Except for where resiliency was down due to previously scheduled maintenance. Certainly wasn't seamless from my point of view. But yes, Clare Curran needs to GTFO From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Sam Russell Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 3:27 p.m. To: Al Twohill Cc: nznog Subject: Re: [nznog] Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable Presumably a redundant link means that nobody loses service when they accidentally break one of them? It does seem like an excuse to blame National for not propping up Pacific Fibre, rather than anything wrong with a redundant set of links failing over correctly due to a fault, as designed Sent from my iPhone On Nov 9, 2012, at 1:20 PM, Al Twohill wrote: On 9 November 2012 15:16, David Robinson wrote: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/labour-alleges-failure-of-southern- cross-cable How much substance and how much Political Grandstanding? Yes a second cable would be nice but be careful saying the sky is falling. There is a thread discussing it on AUSNOG. Looks like Labour basically quoted that. http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2012-November/015297.html _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

From that point of view Auckland<->Sydney traffic may as well go via the US in the case of outage.

With Hurricane Sandy there was a lot of packet loss over he.net to Europe. They most likely didn't have enough capacity in the event of an outage - the latency wasn't up a lot, but throughput was significantly reduced. The same thing is likely to happen to NZ if there are two cables. It's not likely that most NZ providers will operate at 40% peak capacity.across international links. Sure - 3 cable paths will reduce the level of impact. But in the US it's common to have 3 or more transit providers, reducing the chance of impact. But NZ being ages away from anywhere, with the bulk of traffic on two cable paths seems to have lead to less diversification within New Zealand, with multiple upstreams being limited to the US. And if the US and Europe got cut off completely, traffic via Asia to Europe is likely to be pretty terrible. Also, looking at Hurricance Sandy, what would happen to Auckland if it got hit by a Hurricane? Could it take out all international traffic leading to only Satelitte working for redundancy? Ben. On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 01:26:47PM +1100, Sam Russell wrote:

Presumably a redundant link means that nobody loses service when they accidentally break one of them? It does seem like an excuse to blame National for not propping up Pacific Fibre, rather than anything wrong with a redundant set of links failing over correctly due to a fault, as designed

Sent from my iPhone On Nov 9, 2012, at 1:20 PM, Al Twohill <[1]moebiusproject(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 9 November 2012 15:16, David Robinson <[2]nznog(a)karit.geek.nz> wrote:

[3]http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/labour-alleges-failure-of-southern-...

How much substance and how much Political Grandstanding? Yes a second cable would be nice but be careful saying the sky is falling.

There is a thread discussing it on AUSNOG. Looks like Labour basically quoted that. [4]http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2012-November/015297.html�

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References

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 9/11/2012 15:50, Kris Price wrote:

Grandstanding, yes. But then again, isn't there actually a real problem here? With both spans of Southern Cross landing within a stones throw of each other (~30 kms), and on the northern side of a tiny little peninsula from the rest of the country, to boot.

Don't forget that those spans are then transferred through an active volcanic field about which the only certainty is that nobody has the foggiest idea where the next eruption will occur. If the Auckland Volcanic Field blows its top in a big way at the wrong location the rest of New Zealand will be reduced to a very little bit of satellite "string". - -- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlCcehUACgkQTdEtTmUCdpyj7QCgzjlKqs6iJwERCiJig7baCbp2 mgEAoLleJO2jVN2Wcy+qcoAFSzLHN3s6 =maEn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I wrote about exactly this issue (volcanoes and redundancy) this week: http://tuanz.org.nz/blog/2012/11/8/critical-infrastructure The two landing sites are within 15km of each other and while the risk of a volcanic eruption is low (actually it's unknown - we assume it's low) the damage from such an event would be devastating. -----Original Message----- From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Sam Silvester Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 5:04 p.m. To: Kris Price Cc: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Kris Price wrote:

Grandstanding, yes. But then again, isn't there actually a real problem here? With both spans of Southern Cross landing within a stones throw of each other (~30 kms), and on the northern side of a tiny little peninsula from the rest of the country, to boot. Isn't there any concern that a Christchurch like event in Auckland could damage both spans, knocking NZ offline for a couple of months while ships were tasked to repair them?

