“Not again, but again”: Sea-Me-We 3 submarine cable failed for the second time in a year
In early December, it became known that the Sea-Me-We 3 submarine telecommunications cable, which provides communication between the countries of Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe, has once again broken down . The problem was felt in Asia and Australia .
Understand what happened.
/ Photo Official US Navy Page CC
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Sea-Me-We 3 (South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3) is an optical underwater telecommunication cable that connects three regions of the world. It was commissioned in 2000 and is the longest and one of the oldest systems of its kind.
The history of this route began in 1985 with the first generation Sea-Me-We. Its length was 13.5 thousand km. The second generation - 18.7 thousand km. It was the longest in the world at the time of commissioning in 1994.
In 1993, the operators of Singapore Telecom and France Telecom conducted preliminary studies for laying a new high-capacity cable that would connect Europe with the Asia-Pacific region. In 1994, 16 parties agreed to work on the Sea-Me-We 3 project in the area between Western Europe and Singapore. In 1996, the system was extended from Singapore to the Far East and Australia. In 1997, an agreement on construction and maintenance of Sea-Me-We 3 was signed by 92 international telecommunications companies.
For all the time of its existence, the Sea-Me-We 3 cable with a length of 39 thousand km was modernized several times. Last update made in 2015 for inputting 100G technology.
Accidents at different parts of Sea-Me-We 3 occurred earlier. The latter case was recorded by Vocus Communications, which owns the Sea-Me-We 3 cable system between Perth, Australia and Singapore. The incident occurred at a distance of 1.1 thousand km from the cable service station in Singapore. A repair vessel has been assigned to restore communication. If everything goes according to plan, and the weather at the site does not deteriorate, they plan to fix the problem until January 9, 2018. During the repair traffic will be redistributed to other lines of communication.
The history of Sea-Me-We 3’s global disruptions began in 2008, when it went down with two other cables. In 2011, the gap occurred at a site in the Suez Canal, Egypt. In 2014, a malfunction occurred between Singapore and Indonesia.
In the following years, problems became more frequent - the only cable directly connecting Perth and Singapore stopped working twice in 2015 with short breaks. A serious gap occurred at the end of August 2017 due to two typhoons in Southeast Asia. The cable was restored only in October.
The causes of many faults have not been announced. While ship anchors, people, and even sharks can be responsible for the breaks, it should be borne in mind that SEA-ME-WE 3 passes through the so-called “ring of fire” zone , in the perimeter of which the greatest number of earthquakes occur on the planet. As Clement Teo, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, explains , clearing a cable bypassing this zone will require much more money than going to resolve incidents.
One of the causes of problems is in the process of cable installation after repair. The fact is that the cables “ accumulate ” a layer of protective sludge, being submerged under water, but for several weeks and months after the repair they remain vulnerable to anchors, underwater earthquakes and other risk factors.
The global problem of Sea-Me-We 3 is the state in which the cable is located after 17 years of operation. Head of Vocus International Luke Mackinnon, commenting on the latest malfunction, said that the life cycle of the system is nearing its end. He called this system "fragile" and added that "Australia needs more reliable alternatives with more bandwidth."
Every time, regular users suffer from gaps - the speed of access to a number of Internet resources slows down. Alternatively, at the time of failure of Sea-Me-We 3, operators look for nearby routes, directing traffic through the US or Hong Kong . However, Australia does not only rely on a complex emergency routing system.
/ photo The Official CTBTO Photostream CC
In order to provide more bandwidth and meet the growing demand of users, the route service was partially transferred to Sea-Me-We 4 and Sea-Me-We 5. They were launched in 2005 and 2017, respectively.
The length of the Sea-Me-We 4 is about 18.8 thousand km. It provides connectivity between Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe, complementing Sea-Me-We 3. The two cable systems are complementary. Sea-Me-We 4 has a higher data transfer rate: 1,280 Gbit / s against 960 Gbit / s for Sea-Me-We 3.
The main task of Sea-Me-We 4 is to meet the growing demand for high-speed Internet access in developing countries. Like the main cable, Sea-Me-We 4 is prone to malfunction. During its existence, it failed more than 10 times.
Sea-Me-We 5 was launched in early 2017. Its length is about 20 thousand km. Its design bandwidth is 24 Tbps. It also links the countries of Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe.
The latest Sea-Me-We 3 break was the reason for discussing another project - Australia Singapore Cable (ASC). This is an underwater cable system with a length of 4.6 thousand km, connecting Perth with Singapore via Indonesia. The ASC part will be laid out in such a way as to avoid the gaps that have accompanied Sea-Me-We 3 over the past 10 years.
The new cable will be laid at a distance of up to four meters from the seabed between Singapore and Christmas Island. Cable launch is expected in July 2018. The design capacity of ASC is 40 Tbps.
Failure of cable systems causes serious damage to intercontinental communications and hampers access to global web services. 99% of all traffic passes through the oceans on submarine cables. Large breaks of several lines at once create problems for millions of users, and losses from such incidents are estimated at more than a million dollars, provided that the failure can be repaired in two weeks. This takes into account only direct costs.
Here are some accidents with cable systems in the oceans over the past 12 months:
PS A few more materials from our corporate blog:
Understand what happened.
/ Photo Official US Navy Page CC
')
What is this cable
Sea-Me-We 3 (South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3) is an optical underwater telecommunication cable that connects three regions of the world. It was commissioned in 2000 and is the longest and one of the oldest systems of its kind.
The history of this route began in 1985 with the first generation Sea-Me-We. Its length was 13.5 thousand km. The second generation - 18.7 thousand km. It was the longest in the world at the time of commissioning in 1994.
