Now it seems that we’re unable to connect to servers in the United States and Europe. I can’t even access my work email. I couldn’t even access this weblog since this morning until about 1342 hours local time. And I hope before the connection flips out again, I’d get this entry written and saved.
According to rumours from Jeff Ooi’s blog, last night’s Taiwanese disastrous earthquake caused Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 Segment 7 (APCN2 S7) to go tits up and caused internet connections between Malaysia, among other countries, to the United States to be congested.
APCN2 is the longest international seabed fibre cable network, 19,000km in total length, in the Asia-Pacific, linking China, Japan, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and onward to linking America, Europe and Australia. The network went into operation in October 2002 for the initial phase.
The project was spearheaded by 26 telecommunications companies, namely Advantel, Cable & Wireless Global Network, Cable&Wireless HKT, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Concert, Global Network Services, Global One, Japan Telecom, KDD Corpe ration, Korea Telecom, KPN, Layer 2, MCI, WorldCom, Metromedia Giber Network Service, NTT Com, NCIC, OneLink Cable Network, PLDT, StarHub, SingTel, Taiwan Fixed Network, Teleglobe, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra and Williams Communications.
The APCN2 cable system was designed to provide 2.56 Terrabits per second (Tbps) using state-of-the-art Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology to provide upgradeable, future proof transmission facilities. However, APCN2 currently runs on a designated transmission capacity of 160 Gigabits per second (Gbps).
Update at 1823 hours:
Here are two more sources dealing with the current outages. The Star has a couple of articles on it while LowYat.net has the TMNet statement as well as some graphics concerning the regional cable network.
Here’s to a speedy recovery of this side of Pacific Ocean’s data communications network.
