MWEB - SEACOM Update

Just on the Seacom twitter feed: Just posted an updated news release on website, answering questions to the best of our ability at this point: Pls read http://bit.ly/bu1Hpw

SEACOM experienced an interruption in its service 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, was initially scheduled to undergo repairs to fix the affected fibre pair in the Mediterranean Sea on Saturday 17 April 2010 but this was subsequently rescheduled to Saturday 24 April 2010. However, due to ongoing maintenance activity on another cable network servicing Africa and poor weather in the Mediterranean Sea, the actual work only began on Sunday 25 April 2010 resulting in the SEACOM service experiencing interruptions from around mid-day on Sunday.

The ongoing repair work is affecting several cable systems and has impacted negatively on the overall Internet connectivity in many regions across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, which rely to some extent on the availability of the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable for global connectivity.

Operators that have opted to work with SEACOM to find alternative channels have been routed to an Internet Access point in India to maintain service. The repair work is managed and controlled by SEA-ME-WE 4 who has indicated that the repair window may be extended to Friday 30 April 2010 for reasons unknown to SEACOM at this point. SEACOM will continue to provide updates as more information becomes available.
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MWEB Operations said:
Based on the latest feedback we have received from Seacom this afternoon , it now seems likely that the repairs to their undersea cable will only be completed by Friday the 30th of April. The work is being severely hampered by poor weather conditions at sea. Whilst we have been able to secure alternative international bandwidth for the full duration of the repairs, as I stated previously there is some congestion on these links and it is affecting our service. Bandwidth-intensive applications such as peer-to-peer will therefore be de-prioritised until sufficient capacity once again becomes available.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this may be causing you and thank you for your patience during this time.

We will continue to monitor the situation on an ongoing basis and as and when we receive updates we will notify you via our Free The Web site and via our online outages noticeboard at http://www.mweb.co.za/helpcentre/NetworkStatusNotices/tabid/1765/Default.aspx

Kind regards
MWEB Operations
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How do we apply for refunds? I presume MWEB is also not getting what they paid for and can give us back something prorata?
 
killadoob said:
Lance is going to be most upset :D.
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Well strangely enough I am actually rather pleased that this is a temporary thing. I have just committed to Mweb and they insist on a one month notice period so I'd be stuck with this appalling service for a full month if it was the norm.

The only thing that is pissing me off is that I only signed up on Saturday. I was expecting 7 days of good use of my uncapped account for the remainder of the month. I grudgingly accepted that I would need to pay half a month subscription for this privilege as these are MWeb's stupid rules (Afrihost would have pro rated per day ;) )! Now it is looking like I will have paid that money for nothing!

MWeb rep please feel free to PM me to tell me MWeb will be more than happy to not change me the pro rata for the month of April!
 
In your case lance a refund should be the correct way for them to go without a doubt.

I cannot really complain or ask for anything back :D, 85gb is more than enough for me.
 
You've more chance of being abducted by aliens than getting a refund. Are you people seriously looking for a refund?! How is this MWEB's fault? Its a national crawl at the moment, over which MWEB has no control. Also, i'm pretty sure that its in the terms and conditions you signed that you can't get a refund due to the fault of the upstream providers. I will have a look at them, but really. I can understand that this may be disappointing and you're probably pretty bummed, but its not MWEB's issue (or mine for that matter so I'm going to shut-up after this).
 
how can it be mweb fault that seacom wanted to do maintenance ??????????????????????????????????? lol seriously
thats a dumb post hahahah
 
hambone said:
You've more chance of being abducted by aliens than getting a refund. Are you people seriously looking for a refund?! How is this MWEB's fault? Its a national crawl at the moment, over which MWEB has no control. Also, i'm pretty sure that its in the terms and conditions you signed that you can't get a refund due to the fault of the upstream providers. I will have a look at them, but really. I can understand that this may be disappointing and you're probably pretty bummed, but its not MWEB's issue (or mine for that matter so I'm going to shut-up after this).
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Well Lance only signed up on Saturday, he paid for half of the month but it's possible he only gets a week now of half-baked access. I think it's only fair that he at least gets a discount if this maintenance is extended. If he had signed up at the beginning of the month and had used 100's of gigs I wouldn't be saying this.

ForSure said:
how can it be mweb fault that seacom wanted to do maintenance ??????????????????????????????????? lol seriously
thats a dumb post hahahah
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You should have your question-mark key looked at ;) Which "dumb" post are you referring to?
 
Somebody at SEACOM has been doing the rain dance at sea. He should get fired, noob garbage.
 
Seacom failed in checking weather conditions before starting the repair, i guess they will learn from this
 
Sjoee, things arent moving at all today.... only this site works.

