0]

It may seem like a normal natural phenomenon which has just occurred but the reason I am writing this in the 'Vent' forum is because of the consequences it brought together with. This earthquake in Taiwan was measured 6.7 in the Richter scale and it's vibrations managed to damage the underwater cable over here in Singapore, causing us not to be able to surf the internet; maybe not the internet but overseas websites. Non-intranet and local websites were not affected. This spelt a huge amount of inconvenience for us, as I was without Xisto, my email, my football news, Soccervision ... etc, thankfully my blog hosted at Xisto was still able to be accessed and I managed to publish posts just as I would do on normal days. As a result I was not able to access this wonderful forum for a good 3 days, losing 3 credit points for an unforeseen circumstance but no worries, I will make it up.
The reason why I am able to access Xisto after 3 days because as we speak, there are divers at the bottom of the sea re-routing the connection to an alternative cable. At this point of time, 85% of the connection has been re-routed on 27th Decmeber 2006, albeit through a slower connection (at least for the internet service provider i am using). It will take a few more days to completely re-route the connections (hopefully another day would be sufficient) but for repairs to fully complete, it would probably take weeks.

This made things very inconvenient users especially in Asia as this earthquake practically knocked out every single Asian country's access to an overseas website. This immediately brought to mind the thread which I read before in Xisto titled "What would you do if there was no internet", the situation was smacked in my face, I may not have been totally without internet but I could not surf 95% of the sites I visit everyday as a lot of it is based outside of Singapore. Here is the link to the thread:

http://forums.xisto.com/index.php?shoic=6971=

This sudden internet service disruption really had a major impact on users surfing the internet but also business all around Asia especially the stock market, we all know it is a very intensive real-time environment where we need constant internet availability to keep in touch with the latest share raise and drop. Banks and travel agencies also suffered a major drop as a lot of business transactions are done over the net with internet banking accounts as well as debit/credit cards.

This is an indication of the over-dependence on technology and how a mere natural phenomenon can just knock out the infrastructure of a certain region. Imagine if the world was hit by a earthquake of a large scale that it would affect every single region in the world, we would be totally lost in touch with the internet. I am not angry at this earthquake knocking out our internet connection here in Asia but scared at the prospect of all the underwater cables being hit by a massive-scaled earthquake, what would happen to business, transactions and the economy on the whole then? And the prospect of us being without the internet could actually be a not-far hidden reality.

I've thought for a while now that the entire western world would completely collapse without the even most sensitive of technologies. Its quite amazing and worrying to think the economy, international communications, governmental communications and even intelligence agencies' communications could all fail through a worldwide malfunction. Obviously underwater cables wouldn't affect these, but the internet still provides the platform for such a huge amount of business nowadays that it is almost unthinkable not to have it. Its all very worrying.

[Dooga 0]

What happened with the huge 8.7 Richter scale earthquake near Japan? Apparently a lot of asian countries had Tsunami alerts, and that the nearest Tsunami would have hit Japan a few hours ago. The water is still moving... hopefully nothing will happen.

[garbage 0]

wow man that would suck to have another Tsunami hit land.. I mean t hat has got to be one of the scariest things to experience..I know id be really scared and id be looking for the tallest build or something to just try to get up high enough...and also speaking of Tsunami's I either saw this on TV , a movie or it might have been real but I clearly remember seeing something where a helicopter was hit buy a Tsunami wave that was so high that even the helicopter was hit by wave, and it was something like a news helicpter doing the report, and they just happened to be low enough that the following wave ended up hitting them. bringing the entire thing down.