1 Effects of Mediterranean Fibre Cuts seen by PingER, Jan Prepared by: Les Cottrell SLAC, Qasim Lone NIIT/SLAC

2 Event Jan 30 in the morning 2 fibre cuts in Mediterranean reported by: etc. –Ships dragging anchors in storm –One near Alexandra, other near Marseille –Cut SEAMEWE4 and FLAG Alexandria Marseille

3 Effects Traffic degraded to Middle East, S. Asia Bangalore Increase in RTT from 330ms to 550ms Losses increase to 50% Most applications fail RTT recovered Jan 31 Losses recovered Feb 5 RTT (ms) Loss % Effect starts between 6:47am and 7:16am GMT

4 Recovery Traffic rerouted to use SEAMEWE3 or go Westwards Effect often recovered from after hours, complete recovery after 3 days RTT (ms) Loss % UAE Effect starts between 6:47am and 7:16am GMT

5 Impact on Region Before = Jan-Sep 07, After = Jan 30 th (first 6 hours of Jan 30 are before event) Israel & Pakistan (cf. 2005) not affected Sudan, Egypt, India, Sri Lanka: factor 2-4 worse Jordan, Oman, UAE, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh < 100kbps After (Jan 30, ’08)Before (Jan-Sep ’07) Throughput

6 Badly affected Hosts 23 hosts in 13 countries impacted Note the spike in RTT on Jan 30 th Many hosts recover on Jan 31 st Affects: UAE, Bangladeshh, Bhutan, Djibouti, Indonesia, India, Jordan, Sri lanka, Maldives, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey Pakistan OK (cf. June 2005 SEAMEWE3 fibre cut, now has multiple terrestrial fibres) Country RTT (ms) Date Average RTT seen from SLAC to hosts affected by the Mediterranean Fibre Cuts Jan 30, 2008

7 Badly affected Hosts 29 hosts in 16 countries impacted Note the spike in RTT on Jan 30 th Recovery can take days Some hosts recover on Jan 31 st Affects: UAE, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bhutan, Djibouti, Indonesia, India, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, SudanThailand Pakistan OK (cf. June 2005 SEAMEWE3 fibre cut, now has multiple terrestrial fibres) Country Average RTT seen from SLAC to hosts affected by the Mediterranean Fibre Cuts Jan 30, 2008 Date RTT (ms) S Asia Mid East Africa SE Asia Outage

8 Average RTTs Jan 29 th and 30 th Vertical axis chopped, can get to ~ 10 secs! 30 Hosts, 17 countries Time of impact varies by 2-3 hours, 4am except Jordan Impact is sudden Most Hosts continued to respond –4 hosts: 3 Sudan, 1 Bahrain unreachable for 1 hr ea. Magnitude of impact varies Normal Day Jan 29 th 2008 Event day Jan 30 th 2008

9 Recovery Median RTT for impacted hosts seen from SLAC –Stable prior to Jan 30 th –Increase by > factor 3 on Jan30th –Lot of host to host variability –Starting to recover by Jan 31st Not all hosts in all countries in the region were impacted, e.g. India: 2 of 8; Sri Lanka 3 of 5; Malvinas 3 of 5; Indonesia 1 of 7; Turkey: 1 of 3; Thailand 1 of 6. On the other hand all monitored hosts were impacted in: UAE(1), Bangladesh(2), Bharein(2), Djibouti(1), Jordan(4), Oman(1), Qatar(1), Saudi Arabia (2) Non impacted countries in region also interesting, e.g. Central Asia – using satellite Palestine – using SEAMEWE3 Pakistan – alternate cables Israel – not using these cables E. Asia – via the Pacific

10 RTT seen from ICTP Trieste Fewer host monitored Sudan recovers after 3 days, India recovering after 6 days Bangladesh no recovery sign

11 Recover from Loss Number = % loss Some countries/sites normally poor –Sudan 1 of 3 –Oman –Bangladesh 1 of 2 –Maldives 1 of 2 Not all sites in a country affected: –Bahrain 1 out of 2 –India 2 out of 4 –Jordan 3 out of 4 –Sri Lanka & Maldives none Some countries take a long time (>5 days) to recover –Jordan, Bangladesh –India: 2 sites 4 days Start of Outage 0 – 2.5% (acceptable) >= 12% (unusable) % (poor) Africa M East SE Asia S Asia

12 Jan 30 th RTTs from SLAC Vertical axis chopped, can get to ~ 10 secs! 30 Hosts, 17 countries Time of impact varies by 2-3 hours Impact is sudden Most Hosts continued to respond –4 hosts: 3 Sudan, 1 Bahrain unreachable Magnitude of impact varies Country RTT (ms) Time of day (GMT) Average RTT from SLAC to various countries On January 30 th 2008 Normal diurnal Variations Jan 29