HN Explorer

Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlantic fibre-optic cables?

35 points by iam-TJ ↗ HN
Do your disaster mitigation plans have this scenario considered and, if multiple cables were disrupted such that there was no alternate routing available, what impact would it have on your services ?

Is this something we as an industry should be working together on to understand the risk and how we may be able to cooperate with each other to mitigate the risks and recover rapidly (such as pre-positioning cable repair ships at times of elevated risk) ?

As the situation in Ukraine vis-a-vis an invasion by Russia deteriorates [0] Russia has today told the Irish government it intends to conduct naval live-fire exercises February 3-8 in a small area of the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) 160 nautical miles (~240km) SSW, off Mizen Head [1], coincidentally where the major fibre optic cables between Europe and North America drop off the continental shelf into deep water [2].

This is the location of several major shipping routes [3] and will also cause an air exclusion zone between 0400-1400 each day.

Combined with suspected interference with similar cables off the north-west coast in August 2021 by a Russian Oceanographic Survey ship [3] there is potential for major interference or disruption to multiple cables simultaneously.

[0] https://liveuamap.com/

[1] https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/01/russian-navy-live-firing-off-irish-coast-during-tensions/

[2] https://world3dmap.com/submarine-cable-map/

[3] https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2021/08/russian-spy-ship-yantar-loitering-near-trans-atlantic-internet-cables/

8 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 75.2 ms ] thread
uejfiweun
What exactly would this do to the US internet? I don't intuitively understand - if I am in NYC and the server is in VA, how would a broken undersea cable impact my internet?
giantg2
Probably shouldn't in most cases.
speedgoose
Not everyone lives in America on this website.
seattle_spring
GPs reply doesn't imply that, it just seems they're asking about their own consequences. Will you reply "not everyone lives in Ireland" if someone else asks about what would happen to Ireland?
bettynormal
It goes without saying that you would have to have traffic that went over one of these cables.... having said that somethings have strange dependencies that only come to light when there is a problem.
iam-TJ
First and foremost would be financial transactions, especially banks, that if these links were lost might be unable to make settlements and reconcile daily balances with overseas subsidiaries, partners, and correspondents. That would have an immediate impact on any business that relies on making or receiving international payments to/from suppliers/customers - think SWIFT [0].

Secondly is the affect on 'cloud' services (AWS, Azure, Goggle) with their complex inter-dependencies across services and geographical regions. We've seen several instances over the last couple of years where even a minor failure in one system has a knock-on effect to tens of thousands of other organisations that rely on it. Also, consider the reliance that AWS globally appears to have on US-East. If AWS Europe data-centers loose their link to US-East there could be major disruption of many services hosted on AWS, even those that use multiple availability zones.

Third would be the knock-on effect of switching to other routes (BGP) and the consequent 'traffic jam' as traffic between North America and Europe attempts to use alternate routes - maybe via Latin America and Africa or Asia.

Fourth, telecommunications ('phone) and VoIP services linking North America and Europe, Africa, and Middle East.

Fifth, and possibly the hardest to mitigate, is the by-product due to extensive use of CDN 'edge' services (Cloudflare, etc.). Most web sites nowadays have many dependencies on externally hosted services. Many are behind CDN edge servers. If the origin servers for those are on the other side of a major break then suddenly services you'd expect to be fully local will break in unexpected ways.

[0] https://www.swift.com/

giantg2
Nope. It's likely that the stock exchanges would halt trading, so there's not much we would be doing.
throwawayvibes
God, I wish. The biggest blessing would be to be cut off from the US internet. I dream of the balkanization of the web every week by now, and this was not the case 10 years ago.