Under the sea

Feb 01 2008

By Jim Reavis

What’s going on, are they making anchors heavier than they used to? We have now had three cut cables in two separate incidents, disrupting Internet service between India, parts of the Middle East and the rest of the world. The suspected culprits are a couple of wayward ships’ anchors, although that working theory is still waiting confirmation.

I will go along with the accidental theory for the moment, this sort of mishap has happened before, and it would be quite an operation to do this on purpose, even though I find the theory of militant dolphins more fun. These long haul connections are fewer and farther between than the routes between, say San Francisco and San Jose, so we are potentially faced with a week or two of India running at 50% of normal bandwidth.

Hopefully this incident will spur some efforts to build some more infrastructure redundancy, even if this turns out to be nothing more than an act of God, or an act of Sinbad. The past few years I have commented that even though the bad guys own more of the Internet than ever before, at least they have the same shared interest in keeping core infrastructure running as the network operators have. However, I am wondering how long this will last. The amazing growth in the sophistication of the cybercrime marketplace combined with the Machiavellian instincts of criminal organizations facing too few consequences makes me wonder if massive disruption of the Internet won’t soon be seen as a business opportunity by someone. After all, there are people who make money when the stock market goes up, and there are people who make money when the stock market goes down.

Who benefits from a weakened India, besides vengeful sea mammals?

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