| On Wednesday, January 30, 2008, two underwater telecommunications cables were cut and disabled in the Mediterranean Sea, impacting Internet communications to Egypt, India and Gulf Arab countries. The incident demonstrates the continued vulnerability of the Internet's infrastructure, and the significant economic impact that lack of Internet communications can have on multi-national businesses.
Akamai is providing a first-of-its-kind view of the impact that the severed cables had on Internet latency. Data collected by Akamai's global network shows the increased time — beyond the average for a specific connection — it took for data to traverse individual network points. Yellow lines represent a 1.5 times increase over the average latency. Orange lines represent a 2 times increase over the average latency. And, red lines represent a 3 times or more increase over the average latency. The view below captures network performance readings for the 36 hour period following the cable cuts. |
