[102192] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu Jan 31 12:04:16 2008
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:56:14 +0000
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: "Rod Beck" <Rod.Beck@hiberniaatlantic.com>
Cc: "Hank Nussbacher" <hank@efes.iucc.ac.il>,
"Sean Donelan"
<sean@donelan.com>, <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <71CB284A12EDA54880FF588A8BAC0BE20E4EC3@ernie.HiberniaAtlantic.local>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:20:07 -0000
"Rod Beck" <Rod.Beck@hiberniaatlantic.com> wrote:
> Cables are mostly damaged by fishing in coastal areas (continental
> shelf) or by deep undersea currents that erode the polyurethane
> jacket that protects them. So it is crucial that the cable be buried
> at least one meter and preferably two meters in coastal waters. The
> big fishing boats scrape sea floor - the ecological equivalent of
> surface or 'strip' mining. These boats scrap the ocean floor and can
> hit the cables or even sever them.
>
In some areas, shark bites are a threat, too -- see
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel1/48/1267/00029600.pdf
(subscription required for the full text), or
http://www.tscm.com/phone/oceanic_cable.html
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
