Earlier quoted context omitted.
An act of terrorism is never smart or heroic.
[flagged]
Free the hostages then we can talk
Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cables in Red Sea got cut frequently On land, we’ve call before you dig . I wish they could do something like call before you drop (anchor) training or just get the word out.
(It’s not actually anchors.)
It very often _is_ an anchor, and they are usually dropped and dragged on purpose for the effect of cutting the cables which are clearly marked on charts as places to not drop anchor
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#23Multiple subsea fiber cuts in the Red Sea impacting global communications Impact Summary Starting at 05:45 UTC on 06 September 2025, traffic traversing through the Middle East originating and/or terminating in Asia or Europe regions may experience increased latency due to multiple undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea. The disruption has required rerouting through alternate paths which may lead to higher-than-normal lat…
The smart folks who keep these things running, despite failures like this, are incredible. Hats off to you all, good luck in the coming weeks as you have to deal with this.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241014-the-deep-sea-eme...
An article about people who fix this
Also, the teams are quite busy:
> "There are 150 to 200 instances of damage to the global network each year. So if we look at that against 1.4 million km, that's not very many, and for the most part, when this damage happens, it can be repaired relatively quickly."
...
> If a fault is found, a repair ship is dispatched. "All these vessels are strategically placed around the world to be 10-12 days from base to port,"
...
> To repair the damage, the ship deploys a grapnel, or grappling hook, to lift and snip the cable, pulling one loose end up to the surface and reeling it in across the bow with large, motorised drums. The damaged section is then winched into an internal room and analysed for a fault, repaired, tested by sending a signal back to land from the boat, sealed and then attached to a buoy while the process is repeated on the other end of the cable.
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#24Can they splice these? Surely the don't have to run a whole new cable?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241014-the-deep-sea-eme...
An article about such repairs (150-200 yearly)
> To repair the damage, the ship deploys a grapnel, or grappling hook, to lift and snip the cable, pulling one loose end up to the surface and reeling it in across the bow with large, motorised drums. The damaged section is then winched into an internal room and analysed for a fault, repaired, tested by sending a signal back to land from the boat, sealed and then attached to a buoy while the process is repeated on the other end of the cable.
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#25Every subsea cable service interruption story is an excuse to share one of my favorite pieces of long-form technical history: Neal Stephenson's Mother Earth Mother Board:
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#26Can they splice these? Surely the don't have to run a whole new cable?
They can but it's an involved process. Modern cables manage their slack very precisely - a complicated job in and of itself - and usually cannot be hauled to the surface without snapping them. So if the cable is not already cut (an anchor can damage a cable in a variety of ways short of physically snapping it) it will be cut while still on the bottom. The ends are then winched up and a splice is patched in but now there's a rather lengthy section of extra cable to deal with. They deal with that by laying it down precisely on the seabed in a nice sideways loop.
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The smart folks who keep these things running, despite failures like this, are incredible. Hats off to you all, good luck in the coming weeks as you have to deal with this.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241014-the-deep-sea-eme... An article about people who fix this Also, the teams are quite busy: > "There are 150 to 200 instances of damage to the global network each year. So if we look at that against 1.4 million km, that's not very many, and for the most part, when this damage happens, it can be repaired relatively quickly." ... > If a fault is found, a repair ship is dispatche…
I wonder how much slack is left in the cable over its run in order to facilitate bringing it up for repair.
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#28Can they splice these? Surely the don't have to run a whole new cable?
I think they raise the cable to the surface, splice it and sink it again.
I've read (or perhaps watched on YouTube) the same thing.
Finding both ends of the cable to grab abd raise it took longer than the raise/splice operation.
I suspect a sufficiently malicious attacker could intentionally cut the cable twice, so when the repair crew drag up one end of the cut they know about, the section between the cuts drags its other end away from it's cut-point making the second repair significantly more difficult...
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241014-the-deep-sea-eme... An article about people who fix this Also, the teams are quite busy: > "There are 150 to 200 instances of damage to the global network each year. So if we look at that against 1.4 million km, that's not very many, and for the most part, when this damage happens, it can be repaired relatively quickly." ... > If a fault is found, a repair ship is dispatche…
I wonder how much slack is left in the cable over its run in order to facilitate bringing it up for repair.
Now that’s what i call a service loop!
Re: Microsoft Azure: "Multiple international subsea cables were cut in the Red Sea"
#30Every subsea cable service interruption story is an excuse to share one of my favorite pieces of long-form technical history: Neal Stephenson's Mother Earth Mother Board: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20497098
The Wired article is paywalled now unfortunately. Here's an archived version:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210107003422/https://www.wired...
The Verge also has a great article which is more recent and more specifically about a repair ship:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240422050805/https://www.theve...