MWEB - Seacom planned maintenance update

MWEB said:
Hi bradrap,

Best estimates we have is 6-9 hours for the duration of the repairs, however their start was delayed from yesterday morning to this afternoon due to unfavourable weather conditions.

As soon as we have any further feedback we will update.

MWB.
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sounds like that its going to be very late today...
 
I'm still not getting any tracerts through SEACOM, and Mweb international traffic seems to be worse than on Sunday. I also don't see any traffic going trhough AS6453 (Tata), so all Mweb internation traffic is going through a very heavily congested SAT-3. Did MWeb perhaps only buy alternative bandwidth for 8-12 hours?
 
Please remember, today is actually a working day, where yesterday was sunday, ofc the international BW need will be far greater than yesterday, or over the weekend for that matter.
 
Repair work on Mediterranean segment of SEA-ME-WE 4 cable may cause brief SEACOM network disturbance - 23 Apr 2010

SEACOM experienced an interruption in its network on 14 April 2010 which lasted around seven minutes as a result of a fault on the Mediterranean section of the SEA-ME-WE 4 submarine cable system, which SEACOM currently utilizes to connect to London.

SEA-ME-WE 4, which stretches from South East Asia to Europe via the Indian Sub-Continent and Middle East, is now scheduled to undergo repairs on Saturday 24 April 2010 to fix the affected fibre pair in the Mediterranean Sea. This process will be carried by a repair ship which has been deployed to the location of the fault where it will pick up the cable, cut it and bring it onboard to undergo the repair on the optic fibre before the cable is put back in the water. This will result in the power being shut down on the cable for the duration of the repair.

Whilst the disruptive portion of the repair process is expected to be minimal, the precise chronology and actual duration is unpredictable due to exogenous factors such as weather conditions.

SEACOM has been actively working with its clients to put in place suitable alternative channels that will ensure continuous availability during the planned repair work.

Enquiries:
Suveer Ramdhani
+27 83 680 1646
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Source: http://www.seacom.mu/news/news_details.asp?iID=129

Wonder what alternative channels they put in place?
 
bullzeye.za said:
Source: http://www.seacom.mu/news/news_details.asp?iID=129

Wonder what alternative channels they put in place?
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Possibly routing via SEA-ME-WE 3, which has 25% of the capacity, like the previous times it broke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4

Clearly this is not a realistic option for South Africa, hence the congestion on SAT-3. The SEACOM link from SA to Mumbai is still working, but is effectively of limited use AFAIK. MWeb has negotiated some bandwidth via AS6453 (Tata communications), but this is being used by high-priority users IMO. (I posted most of this earlier in this thread).

Edit: You can do a tracert to Tata (Mumbai) in 130ms(!), so the link is there, but none of the sites I try currently go via this route (some were on Sunday).

Code: 
Tracing route to if-11-1-1.core2.MLV-Mumbai.as6453.net [216.6.13.141]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1   <10 ms   <10 ms   <10 ms  home.gateway [192.168.1.254]
   2     8 ms     8 ms     7 ms  41-132-48-1.dsl.mweb.co.za [41.132.48.1]
   3    29 ms    29 ms    29 ms  tengig-0-0-0-101.vic-ipc-1.mweb.co.za [196.22.169.134]
   4    28 ms    29 ms    28 ms  vl-92.vic-hscore-2.mweb.co.za [196.22.189.3]
   5    32 ms    32 ms    32 ms  tengig-0-0-0-0-12.vic-up-2.mweb.co.za [196.22.169.242]
   6    30 ms    31 ms    31 ms  tengig-0-3-1-0.mid-1.mweb.co.za [196.22.169.211]
   7   133 ms   134 ms   134 ms  if-11-1-1.core2.MLV-Mumbai.as6453.net [216.6.13.141]

Trace complete.
 
Last edited:
Just a thought and a query I suppose. I was under the impression that this cable is brand new. Is it normal for it to require repairing already? I understand undersea conditions can get rough but surely this is accounted for when laying the cable.
 
LancelotSA said:
Just a thought and a query I suppose. I was under the impression that this cable is brand new. Is it normal for it to require repairing already? I understand undersea conditions can get rough but surely this is accounted for when laying the cable.
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Not brand new, no. I think it is about 4 years old now? One of the more common causes is damage to the cables by ships/anchors. Something they cannot really avoid, they can just try to reduce the likelihood of damage.
 
Gordon_R said:
Edit: You can do a tracert to Tata (Mumbai) in 130ms(!), so the link is there, but none of the sites I try currently go via this route (some were on Sunday).
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I don't think all the routes are being advertised yet or ISPS are hoping that things can go via other AS numbers ...I think the net is pretty much in a flurry right now and ISPs are trying to get answers from Seacom, re-route traffic(which could take some time) and satify supply/demand. The other prob with re-routing is that you can only do so much via your network and are dependant on upstreams to either accept/decline your routes and they too are afaid that your traffic is going to congest their networks.

The internet ...gotta LUV IT! :)
 
It's easy to forget that there is actually a physical link between us here (yes, yes, unless you're on wireless) and the destination on the other side of the planet. That physical link runs inside a cable which is situated at the bottom of the ocean -- a cable that runs the entire length of the east African coast. Pretty amazing I think.
 
bradlesliect said:
I don't think all the routes are being advertised yet or ISPS are hoping that things can go via other AS numbers ...I think the net is pretty much in a flurry right now and ISPs are trying to get answers from Seacom, re-route traffic(which could take some time) and satify supply/demand. The other prob with re-routing is that you can only do so much via your network and are dependant on upstreams to either accept/decline your routes and they too are afaid that your traffic is going to congest their networks.

The internet ...gotta LUV IT! :)
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With Seacom down, we're seriously short of bandwidth now -- there just is not enough surplus capacity. Everything is being squeezed down the other pipes. SAT3 must be blazing. Can fibre melt? :)
 
SabreWolfy said:
It's easy to forget that there is actually a physical link between us here (yes, yes, unless you're on wireless) and the destination on the other side of the planet. That physical link runs inside a cable which is situated at the bottom of the ocean -- a cable that runs the entire length of the east African coast. Pretty amazing I think.
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You mean "satellite" ....
 
synapseZA said:
Not brand new, no. I think it is about 4 years old now? One of the more common causes is damage to the cables by ships/anchors. Something they cannot really avoid, they can just try to reduce the likelihood of damage.
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no really... it is brand new. Can't have been on the seabed for more than 2 years now. Only 9 months since it went live.
 
SabreWolfy said:
It's easy to forget that there is actually a physical link between us here (yes, yes, unless you're on wireless) and the destination on the other side of the planet. That physical link runs inside a cable which is situated at the bottom of the ocean -- a cable that runs the entire length of the east African coast. Pretty amazing I think.
Click to expand...

it is pretty awesome. maybe jaws tried to bite the cable and sell it to the pirates? :)
 
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