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Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

status.hetzner.com

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Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#81

Post by solarkraft »

yuliyp wrote: post #64
sizzzzlerz wrote: post #59

When something like this happens, does the traffic get distributed on other operational fibers that have sufficient unused bandwidth or do the operators fire up some dark fibers to carry the load? Or maybe it’s both?

It depends. Generally the larger carriers and consumers of fibers have a network that is able to route around outages (fiber cuts like this are basically routine) just the same as on land. If they don't have enough, then they'll need to either reduce demand or rent some capacity from someone else.

> then they'll need to either reduce demand

Worst case everything just gets a bit slower (right?), depending on how much traffic went through that cable.

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#82

Post by bogomipz »

foepys wrote: post #54
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither, it's shared ownership. It's similar to if you buy a house with your partner: neither of you owns specific rooms, but you own the whole thing together. There's likely agreements about which fibers (there's 8 fiber pairs in the cable) and/or how much bandwidth everyone can use, though.

Why only 8? Why don't they put like 100 in there?

Well, cost for one. If that fiber isn't being used it's a terrible investment. But more generally it's probably not needed. The bandwidth of optical fibre is theoretically unlimited. A single fibre carries many wavelengths, a wave length is like a channel. This is known as DWDM(dense wave division multiplexing.) A single wavelength commonly caries 100 Gbs. Although recently advances have shown 700 Gbs for a single wavelength[1]. The number of wavelengths and hence bandwidth depends on the transmission gear used on both ends of the cable. You can upgrade the bandwidth by upgrading the transmission gear. The state of the art for years has been 8 pair systems but more recently developments have produced 24 and 36 pair systems.

[1] https://www.lightwaveonline.com/network-design/high-speed-ne...

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#83

Post by daneel_w »

fosefx wrote: post #50
daneel_w wrote: post #25

This isn't Hetzner's own cable, and it's not just "any" cable - it's an Alcatel-Lucent + Cinia + EU project, with 150 terabits worth of bandwidth. It's a high profile target, but it's just as likely that it's just an anchor accident.

Is there sth like a status page for submarine cables?

Possibly, but none that I'm aware of.

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#84

Post by lordnacho »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #56
lordnacho wrote: post #18

Happens quite often to subsea cables. I was renting a number of them and every now and again you'd get a break. You can follow the NOC's update emails: Break detected Ship has been commissioned Ship is at harbor Ship has sailed out to the cut Fusing the ends Service restored

What's the kind of scenario where you'd be renting an undersea cable?

Servers in different financial exchanges that need to talk to each other, reasonably fast.

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#85

Post by [deleted] »

fosefx wrote: post #50
daneel_w wrote: post #25

This isn't Hetzner's own cable, and it's not just "any" cable - it's an Alcatel-Lucent + Cinia + EU project, with 150 terabits worth of bandwidth. It's a high profile target, but it's just as likely that it's just an anchor accident.

Is there sth like a status page for submarine cables?

[deleted]

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#87

Post by hypertele-Xii »

piptastic wrote: post #49
dabeeeenster wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the hell do you fuse the ends of a massive cable like this at the bottom of the sea?!

This has pretty good information on it, and a couple videos: https://www.onesteppower.com/post/subsea-cable-repair

> to fix a deep water cable, the ship has to use a grapnel, which grabs and cuts the cable, dragging the two loose ends to the surface. If needed, one end can then be hooked to a buoy and the other end brought on board. Cable has to be added to make the repair, since there is not enough slack to bring the cable up and cut a piece out. After the cable is retrieved and on board, in a repair room that looks like a laboratory, engineers repair the cable. Data cables can take up to 16 hours to repair, after which they are lowered back down to the sea bed in an omega or hairpin pattern to accommodate the extra length. There is new technology in development that would make in situ repair possible for power cables, preventing the need to pull the cables up to the surface.

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#88

Post by ahartmetz »

colanderman wrote: post #22
bostik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the non-optical domain, that used to be a feature in the most expensive cable measuring gears (to the tune of €25k about 20 years ago). I had the pleasure of using one of the devices that had that when I wired my old house. Borrowed the kit from ... an institution that allowed me to get their gear for a weekend. (Yes, I knew people in there.) Having the device tell me that a given strand in a CAT5e cable was fault…

Many (low-cost) Mikrotik routers have this feature built in now: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Interface/Ethernet#Det...

I first saw the feature on a motherboard integrathed Ethernet chip over 10, possibly over 15 years ago.

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#89

Post by shrubble »

foepys wrote: post #54
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither, it's shared ownership. It's similar to if you buy a house with your partner: neither of you owns specific rooms, but you own the whole thing together. There's likely agreements about which fibers (there's 8 fiber pairs in the cable) and/or how much bandwidth everyone can use, though.

Why only 8? Why don't they put like 100 in there?

Look up how DWDM works; they don't need more than 8. The optical gear that goes on land, keeps getting more capable of driving ever more bandwidth over the same fiber...

Re: Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage

#90

Post by bombcar »

OJFord wrote: post #75
daneel_w wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as I'm an EU citizen paying top taxes, plenty of which went into funding the project, it's partially my cable as well.

By that logic (that it's not (partially) Hetzner's I mean, not the sarcasm) it's nobody's cable then?

If it’s everyone’s cable, it’s no one’s!

Syndroooooooome out

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