My Internet was working really slow for the last 20 hours, I even filed the complaint at my ISP, but they were telling me a different story. I searched the net to find the exact reason and I quickly got the answer – Once again the under sea cables have been damaged. 🙁 You can read more about this at BBC News and at AFP and at Bloomberg
I understand that the Internet is just the global mesh (including cable connections) and the connected computer systems(and routers etc), But my ISP(Airtel Broadband, India) kept telling me fake stories about the lower Internet speed. First they told me that they are upgrading their routers and that would enhance the overall performance after two hour. After 8 hours of waiting I called them again and the call center
guy tried to convince me that there is something wrong with the DNS servers. When I told him to connect me to someone knowledgeable in his company as I am not using the ISP DNS and I always use openDNS and it is faster and more reliable than the Airtel DNS servers he put me on hold for about a minute and after that he apologised and told me that actually the under sea cables have been damaged once again and it would take up-to 48 hours to get every thing normal. I know these unfortunate events can occur, But the ISP should not hide the truth from the customers specially when they know that it could take much more time then they are telling to their customers.
Anyway, this slower Internet and damaged cables once again remind me the South-Park Season 12 episode 6. Watch yourself and enjoy. 🙂
Update: Here comes the update on the severity of the situation ( Source: fibresystems.org ):
A first appraisal at 7:44 am UTC gave an estimate of the following impact on the voice traffic (in percentage of out of service capacity):
- Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service
- Djibouti: 71% out of service
- Egypt: 52% out of service
- United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service
- India: 82% out of service
- Lebanon: 16% out of service
- Malaysia: 42% out of service
- Maldives: 100% out of service
- Pakistan: 51% out of service
- Qatar: 73% out of service
- Syria: 36% out of service
- Taiwan: 39% out of service
- Yemen: 38% out of service
- Zambia: 62% out of service
