Breaking news: something's happening to the internet, right now. We're just not quite sure what.

Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

These carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America. It's hard to gather what this actually means - is it that the internet is down or (more likely) significantly slower than usual between the Middle East and America? (If you're reading this, let's face it, the internet has not shut down altogether)

But, according to the company, there is a domino effect taking place. Interoute says it is:

hearing that offices have lost their entire private network connectivity. As a result, users are unable to do their daily job over the internet and are turning to their mobile phones to communicate across the globe. This is having a knock on effect on the domestic voice networks, which are getting a surge of calls needing to be routed internationally. These calls need to be routed onto international gateways that pass voice traffic in longer directions around the world to avoid the cable breaks – causing more quality issues and risk more call failures, in turn causing more calls to be placed and increasing the pressure on local voice networks.

What (I think) this means is that companies' private internet services have gone down. So, if they can get access, they have had to go on the public internet and mobile phones, like the rest of us average joes, to get their work done. That results in more strain on mobile phone networks, which means more phone calls go down and the internet becomes slower.

Stay tuned.. Hopfully it isn't affecting any of our members access to the Zone.

All the best,
Mike

Someone on the news once said the next terror attack and the next war would be on the networks. Just think the banks, communications, we've come to depend so much on networks you can't buy a hamburger at McDonald's or coffee at Dunkin' Donuts if the network is down.
We'll have to go to the local mom and pop diner where they can still make change without one of them fancy computers.

As most of us know the government, in conjunction with scientists and IT experts, are creating Internet 2.0 which is kind of a (hush hush) secret operation and where the new internet will supposedly have much better security and much better connectivity and speed than the internet we use today. Also, from what I understand, it is suppose to be new from the ground up, built from scratch, and will supposedly completely side step all the various flaws that the current internet we use today has. It's been a while since I studied up on it but apparently Internet 2.0 will only be used by the federal and state government agencies at first with a revision later on that will also take into consideration the general public.

If there is anyone with a better understanding of what Internet 2.0 will entail please feel free to jump in and say so. I believe though that it is still quite a few years away before it will be ready for launch.

All the best,
Mike

[This message has been edited by keybplayer (edited 12-19-2008).]

"The sky is falling down!!

The sky is falling down......................!!"

If all it takes is someone dragging an anchor in a storm to bring down our networks, perhaps terrorism is the least of our worries...

Then again, good old GW still has a few weeks to bomb the world's seagoing craft back to the stone age too. That will probably be as effective as his prior efforts to 'make us safe', too

'The War On Anchors'... it's got a nice Pentagon ring to it

Hey most of the time I'd much prefer to eat at a Mom And Pop Diner than at McDonalds.

But I'd would prefer McDonalds over the Heart Attack Grill http://www.cbsnews.com:80/video/watch/?id=4632991n



[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 12-22-2008).]