The link at the bottom of the sea
Internet services in the Middle East and India will not be fully restored before next week after two undersea cables were cut near Egypt early last week, causing severe disruptions in internet access. The cause of the damage is not yet clear. This is...
Internet services in the Middle East and India will not be fully restored before next week after two undersea cables were cut near Egypt early last week, causing severe disruptions in internet access. The cause of the damage is not yet clear.
This is not the first time that undersea communication cables are damaged, resulting in a drastic reduction of internet connectivity. Five years ago an Algerian earthquake caused massive disruption by breaking several major cables passing through the Mediterranean. The recent tremor felt in the Maltese islands is a reminder that we are not immune.
The Maltese islands are dependent on a submarine cable between Malta and Sicily for internet access, but this will soon be augmented by a second cable commissioned by Go.
"When nature strikes through earthquakes there is little one can do to mitigate the damage to anything within its path," according to Mr Joseph Bugeja, chief technology officer at Go.
He reassured that all possible measures will be taken to protect the new cable.
"Throughout most of its route the cable will be buried in the seabed which should protect it from the main source of damage to submarine cables, i.e. fishing gear and anchors of vessels. Furthermore, depending on the depth of the sea, cable protection is provided by the type of armouring applied on the cable; generally, the nearer to the shore the cable is, the heavier is the armouring used."
The new cable will provide a more resilient service for internet users and more bandwidth for the ever-increasing number of bandwidth-hungry applications in use. It will link St Paul's Bay to Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, taking a different route than the older cable, linking St George's Bay to Catania, which has served Malta since the introduction of internet access in 1995.
"The different route was chosen for resiliency purposes, even though it is longer and therefore more expensive," explained Mr Bugeja." There are several things that can go wrong with any cable link that affects the services. For equipment failures, a second cable following the same route would suffice; however, the likelihood of two concurrent failures affecting both cables increases in the case of parallel routes.
"This could be caused by fishing and anchoring activities, which cause more than two-thirds of all submarine cable faults. Cables laid along parallel routes are more liable to fail in the event of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, hitting the area. This is the main reason for the completely diverse route. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that the two cable routes do not cross each other. The landing at Mazara gives us also the possibility to link to the pan-European network of our service providers, Interoute."
There are two alternatives to a submarine cable, which are a microwave radio link or a satellite link. Satellite links are the most expensive, on a per Mbit/s basis, and have limitations in terms of bandwidth and the delays associated with the distance of the satellite from the earth stations. Microwave links also offer limited bandwidth capabilities and are prone to degraded services due to adverse weather conditions and reflections from the sea. In the end the only feasible solution for Go, both in terms of bandwidth availability and quality of service, seemed to be a new submarine cable system.
The process used in laying such a cable is quite standard and the cable is insured through an organisation such as MECMA that is responsible for the maintenance of submarine cables in the Mediterranean region.
Once the new cable is installed, local internet users should expect better internet access, as detailed by Mark J. Farrugia, project manager of the submarine cable.
"ADSL users are expected to have an improved user experience with regards to latency, namely the time to access foreign websites/content should reduce. Furthermore, due to the fact that Go will be procuring internet bandwidth from more than one service provider the chances of total system outages due to the unavailability of the international links will be minimised. For these reasons the end user's surfing experience should improve," he said. The initial capacity of the cable will be eight times the equipped capacity of the existing cable. Thus, apart from redundancy, the cable will be able to support also applications that are more demanding on bandwidth such as video and TV. Go will be able to support international networking requests from corporate customers particularly those that will be hosted in SmartCity Malta.
Indeed the amount of bandwidth used by Maltese internet users has increased exponentially in the last 12 years. Mr Farrugia revealed how initially the bandwidth requirements for international voice and fax traffic were significantly more than for internet, which at the time was allocated just 64kbit/s for the basic dial-up service or 128kbit/s for an ISDN basic rate service.
"Notwithstanding the increased demand for bandwidth for voice services brought about by the slashing in pricing for international calls, with the introduction of broadband using ADSL, the internet demand for bandwidth overtook that for voice circuits combined with that for leased lines within a few years.
"As traditional international voice traffic started being replaced by VoIP, and as e-mail started replacing fax, the bandwidth requirements for traditional circuit switched voice and fax traffic diminished significantly. Even the demand for traditional leased lines began being replaced by virtual private networks and other internet-based services. Thus, today, Go's demand for internet bandwidth is 16 times that used for all traditional services combined," revealed Mr Farrugia.
Apart from the existing submarine cable, Go also operates two satellite earth stations and a microwave radio link. The main scope of the satellite earth stations, erected before the existing submarine cable, is to provide resiliency for intercontinental voice traffic. The microwave radio link was commissioned to provide partial redundancy to the traffic carried by the existing submarine cable.