Sad Panda :/ Stupid Seacom
 
schumi said:
Seacom failed in checking weather conditions before starting the repair, i guess they will learn from this
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Seacom did not fail in anything... Are you all unable to comprehend BASIC English by any chance?.. The repairs are being done on Sea-Me-We-4... which is a completely DIFFERENT fscking cable.

Oh and just as a btw, what exactly would checking weather conditions do?.. they need to repair the cable as soon as possible.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Oh and just as a btw, what exactly would checking weather conditions do?.. they need to repair the cable as soon as possible.
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I have also wondered about the logic of this argument. If they checked the weather and it showed rough seas how would that have helped? They would still have battled to get the repairs done. As far as I am aware they can't change the weather.
 
LancelotSA said:
I have also wondered about the logic of this argument. If they checked the weather and it showed rough seas how would that have helped? They would still have battled to get the repairs done. As far as I am aware they can't change the weather.
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I think this is just a bunch of little children who need to vent that they can't pull down hundreds of gigs of torrents atm because the internet is slow.... they're just saying whatever random nonsense comes into their heads.
 
I thought it would be worth getting up at 7am to see if international traffic was any better. Not really!?

India is 3 hours ahead of SA, so getting up early probably doesn't help. Staying online after 10pm last night did seem a little better IMO.

Traffic to some sites in locations such as Europe seem to be much more congested than those in the US. I guess the re-routing from south-Asia to the Middle East is putting a very heavy burden on some key points.
 
Actually Toxic now that you mention it this really has nothing to do with Seacom. The cable thats faulty is owned by a completely different group, Seacom just rents from them really.
 
It doesnt look like this is routing through Asia and the states anymore..


1 58 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.2
2 9 ms 9 ms 10 ms 41-133-88-1.dsl.mweb.co.za [41.133.88.1]
3 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms tengig-0-0-0-101.vic-ipc-1.mweb.co.za [196.22.16
9.134]
4 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms vl-92.vic-hscore-2.mweb.co.za [196.22.189.3]
5 14 ms 12 ms 11 ms tengig-0-0-0-0-12.vic-up-1.mweb.co.za [196.22.16
9.241]
6 11 ms 12 ms 13 ms rrba-ip-hsll-1-wan.telkom-ipnet.co.za [196.25.8.
249]
7 227 ms 263 ms 221 ms lon-ip-dir-telecity-gig-1-0-2.telkom-ipnet.co.za
[196.43.9.217]
8 381 ms 401 ms 384 ms ldn-tch-i1-link.telia.net [213.155.141.153]
9 585 ms 587 ms 585 ms ldn-b5-link.telia.net [80.91.250.209]
10 589 ms * 587 ms ldn-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.252.205]
11 * 377 ms 378 ms prs-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.247.254]
12 378 ms 431 ms 379 ms prs-b7-link.telia.net [80.91.252.142]
13 380 ms 379 ms 379 ms prs-sdix-i1-link.telia.net [80.91.247.149]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 80-239-170-114.customer.teliacarrier.com [80.239.170.114] reports: Destina
tion net unreachable.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Seacom did not fail in anything... <snip> ... The repairs are being done on Sea-Me-We-4... which is a completely DIFFERENT fscking cable.
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Who has the contract for the onward connectivity via Sea-Me-We-4? Surely this party is responsible to provide the alternate routing while the cable is under repair?
 
Also this is hardly anyone's fault. Basically on the 15th there was a shunt fault (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunt_fault) on SEA-ME-WE 4, in the Mediterranean. With a shunt fault the cable continues to operate, but it is somewhat crippled. Repair takes place when it is possible. Clearly they had some unexpected weather troubles while repairing it, or someone slipped up and the repair wasn't completed in the planned time frame, or they had some other unexpected difficulty causing them to miss the time frame. So now the cable is either completely offline, or operating at significantly reduced capacity, and efforts to fully repair it are being thwarted by bad weather. I would imagine the reason we have been told Friday, is because that will be the first opportunity that the weather allows them to complete repairs.

Seacom owns and operates undersea cables that run up the east coast of Africa, the furthest reaches being India and Egypt. They then lease capacity from SEA-ME-WE 4, for their linkup between Egypt and France. There are numerous undersea cables connecting Europe and the Far East, each owned and operated by a different telecoms consortium. It is thanks to these other cables that we have connectivity at all, however naturally our usage of this capacity is unplanned, and hence the system is taking strain.

So to conclude, there is nothing wrong with Seacom's cables, we are waiting on the Seacom's provider for the European link up of the network to be able to repair their cable. If you want to blame somebody, blame fishing trawlers for dragging their anchors around.

If you want further information on what undersea cables there are, and try and trace the route we take from the above onward, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Submarine_telecommunications_cables

Edit: I wasn't too far off. http://mybroadband.co.za/news/telecoms/12212-SEACOM-explains-prolonged-downtime.html
 
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