Without especially agreeing nor disagreeing with that - I suspect it's a case of not making perfection the enemy of the good. True geographic diversity is expensive especially in terms of submarine cables. I'd contend (happy for somebody to jump in here if my instinct is wrong) is that whilst it's shitty when multiple cables get cut due to those kind of events, even having two cables on a similar path can be good because it's less likely one administrative group will take down the whole system. I suspect the number of human error or hardware failures far exceed the number of earthquakes and the like. Sam _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

On the Dotcom issue - as an aside - he tells me that's not quite what he suggested. Rather he'd like to see a cable built and is happy/eager to invest in it, but understands that his involvement may delay or derail the project and so would stand aside. But if he wins the case against the US govt he would be happy to invest - somehow that became "Dot Com to sue US govt/give NZ free broadband" which isn't quite right. As for intercepting the SCCN and building on a spur, I suspect that's too difficult at this point in time. You'd need to drop that leg of the cable for the duration of the connection work and you'd run quite a risk while doing it. I've been told the best alternate landing place is in the South Island - Nugget Point, near Tiwai Aluminium Smelter - as it's the shortest route to Australia. That would be great I think. -----Original Message----- From: Ben Aitchison [mailto:ben(a)meh.net.nz] Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 5:20 p.m. To: Paul Brislen Cc: Sam Silvester; Kris Price; nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable I can't say I know a lot about undersea cables, but I'd think there'd be a way to intercept Southern Cross before it gets to Auckland and route it to Wellington or such. So a whole new cable may not be necessary.from that point of view. That said Coromandel or New Plymouth is probably simpler/cheaper. If it could be intercepted and go to both, even better. I'm really not buying this Pacific Fibre being reintroduced by Kim Dotcom after he sues the US thing. But I suppose as far as backup goes we only need to get to Australia. Ben. On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 05:09:17PM +1300, Paul Brislen wrote:

I wrote about exactly this issue (volcanoes and redundancy) this week:

http://tuanz.org.nz/blog/2012/11/8/critical-infrastructure

The two landing sites are within 15km of each other and while the risk of a volcanic eruption is low (actually it's unknown - we assume it's low) the damage from such an event would be devastating.

-----Original Message----- From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Sam Silvester Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 5:04 p.m. To: Kris Price Cc: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Kris Price wrote:

...

Grandstanding, yes. But then again, isn't there actually a real problem here? With both spans of Southern Cross landing within a stones throw of each other (~30 kms), and on the northern side of a tiny little peninsula from the rest of the country, to boot. Isn't there any concern that a Christchurch like event in Auckland could damage both spans, knocking NZ offline for a couple of months while ships were tasked to repair them?

Without especially agreeing nor disagreeing with that - I suspect it's a case of not making perfection the enemy of the good.

True geographic diversity is expensive especially in terms of submarine cables. I'd contend (happy for somebody to jump in here if my instinct is wrong) is that whilst it's shitty when multiple cables get cut due to those kind of events, even having two cables on a similar path can be good because it's less likely one administrative group will take down the whole system.

I suspect the number of human error or hardware failures far exceed the number of earthquakes and the like.

Sam _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

On Fri, 2012-11-09 at 17:31 +1300, Matthew Poole wrote:

Only negative would be that I could see it being difficult to attract people to live and work in Invergiggles.

Offer staff free craft beer, curry and 100mbit internet connections and you could probably get half of NZ's IT scene to move. ;-) regards, jethro -- Jethro Carr www.jethrocarr.com

Paul Brislen wrote:

I've been told the best alternate landing place is in the South Island - Nugget Point, near Tiwai Aluminium Smelter - as it's the shortest route to Australia. That would be great I think.

Daft idea. Unless you're actually in Southland, it's a long way around ... and across a major fault/subduction zone. (The third largest earthquake in NZ's history (7.8) occurred in that part of the world (Dusky Sound) ... in 2009 ... plus a 7.2 in Fiordland in 2003.) It would also be putting over a thousand kilometres of idiots with backhoes and post hole diggers, not to mention a minor waterway known as Cook Strait between the cable landing and the bulk of the population it would serve. -- don

On 11/11/2012 4:08 p.m., Richard Hector wrote:

...

Paul Brislen wrote:

...

