Fourth cable damaged in Middle Eest (Qatar to UAE)

Mon Feb 4 01:29:54 UTC 2008

y'all,

there has has been a lot of speculation that this is all some US
prelude to war with iran.  while i don't claim to know much about
whether that makes any sense, i do know that if they're trying to
disconnect iran from the internet, they're doing a lousy job:

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/attention_iran_is_not_disconne_1.shtml

we (renesys) have been tracking (at layer 3) this set of outages  (see
the previous 3 postings at:

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml
http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break_part_1.shtml
and
http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/mediterranean_cable_break_part.shtml

for a view of this from a routing perspective among out peer set) and
iran is not even one of the 10 most affacted countries.  it certainly
all seems suspcious and worrisome, but it does not seem that iran is
the target of a competent campaign to disrupt its telecommunications
(slashdot paranoia notwithstanding).  

i'll be interested to hear more about what is found about the physical
layer causes.

t.

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
todd underwood                                 +1 603 643 9300 x101
renesys corporation                            general manager babbledog
todd at renesys.com                               http://www.renesys.com/blog