A transAtlantic cable was severed.

Tue Feb 23 19:42:15 UTC 1999

> Unnamed Administration sources reported that Henry Linneweh said:
> > 
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > According to this bbc article in Sci/Tech and Janet took a dump for 24
> > hours
> > as A direct result.
> 
> There's an obvious problem. How could they locate both ends,
> lift same, splice, and seal the cable in 24 hours?

Any normal (*) person buying transatlantic capacity on a non-SDH
cable tends to buy protection bandwidth either in the form of
preemption or preemptible bandwidth.

(*) = some people obviously elect to take the risk not to do this. Interesting
whether they had any SLA's or not. Interesting also to know whether the
customers concerned knew this was the situation, if indeed it is
as alleged. Some people (one of whom may post back
here) use IP as the protection mechanism rather than SDH, which has
some reasonably obvious pros and cons (double capacity when everything
is working, IGP activity required to switch over, etc.).

-- 
Alex Bligh
GX Networks (formerly Xara Networks)