I've been told the best alternate landing place is in the South Island - Nugget Point, near Tiwai Aluminium Smelter - as it's the shortest route to Australia. That would be great I think. Daft idea. Unless you're actually in Southland, it's a long way around ... and across a major fault/subduction zone. (The third largest earthquake in NZ's history (7.8) occurred in that part of the world (Dusky Sound) ... in 2009 ... plus a 7.2 in Fiordland in 2003.)

It would also be putting over a thousand kilometres of idiots with backhoes and post hole diggers, not to mention a minor waterway known as Cook Strait between the cable landing and the bulk of the population it would serve. For the primary cable, that makes perfect sense. But for a redundant backup, don't you want to be approaching as much of the country as

On 10/11/12 12:34, Don Stokes wrote: practical from the opposite side?

The only Nugget Pt I can find is on the opposite side of the island from Australia, though - closer to Dunedin than Tiwai Pt.

For real redundancy, though, how about bypassing Australia and going for South Africa - about the same distance away as San Francisco :-) Add in links to Chile/Argentina, and form a Southern Ring?

There is the small matter of a large field of icebergs and glaciers in the way of all the short paths to South Africa. The Chile/Argentina link has better prospects, though the shortest path still encounters the floating iceberg problems. AYJ

I'm told the Chilean option is fraught with political problems but that rather than landing in the US, Panama or Tijuana are both large landing sites... I'm agnostic - I don't care where we go just so long as we start building stuff. I'm hoping we'll see something get off the ground in the next couple of years, otherwise any future connections will simply be from here to Sydney and we'll end up as a subsidiary of Australia for the rest of time. I'm not sure I could handle that. -----Original Message----- From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Pieter De Wit Sent: Sunday, 11 November 2012 8:29 p.m. To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable On 11/11/2012 17:50, TreeNet Admin wrote:

On 11/11/2012 4:08 p.m., Richard Hector wrote:

...

...

...

I've been told the best alternate landing place is in the South Island - Nugget Point, near Tiwai Aluminium Smelter - as it's the shortest route to Australia. That would be great I think. Daft idea. Unless you're actually in Southland, it's a long way around ... and across a major fault/subduction zone. (The third largest earthquake in NZ's history (7.8) occurred in that part of

Paul Brislen wrote: the world (Dusky Sound) ... in 2009 ... plus a 7.2 in Fiordland in 2003.)

It would also be putting over a thousand kilometres of idiots with backhoes and post hole diggers, not to mention a minor waterway known as Cook Strait between the cable landing and the bulk of the population it would serve. For the primary cable, that makes perfect sense. But for a redundant backup, don't you want to be approaching as much of the country as

On 10/11/12 12:34, Don Stokes wrote: practical from the opposite side?

The only Nugget Pt I can find is on the opposite side of the island from Australia, though - closer to Dunedin than Tiwai Pt.

For real redundancy, though, how about bypassing Australia and going for South Africa - about the same distance away as San Francisco :-) Add in links to Chile/Argentina, and form a Southern Ring?

There is the small matter of a large field of icebergs and glaciers in the way of all the short paths to South Africa. The Chile/Argentina link has better prospects, though the shortest path still encounters the floating iceberg problems.

Add to that the fact that they have 0 bandwidth to anywhere.... :) SAT2 cable was full, iirc and SAT3 only linked to India etc up the west coast. Pieter _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

On 11/11/2012 9:36 PM, Tony Wicks wrote:

1. All major cable systems in in this country are commercial, this means they must generate a return for the shareholders at some point.

This thread started with the premise that there is value for the nation in having geographic diversity, and recognizing this is not likely to arise from a purely commercially driven design, the Government maybe should be involved to offset additional costs in order to make this happen.

2. It is pointless bringing a cable into a landing station anywhere that does not have significant terrestrial fibre path available. As it stands it is not uncommon for current transit providers to only pick up from Northcote as Whenuapai has only Telecom/Chorus, TelstraClear and Vector fibre available. Some of the suggested landing sites wouldn't even have existing access to dial-up !

