SEACOM to improve redundancy

The downtime sucks, but I'm not fuming. At least we've been provisioned some international bandwidth for the time being. Luckily we have 1Gig of backup WA bandwidth for these situations though, it curbs a lot of the frustration. Improved redundancy will be nice however. :/
 
I hope they are successful or the Seacom cable will quickly become redundant.
 
Improve redundancy? doesnt the use of the word improve in the article suggest they already have some form of redundancy?
it doesnt seem that way
 
How in the hell is having proper redundancy and/or a backup plan in case of technical faults some kind of epiphany? Given the scale and cost of the Seacom project, how vastly incompetant do you have to be to not forsee and plan for something like this?
 
nivek said:
Improve redundancy? doesnt the use of the word improve in the article suggest they already have some form of redundancy?
it doesnt seem that way
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I guess the key is to what time of failure but I know what you mean here, had a similar thought.
AKA - what are the gonna run another cable?
 
SEACOM itself highlighted the need for improvements to system redundancy in a Twitter post, saying that they have to ensure rapid network restoration when faults occur.
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That's hosted outside South Africa, right?
 
In an official statement today SEACOM announced that it has successfully secured a number of restoration options for its clients through other international connectivity providers, including cable networks.

“This effectively provides customers with alternatives to re-route services and restore connectivity. These restoration solutions are now being actively implemented,” said SEACOM spokesperson Frederic Cornet.
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So is IS back online now?
 
SEACOM BEING CONNECTED TO SAFE/SAT3

DarkStreet said:
So is IS back online now?
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Telkom was approached by Seacom onMonday evening to cross-connect to Sat3/Safe at Mtunzini. Telkom has graciously agreed , at a price ,and already connected many circuits. ( at launch it is the Same Seacom that called telkom names) !!!!
 
Ispy said:
Telkom was approached by Seacom onMonday evening to cross-connect to Sat3/Safe at Mtunzini. Telkom has graciously agreed , at a price ,and already connected many circuits. ( at launch it is the Same Seacom that called telkom names) !!!!
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Payback is a biaatch!!!
 
I was under the impression that a two way backup had been agreed some time back. Maybe not.

Due to the vulnerability of undersea cables and the lack of numbers it certainly would make sense for all cable operators to act as backup to each other.
 
As I understand it, TATA, major shareholder of Neotel who distribute Seacom, have access to SAT3 at about the same level as does Telkom. While this may not be via the Blouberg landing site, it is most likely at a point where Seacom also lands.

This being corect, could Neotel not provide a redundant link via SAT3? Just a thought.
 
bekdik said:
As I understand it, TATA, major shareholder of Neotel who distribute Seacom, have access to SAT3 at about the same level as does Telkom. While this may not be via the Blouberg landing site, it is most likely at a point where Seacom also lands.

This being corect, could Neotel not provide a redundant link via SAT3? Just a thought.
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Not really. They may be a consortium member, but they still have to buy bandwidth like everyone else. They will have some capacity there, but it's unknown exactly how much, and how much of that is currently utilized. For the free capacity on the cable, you have to look at
  • The amount that's not contractually being provided to a customer already (To maintain their own SLA's they have with their clients)
  • Is lit up on the cable (Lighting up new capacity is time-consuming and expensive)

That difference is what the cable can realistically provide in an emergency. And with the FIFA WC here, I suspect that until next week the cable has no free capacity whatsoever. Telkom had to meet certain bandwidth guarantees to FIFA.
 
Why don't they just lay 2 fibre optic cables, when they do the initial undersea install, a primary cable(high capacity), and then a smaller secondary cable(with it's own related hardware), for redundancy purposes... that way, when the primary fails, they can switch to the secondary cable, albeit with less capacity, but at least they would still be able to offer a reasonable service... not like the situation is now... sorry we are down... oops...

Personally I think the redundancy issue was not thought through properly in the planning phase! A cable system like Seacom should have built-in redundancy and not have to rely on other networks... the way they have done it, they are just tarnishing their name!

Mr B
 
BGE said:
Why don't they just lay 2 fibre optic cables, when they do the initial undersea install, a primary cable(high capacity), and then a smaller secondary cable(with it's own related hardware), for redundancy purposes... that way, when the primary fails, they can switch to the secondary cable, albeit with less capacity, but at least they would still be able to offer a reasonable service... not like the situation is now... sorry we are down... oops...
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Cost. Laying one cable is cheaper than laying two. That would effectively have doubled the cost of the cable.
 
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