Broken transatlantic cable still disrupting internet traffic

Users may still be suffering internet traffic problems as a result of a broken transatlantic optical cable that went down earlier this week.

The London Internet Exchange (Linx), which carries most of the internet traffic in the UK, and supports much of Europe’s, said France Telecom has still not restored a section of cable for which it is responsible responsible, which broke on Tuesday afternoon (25 November).

As a result, some ISPs have had to re-route their traffic to overcome the break. The network sharing arrangements that have made this possible have resulted in some network management difficulties that could be affecting end users.

Linx sales and marketing manager Vanessa Evans told Computer Weekly, “We don’t know why the cable went down and when France Telecom will be able to fix it.

“What this has proved, however, is that the internet is resilient and has the built in capacity to always find a way to route traffic, but there is a possibility that some end users may have been affected.”

Evans said voice traffic is working as normal, and internet traffic over the cable is at 75% of normal levels.

Users may be experiencing slow response rates with some websites and e-mail may be taking longer than usual to arrive. Evans said technical problems experienced by Telewest, NTL and BT earlier in the week may have been connected to the fault.

A France Telecom spokeswoman said the company hoped to have the cable fixed by Friday evening or Saturday morning