SUBSCRIBESsssllllooooooowwww internet connection
(Image above shows the submarine cable network with the circle as the earthquake’s epicenter. Red lines are fault zones – from time.com)
Internet connection is really at a snail’s pace since yesterday when 6 key submarine cables in Taiwan were damaged in the aftermath of the earthquake in that island country. Yahoo! services were really just disappointing as frequent time outs occured.
These cables are the pipelines that bring internet/data traffic from Southeast Asia to the US. Because of the significance of these pipes, a breakdown/rupture surely affected the bandwidth across Asia thereby disrupting long distance calls, outbound/inbound internet data especially from Asia – US and vice versa (just consider that most of the servers are in the US), online casino and VOIP used by call centers and in Korea, stock trading came to a halt. While the traffic were quickly rerouted to Europe/Middle East, there was a reported general slowdown in online traffic experienced in these areas due to the surge from Asia.
Now, since repairing undersea cables takes time, New Year voice traffic between Asia and the US would surely be affected. As of now, its a throwback to the dial up era as pages are loading to a crawl or timing out.