My feeling was (not being an expert on this clearly) that landing a cable from Sydney somewhere in the Waikato would be workable and probably provide enough diversity. It can pass right through Hamilton, at which there's enough fiber. Also this is pretty much the population center of NZ so from a capacity stand point it works well too. In theory national providers have enough capacity between Southern Cross in Auckland and the Waikato to feed the >50% of the population that's south of there, so that capacity is there, it's just now more traffic would potentially flow in the reverse from the Waikato to feed the <50% of the population in AKL.

Points 1,2,3 and 4 mean unless the government is going to invest two or three of hundred million (with no expected commercial return) into a new cable the only viable landing point for cables in into Auckland

That would be the idea, maybe not 200-300 million though, that's a lot! The thought of NZ being wiped offline by a catastrophic event may seem bit fantastic, but it would be really really bad news if it happened. A few days may not be the end of the world, but weeks or months could be be seriously damaging.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/11/2012 14:22, Kris Price wrote:

My feeling was (not being an expert on this clearly) that landing a

cable from Sydney somewhere in the Waikato would be workable and probably provide enough diversity. It can pass right through Hamilton, at which there's enough fiber. Also this is pretty much the population center of NZ so from a capacity stand point it works well too. In theory national providers have enough capacity between Southern Cross in Auckland and the Waikato to feed the >50% of the population that's south of there, so that capacity is there, it's just now more traffic would potentially flow in the reverse from the Waikato to feed the <50% of the population in AKL. Just to clear up one thing, the area including and north of the line between Hamilton and Tauranga contains over half of the population. The "Golden Triangle" of Auckland-Hamilton-Tauranga is 49%, with the minor centres plus Whangarei contributing more. So landing to Hamilton would get you a huge portion of the population provided there's good connectivity (I don't actually know what the situation is) through to Tauranga. The "Golden Triangle" also provided 57% of national population growth over the last decade, and that is likely to continue. - -- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlCgVFAACgkQTdEtTmUCdpzGwgCdHrIhEgdaAP5xc3j7+SEbO7A1 y5wAn06zeLxoXZF/yAr1kJo53shoXNuu =UBZM -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Friday, November 9, 2012, Ben Aitchison wrote:

But I suppose as far as backup goes we only need to get to Australia.

That's certainly the story I've been selling. Now an NZ to AUS cable might not work on economic grounds but technically we could pick up transit in AUS.

Dean

Good article. Another related that Christchurch, and a couple of other earthquakes (Haiti, Japan) raised is just out critical the mobile networks are after such events. Arguably far more important than any other. Keeping the mobile networks up really needs to be front and center, forget about our stringent requirements for keeping a POTS service up to a collapsed building, we need stringent requirement for ensuring our mobile networks remain up. This maybe becomes more relevant if we're heading into a future with lot of UFB provided tails to mobile towers (i.e. all networks sharing the same common access). Regards Kris On 11/9/2012 5:09 PM, Paul Brislen wrote:

I wrote about exactly this issue (volcanoes and redundancy) this week:

http://tuanz.org.nz/blog/2012/11/8/critical-infrastructure

The two landing sites are within 15km of each other and while the risk of a volcanic eruption is low (actually it's unknown - we assume it's low) the damage from such an event would be devastating.

-----Original Message----- From: nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz [mailto:nznog-bounces(a)list.waikato.ac.nz] On Behalf Of Sam Silvester Sent: Friday, 9 November 2012 5:04 p.m. To: Kris Price Cc: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Labour alleges failure of Southern Cross Cable

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 1:20 PM, Kris Price wrote:

...

Grandstanding, yes. But then again, isn't there actually a real problem here? With both spans of Southern Cross landing within a stones throw of each other (~30 kms), and on the northern side of a tiny little peninsula from the rest of the country, to boot. Isn't there any concern that a Christchurch like event in Auckland could damage both spans, knocking NZ offline for a couple of months while ships were tasked to repair them?

Without especially agreeing nor disagreeing with that - I suspect it's a case of not making perfection the enemy of the good.

True geographic diversity is expensive especially in terms of submarine cables. I'd contend (happy for somebody to jump in here if my instinct is wrong) is that whilst it's shitty when multiple cables get cut due to those kind of events, even having two cables on a similar path can be good because it's less likely one administrative group will take down the whole system.

I suspect the number of human error or hardware failures far exceed the number of earthquakes and the like.

Sam _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog