"Internet crashes in Pakistan"

That is the title of the CNN article here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/06/28/pakistan.internet.reut/index.html



Dust mine ears deceive me? Only one cable? Yup. One cable cut, one country down. And to fix it would...



Hmmm...quite a conundrum there, eh? Good thing the neighboring countries decided to go ahead and allow them the repair time...



So, what's the lesson here, everyone? Redundancy may be expensive, but not as expensive as your whole country's communication pipeline going down.



I know that HostMySite.com "receives connectivity from 4 different Tier 1 providers on a multi-homed, redundant network featuring Gigabit and OCx Internet connections. The redundancy of our network enables us to withstand a loss of multiple providers while still providing you with ample connectivity to your websites. Our network is built to prevent any single point of failure. The fiber for our connectivity providers enters the building via separate conduits to prevent connectivity loss in the unlikely event of a fiber cut." Nice.

I recall back in the late '90's when fiber cuts around MAE-East occurred on a frequent basis resulting in 16+ hour outages for major parts of the web.

Once the world realized that the Internet was part of the nation's critical infrastructure, fines were stiffened and backhoe operators around the country were beaten senselessly any time they cut the fiber along the Jersey Turnpike.

that was also about the same time a word that was not an acronym was used in everyday IT lingo. that word was 'redundancy'.