However, due to the exponential growth in internet traffic only the new cable will ensure an uninterrupted service to Go's customers.
This is not the first time that undersea communication cables are damaged, resulting in a drastic reduction of internet connectivity. Five years ago an Algerian earthquake caused massive disruption by breaking several major cables passing through the Mediterranean. The recent tremor felt in the Maltese islands is a reminder that we are not immune.
The Maltese islands are dependent on a submarine cable between Malta and Sicily for internet access, but this will soon be augmented by a second cable commissioned by Go.
"When nature strikes through earthquakes there is little one can do to mitigate the damage to anything within its path," according to Mr Joseph Bugeja, chief technology officer at Go.
He reassured that all possible measures will be taken to protect the new cable.
"Throughout most of its route the cable will be buried in the seabed which should protect it from the main source of damage to submarine cables, i.e. fishing gear and anchors of vessels. Furthermore, depending on the depth of the sea, cable protection is provided by the type of armouring applied on the cable; generally, the nearer to the shore the cable is, the heavier is the armouring used."
The new cable will provide a more resilient service for internet users and more bandwidth for the ever-increasing number of bandwidth-hungry applications in use. It will link St Paul's Bay to Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, taking a different route than the older cable, linking St George's Bay to Catania, which has served Malta since the introduction of internet access in 1995.
"The different route was chosen for resiliency purposes, even though it is longer and therefore more expensive," explained Mr Bugeja." There are several things that can go wrong with any cable link that affects the services. For equipment failures, a second cable following the same route would suffice; however, the likelihood of two concurrent failures affecting both cables increases in the case of parallel routes.
"This could be caused by fishing and anchoring activities, which cause more than two-thirds of all submarine cable faults. Cables laid along parallel routes are more liable to fail in the event of a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, hitting the area. This is the main reason for the completely diverse route. Furthermore, we wanted to ensure that the two cable routes do not cross each other. The landing at Mazara gives us also the possibility to link to the pan-European network of our service providers, Interoute."
There are two alternatives to a submarine cable, which are a microwave radio link or a satellite link. Satellite links are the most expensive, on a per Mbit/s basis, and have limitations in terms of bandwidth and the delays associated with the distance of the satellite from the earth stations. Microwave links also offer limited bandwidth capabilities and are prone to degraded services due to adverse weather conditions and reflections from the sea. In the end the only feasible solution for Go, both in terms of bandwidth availability and quality of service, seemed to be a new submarine cable system.
The process used in laying such a cable is quite standard and the cable is insured through an organisation such as MECMA that is responsible for the maintenance of submarine cables in the Mediterranean region.
Once the new cable is installed, local internet users should expect better internet access, as detailed by Mark J. Farrugia, project manager of the submarine cable.
"ADSL users are expected to have an improved user experience with regards to latency, namely the time to access foreign websites/content should reduce. Furthermore, due to the fact that Go will be procuring internet bandwidth from more than one service provider the chances of total system outages due to the unavailability of the international links will be minimised. For these reasons the end user's surfing experience should improve," he said. The initial capacity of the cable will be eight times the equipped capacity of the existing cable. Thus, apart from redundancy, the cable will be able to support also applications that are more demanding on bandwidth such as video and TV. Go will be able to support international networking requests from corporate customers particularly those that will be hosted in SmartCity Malta.
Indeed the amount of bandwidth used by Maltese internet users has increased exponentially in the last 12 years. Mr Farrugia revealed how initially the bandwidth requirements for international voice and fax traffic were significantly more than for internet, which at the time was allocated just 64kbit/s for the basic dial-up service or 128kbit/s for an ISDN basic rate service.
"Notwithstanding the increased demand for bandwidth for voice services brought about by the slashing in pricing for international calls, with the introduction of broadband using ADSL, the internet demand for bandwidth overtook that for voice circuits combined with that for leased lines within a few years.
"As traditional international voice traffic started being replaced by VoIP, and as e-mail started replacing fax, the bandwidth requirements for traditional circuit switched voice and fax traffic diminished significantly. Even the demand for traditional leased lines began being replaced by virtual private networks and other internet-based services. Thus, today, Go's demand for internet bandwidth is 16 times that used for all traditional services combined," revealed Mr Farrugia.
Apart from the existing submarine cable, Go also operates two satellite earth stations and a microwave radio link. The main scope of the satellite earth stations, erected before the existing submarine cable, is to provide resiliency for intercontinental voice traffic. The microwave radio link was commissioned to provide partial redundancy to the traffic carried by the existing submarine cable.
However, due to the exponential growth in internet traffic only the new cable will ensure an uninterrupted service to Go's customers.