Wired

Yesterday was a bad day for us internet dependents, internet connection was intermittent. It was no fun to be in Facebook, it was difficult to play apps, all I could access was my email and I can’t even chat without disruption on the connection.

Reports say that a serious cable fault in a segment of the Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) undersea cable network between China and Taiwan caused this disruption could have been caused by technical failure or a cable cut, but definitely not seismic activity because Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau did not record signs of seismic activity (recall: Back in 1996 an earthquake caused an under-ocean landslide which cut nine cables between Taiwan and the Philippines causing disruption in internet connection for weeks.).Internet traffic was rerouted onto other undersea cables but internet access was slowed for users in Southeast Asia.

In an age of wireless communication, incidents like (cable cut) this may come as a surprise to consumers like us. We tend to forget that it's only really wireless for us consumers, everything is actually done over real, physical connections. The internet is highly reliant on a massive physical infrastructure that connects countries, giant cables where all data travel.


It is literally and figuratively the world wide web. I have always thought that we call it the world wide web because the network or inter-connectivity of people through the internet can be best represented by a spider’s web. Little did I know that the physical infrastructure also looks like a giant spider web.

Aside from educating us as to how the internet really works, this incident shows us how vulnerable this global communications network is. We worry so much about cyber crimes and cyber attacks that we take for granted the sitting duck that is the physical infrastructure of global communication network. Little attention is given to protecting this network from natural disasters or even terrorist attacks.Maybe its time we pay more attention to it.