Telecoms

Internet slows down after Japan earthquake

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief August 12, 2009 · 1 min read

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Internet connectivity has slowed to a crawl today as undersea cable were affected by the recent earthquake in Japan.

Reports from ComputerWorld indicates the Philippines is one of the affected countries:

At about 10:50 a.m. on Wednesday, local time, an alarm signaled a cable fault on Segment 7 of APCN2, which connects Hong Kong and Shantou, China. The disruption caused a temporary loss of service on the undersea link but all customers that use the cable were soon shifted to capacity on other cables, according to a source familiar with the situation.

The APCN2 cable is owned by a consortium of 26 telecom operators from 14 different countries. The cable links Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Japan.

Looks like PLDT is the most heavily affected. Some sites appear down as DNS routing are not resolving.

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Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

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145 Comments

manaka_junpei · 17 years ago

naalala ko naman ang sinabi ni Andre Marcelo-Tanner, BBSing na uli, balikan natin, buhay pa kaya ang Livewire BBS…. Yahoong Yahoo….pero pending sa pag-repair nang Fiber-Optic Cable, sana gamitin sila nang Submarine para mabilis makapunta sa Fiber-Optic Cable….takes patience to fix this…sana maayos yan sa lalong madaling panahon, manood pa ako Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou.

sa ngayon, Laro muna ako Super Robot Wars K, GUN X Sword rules….

Blu3martini · 17 years ago

Sobrang bagal net sa bahay. Eto pala ang cause. Using smart bro here. Sana maayos na kasi miss ko na yung download speed na 50kilobytespersecond+.

wtf · 17 years ago

my internet connection has no changes. it’s still the same. im not using PLDT MY DSL lol

danimoth2 · 17 years ago

I agree with Beeps (45). I understand that its an undersea cable and it is not that easy to fix. We should really be grateful that we still have Internet (I use PLDT myDSL). Let’s just hope na this won’t take long to fix, I can’t surf 20 tabs and watch videos with this speed :D

jim · 17 years ago

Yesterday, I noticed that I cannot open the websites of BPI and Eastwest already which I rarely experienced. So this is the cause pala.

beeps · 17 years ago

hehe @magvolunteernga

Bossing, not really that easy to get this fiber break fix. really requires a lot of them on restoring the loss of service and it depends into what extent is the fiber break. Well i hope its not that serious otherwise this might take a bit long.

beeps · 17 years ago

The fiber break was a major issue, this facility is undersea, and investing on such facility is worth billions of dollars and its comprises of major TELCO companies in the world, Most of us are running on their backups right now, and some are very lucky that their connections are running on a different sub fiber cable. “The thing is weather weather lang yan”

JC John Sese Cuneta · 17 years ago

LOL @magvolunteernga

Well, if some huge block of stone fell there really is a possibility that those huge cables will break or at least get damaged :p And if it is undersea, well, I don’t think we can move any faster hehe.

Globe Innove/Broadband heavily affected as well. I use Globe Innove ;) It actually went down for 3 hours :p as in no Internet…

Comcast and Eastern Telecoms according to some friends were also heavily affected.

magvolunteernga · 17 years ago

ganyan ba ka fragile ang mga cables nila? at ganyan ba kabagal kumilos mag-ayos mga tao nila? if they need people, mag volunteer na nga ako mag dive at tumulong para maayos na kaagad agad yan, nakakainis na

Crash · 17 years ago

Oh, goody. We just signed up for PLDT DSL.

Tonskie · 17 years ago

i am pretty sure that they are fixing it nah, meron na results… mejo mabilis na xa ng kaunti.. pero sa facebook di pa rin maxado…

Andre Marcelo-Tanner · 17 years ago

when things start working normally, repair works are underway they say, I think it should be done today or tomorrow. What would do without internet, I guess a lot of coffeeshops will close and people will have nothing to do and go back to watching tv

Rodney Garcia · 17 years ago

My internet connection is so slow right now that speedtest.net cannot even load.

How am I suppose to know the speed of my dsl if the testing facility cannot test?

Hmmmm….

How will we know if the DSL operations are back to normal?

Anyone?

louis · 17 years ago

our connection here not just slow down, but some of the sites are also Access Denied! maybe eto nga yung prob, not sure

madzman23 · 17 years ago

Yay!
For the first time, Digitel connection is faster than PLDT and Globe…
whahaha..

I think bad architecture has some upside anyhow…
hahaha..
ROFL.. :D

crimsonshock · 17 years ago

whatever their lame excuse is, they have to fix the problem FAST!

They have tons of subscribers suffering because of whatever lame excuse they have!

Furlin · 17 years ago

Problem with Smart Bro is, it is slow, whether there is a cable fault or not. It’s always slow, so nobody sees any difference.

Andre Marcelo-Tanner · 17 years ago

probably was faster in the morning due to less internet users, theyre probably on limited bandwith now and are trying to redirect it, doesnt look like its getting much better. i notice browsing with 4 windows is hard now, but browsing with 1 window works, so seems my bandwith or connections is being limited.

just wondering if we have a local network of sites that can be accessed without leaving the country, incase these things go down which sites will still be fast and accessible? like a country network.

or else its back to the BBS’s and playing dragons quest…

kill3rfill3r · 17 years ago

mabilis naman ang facebook at youtube kagabi pero sobrang bagal kapag naka-anim na tabs ka na. dito sa opis mabagal!hehe

Tonskie · 17 years ago

the problem lang din with smart bro, noontime until mga hapon maxado nang mabagal…. sigh…

kakaunti lang globe broadband dito, kaya siguro ok pa ang connection unlike cebu kung saan globe broadband is hated.. kasi super bagal daw.

