Can One Anchor Drop Cripple Global Internet Traffic?
Written by Evan SchumanWhen an undersea cable was cut, near the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, it was the third such cut in recent days and it raised the question of the robustness of global Internet traffic.
The traffic watchers at Keynote Systems this weekend saw the problems throughout the region, a key area for supply chain partners of global retailers.
"Keynote Systems continues to see poor performance and availability for users in India as they tried to access Web sites hosted in Europe and the US. In light of a 3rd cable cut near Dubai, it seems that users in the region will have to continue to expect 50-100 percent increases in load times for Web sites hosted abroad," a Keynote statement reported.
"Keynote customers that host their Internet presence in the Middle East and India are also seeing significant performance degradation as users around the globe attemp to access their Web site. Traffic inbound to the region from Asia, Europe, and the US is being affected. On average Web sites in the region have slowed down by a factor of four compared to their normal speed due to constraints in the remaining available bandwidth," the firm said.
-Marc
February 5th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
The title of this article is “Can One Anchor Drop Cripple Global Internet Traffic?†it should read “Should One Anchor Drop Cripple Global Internet Traffic?  and I’ll also say this… the next time it happens (and it will…somewhere) it may not be an accident. Take heed.