ICT chaos as Seacom cable fails

[BAK]

By MASATO MASATO, 6th July 2010 @ 12:00
DAILY NEWS

TECHNICAL hitches experienced by Seacom -- the first cable to provide broadband to East African countries -- have seriously affected communication in the country for the last two days, almost halting business and other operations that rely on internet.

"It is total chaos in the city...there is nowhere to access the internet," charged Mr Protas Masawe, who was looking for internet connection through a Vodacom modem.

Hundreds of city residents flocked the Vodacom offices along Ohio Street to buy the gadget but were directed to Mwalimu Nyerere Fair grounds along Kilwa road.

Seacom, in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday, blamed submarine failure that started on Monday as a result of "service downtime between Mumbai, India and Mombasa, Kenya."

The firm said preliminary investigations had indicated that a special gadget -- repeater -- has failed on segment nine of the Seacom cable, which is offshore to the north of Mombasa.

Seacom said it had initiated emergency repair procedures to replace the repeater.

"Once mobilised, the repair ship is deployed to the location of the fault to pick up the cable. The cable is then brought on board to undergo repairs -- the faulty element is replaced with a new repeater -- before being put back in the water."

Whilst the repair process itself takes a few hours, Seacom said the overall process may last a minimum of six to eight days, saying the actual duration was hardly predictable due to external factors like transit time of the ship, weather conditions and time to locate the cable.

"For this reason, the estimated duration of this repair remains uncertain," said the service provider, assuring however that it was, through co-operation with individual clients, working round the clock to restore the service by Thursday.

The company was also looking for other options to restore the service, pending the repair work.

Seacom is the first provider of broadband to East African countries, where Kenya and Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique are inter-connected through protected ring structure.

 

[Kiranga]

When the US Department of Defense started the development of the DARPA Net, the early backbone of the internet, a key architectural concern was to network it in such a way that no single point of failure could wreak havoc to the entire system, so a star like network design was favored to ensure that whenever there is a failure somewhere, you still have plenty of redundancy to ensure business continuity.

I wonder if we are too poor to afford a similar setup of redundant uplinks etc, or is it just poor design. ISPs and ICT provides must ensure that they maintain backup links, even if business models do not allow these uplinks to be available 24/7 they should still be maintained on an as needed basis.

It is dangerous to depend on a single link, especially now that so much business is done online, so much communication is using the internet.

Is our usage solely dependent on SEACOM? What did we use before Seacom? Why can't we maintain some of these old (even if they are slow) links for emergencies?

 

[Kang]

Mimi natwanga tu na Voda yangu! Buku 30 inanitoa hadi august!!!! Hongera Voda!!!

 

[Kang]

When the US Department of Defense started the development of the DARPA Net, the early backbone of the internet, a key architectural concern was to network it in such a way that no single point of failure could wreak havoc to the entire system, so a star like network design was favored to ensure that whenever there is a failure somewhere, you still have plenty of redundancy to ensure business continuity.

I wonder if we are too poor to afford a similar setup of redundant uplinks etc, or is it just poor design. ISPs and ICT provides must ensure that they maintain backup links, even if business models do not allow these uplinks to be available 24/7 they should still be maintained on an as needed basis.

It is dangerous to depend on a single link, especially now that so much business is done online, so much communication is using the internet.

Is our usage solely dependent on SEACOM? What did we use before Seacom? Why can't we maintain some of these old (even if they are slow) links for emergencies?

Kuna cable moja tu ya fiber Tanzania so redundancy is not possible unless utegemee satelite ambayo sio cost effective. Lakini zinakuja cable nyingi tu so ni tatizo kwa sasa tu.

 

[Questt]

When the US Department of Defense started the development of the DARPA Net, the early backbone of the internet, a key architectural concern was to network it in such a way that no single point of failure could wreak havoc to the entire system, so a star like network design was favored to ensure that whenever there is a failure somewhere, you still have plenty of redundancy to ensure business continuity.

I wonder if we are too poor to afford a similar setup of redundant uplinks etc, or is it just poor design. ISPs and ICT provides must ensure that they maintain backup links, even if business models do not allow these uplinks to be available 24/7 they should still be maintained on an as needed basis.

It is dangerous to depend on a single link, especially now that so much business is done online, so much communication is using the internet.

Is our usage solely dependent on SEACOM? What did we use before Seacom? Why can't we maintain some of these old (even if they are slow) links for emergencies?[/QUOTE

USA Vs Bongo???????????
Mh....!!!!!!!

 

[Kiranga]

USA Vs Bongo???????????
Mh....!!!!!!!

Ukiwa na mentality ya ku shudder kwa kusema "USA Vs Bongo" ulitakiwa usijiingize katika mambo ya internet kabisa, ukishajiingiza tu umeshajiingiza katika ma ISO OSI Model huko, na ma TCP/IP ambayo hayajali uko USA au uko bongo, yana operate sawa tu.