Bobby Uy · 17 years ago

Telcos do not act properly when their services are down. Take this case, several ISP’s are still affected, with consumers having minimal or NO connection at all. Yet the companies advertise that they have redundant connections. If they really do, how come they can not shift to their backups?! Lame excuses.

Jan Alvin · 17 years ago

Buti na lang smart bro ayus-ayus pa ngayun.

Tonskie · 17 years ago

Hmmm.. kaninang umaga, as in 6am, ok naman ung connection, it’s fast… pero sa ngayon, it’s 9:11 am, and super bagal ng connection. :( i’m using globe broadband, and kahapon nkakapag facebook pa ako, pero ngaun, hindi nah… tsk tsk tsk …

Raven · 17 years ago

Pati ba br0wsing thru f0ne!? It’s kinda iritating kasi,mula pa kahap0n sl0w as slug ang c0nnecti0n with gl0be. Still n0 impr0vement until t0day.

jerald · 17 years ago

Dito rin sa china, napakabagal ng internet since yesterday. But now its better but still slower than normal.

mel · 17 years ago

APCN2 Faults:

#1: Singapore-Malaysia Fault = Repair is estimated to be completed on August 14, 2009

#2: China-Taiwan Fault = cable fault occurred this morning at 10:45 am;

= APCN2 consortium is now trying to implement the APCN2 catastrophic plan for dual failure in these segments

= APCN2 NOC is now doing the mapping and manual patching in concerned stations; hopefully some of our circuits will be restored very soon

whaâ„¢ · 17 years ago

thats the reason why my connections sucks a lot yesterday…

Donna · 17 years ago

affected din ba ang mga broadbands because of this? i’m using sun broadband kasi. di ko alam tuloy kung ano cause ng pagbagal ng connecton ko, kung yung sa “capping” ba ng sun or etong nangyari sa japan. pero ngayong umaga, ok ok naman yung connection ko kahit papano unlike kagabi. argh! daig ko pa naka dial-up sa connection ko kagabi. ang bagal talaga.

Rome · 17 years ago

Ah! kaya pala.. ang bagal nga ng internet namen kahapon.. Globe Broadband internet ko.. Ok na siguro noh?

BrianB · 17 years ago

Kaya pala bagal ng streaming kanina, pero sa speedtest OK naman,

john · 17 years ago

Parang affected din yung smart bro users. But not to all websites(servers).

charles palma · 17 years ago

Nagpapadala na ata sila ng barko to determine the fault line at para ayosin yun.. (Bagal lumangoy mga barko ngaun so just wait for about a week??)

Hehehe..

diego · 17 years ago

so that’s why the latency of my connection is at if not worse than dial-up. Any word on when will normal service resume?

jpeb · 17 years ago

parang slow din ang Globe Broadband. thanks for this info though.

shin-chan · 17 years ago

Godzilla is real….

cynic · 17 years ago

able to talk to a csr after waiting for such a looong time . . . told me that there is currently an installation going on. i asked, “at this hour?!” then she went on to say another reason, system restoration daw. such lame excuses, such LIARS

cynic · 17 years ago

you believe everything you read?

Patrick · 17 years ago

So that’s why some sites were so slow. I thought it was just my connection acting up again. Wait, I’ve had this problem since yesterday so how…

RJCA · 17 years ago

It’s been down to 100kbps ever since I got home hahaha back to dial-up speeds. (Can’t believe dial-up speeds were slower than this!)

Since I can’t post images here’s a link to my Speedtest (PLDT):

http://www.speedtest.net/result/538155589.png

Mindanao Bob · 17 years ago

Last time under sea cables were broken like 2 years ago, it took like 6 months to fix. I hope it’s quicker this time!

August · 17 years ago

yuga loves to use the phrase “slowed to a crawl” whenever things like this happen.

petken · 17 years ago

oh that’s the reason why our mydsl was really slow and sites were not really loading completely. im still on my way home and i hope the connections will be fixed as soon as possible.

netaddict_0924 · 17 years ago

we felt it too here…the internet connection is super slow do you have news when will it be fixed?its been a whole day like this…hope this would not last long….T_T

james · 17 years ago

Whatever the cause is, they should work on it and fix this as soon as possible.

Reuben · 17 years ago

PLDT myDSL is suuuper slow. Hope to be fixed soon.

sherwin · 17 years ago

3 cable systems are cut, EAC/SMW3 was cut monday, APCN2 was cut today, the 3 suffered double breaks (active and protection path).

No relation to the earthquake at all, kase it happened hours after the earthquake.

Adrian · 17 years ago

here in singapore ok naman yung internet.

LadyVi · 17 years ago

yeah we feel that today in the office. good thing we have a second provider which is etpi. IT just switched off the pldt modem from the proxy server, then we’re ok.