In 1993, the operators of Singapore Telecom and France Telecom conducted preliminary studies for laying a new high-capacity cable that would connect Europe with the Asia-Pacific region. In 1994, 16 parties agreed to work on the Sea-Me-We 3 project in the area between Western Europe and Singapore. In 1996, the system was extended from Singapore to the Far East and Australia. In 1997, an agreement on construction and maintenance of Sea-Me-We 3 was signed by 92 international telecommunications companies.
For all the time of its existence, the Sea-Me-We 3 cable with a length of 39 thousand km was modernized several times. Last update made in 2015 for inputting 100G technology.
Accidents at different parts of Sea-Me-We 3 occurred earlier. The latter case was recorded by Vocus Communications, which owns the Sea-Me-We 3 cable system between Perth, Australia and Singapore. The incident occurred at a distance of 1.1 thousand km from the cable service station in Singapore. A repair vessel has been assigned to restore communication. If everything goes according to plan, and the weather at the site does not deteriorate, they plan to fix the problem until January 9, 2018. During the repair traffic will be redistributed to other lines of communication.
The history of Sea-Me-We 3’s global disruptions began in 2008, when it went down with two other cables. In 2011, the gap occurred at a site in the Suez Canal, Egypt. In 2014, a malfunction occurred between Singapore and Indonesia.
In the following years, problems became more frequent - the only cable directly connecting Perth and Singapore stopped working twice in 2015 with short breaks. A serious gap occurred at the end of August 2017 due to two typhoons in Southeast Asia. The cable was restored only in October.
The causes of many faults have not been announced. While ship anchors, people, and even sharks can be responsible for the breaks, it should be borne in mind that SEA-ME-WE 3 passes through the so-called “ring of fire” zone , in the perimeter of which the greatest number of earthquakes occur on the planet. As Clement Teo, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, explains , clearing a cable bypassing this zone will require much more money than going to resolve incidents.
One of the causes of problems is in the process of cable installation after repair. The fact is that the cables “ accumulate ” a layer of protective sludge, being submerged under water, but for several weeks and months after the repair they remain vulnerable to anchors, underwater earthquakes and other risk factors.
The global problem of Sea-Me-We 3 is the state in which the cable is located after 17 years of operation. Head of Vocus International Luke Mackinnon, commenting on the latest malfunction, said that the life cycle of the system is nearing its end. He called this system "fragile" and added that "Australia needs more reliable alternatives with more bandwidth."
Alternatives to Sea-Me-We 3
Every time, regular users suffer from gaps - the speed of access to a number of Internet resources slows down. Alternatively, at the time of failure of Sea-Me-We 3, operators look for nearby routes, directing traffic through the US or Hong Kong . However, Australia does not only rely on a complex emergency routing system.
/ photo The Official CTBTO Photostream CC
In order to provide more bandwidth and meet the growing demand of users, the route service was partially transferred to Sea-Me-We 4 and Sea-Me-We 5. They were launched in 2005 and 2017, respectively.
The length of the Sea-Me-We 4 is about 18.8 thousand km. It provides connectivity between Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe, complementing Sea-Me-We 3. The two cable systems are complementary. Sea-Me-We 4 has a higher data transfer rate: 1,280 Gbit / s against 960 Gbit / s for Sea-Me-We 3.
The main task of Sea-Me-We 4 is to meet the growing demand for high-speed Internet access in developing countries. Like the main cable, Sea-Me-We 4 is prone to malfunction. During its existence, it failed more than 10 times.
Sea-Me-We 5 was launched in early 2017. Its length is about 20 thousand km. Its design bandwidth is 24 Tbps. It also links the countries of Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and Europe.
The latest Sea-Me-We 3 break was the reason for discussing another project - Australia Singapore Cable (ASC). This is an underwater cable system with a length of 4.6 thousand km, connecting Perth with Singapore via Indonesia. The ASC part will be laid out in such a way as to avoid the gaps that have accompanied Sea-Me-We 3 over the past 10 years.
The new cable will be laid at a distance of up to four meters from the seabed between Singapore and Christmas Island. Cable launch is expected in July 2018. The design capacity of ASC is 40 Tbps.
What cables still fail in 2017
Failure of cable systems causes serious damage to intercontinental communications and hampers access to global web services. 99% of all traffic passes through the oceans on submarine cables. Large breaks of several lines at once create problems for millions of users, and losses from such incidents are estimated at more than a million dollars, provided that the failure can be repaired in two weeks. This takes into account only direct costs.
Here are some accidents with cable systems in the oceans over the past 12 months:
- At the end of 2016, a submarine cable serving the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean suffered , as a result of which Internet access was limited to the use of e-mail for 53 thousand inhabitants. Repair work continued in early January 2017.
- The dropped ship anchor also stopped working three submarine cables serving the island of Jersey in the English Channel, on the eve of the onset of 2017.
- At the very beginning of the year, Bangladesh suffered from the effects of the December cyclone in the Indian Ocean, which was damaged by one of the Indian submarine cables.
- In the capital of the Republic of Congo, Brazzaville, in June , network malfunctions were recorded due to damage to the main submarine cables in the region.
- In the same month, an accident at the MainOne cable system, 3,000 km off the coast of Portugal, led to problems in serving African people.
- MainOne Submarine Cable provides connectivity between Europe and several West African countries.
- In addition to Sea-Me-We 3, Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), Asia-American Gateway (AAG) and TGA-Intra Asia (TGA-IA) suffered from the effects of typhoons. ASE is an intra-Asian submarine cable system, and AAG connects Southeast Asia with the mainland USA via the islands of Guam and Hawaii. AAG often has problems.
- Another malfunction has arisen on the IMEWE undersea cable line that connects India and Europe through the territory of the Middle East. As a result, in Pakistan there was a serious slowdown in the speed of the Internet connection.
PS A few more materials from our corporate blog:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/346068/
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