Connexions? We have connections!

Connexions? Noun, chiefly British: dictionary

What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four hours. Yesterday evening, wandering the Internet was achieved with speeds little better than 56K.

This afternoon? 2.53 Mbps.

At 6.20pm. 'Course things will slow down a tad during the evening as it's peak traffic time hereabouts. Still, that'll do nicely. Test: speed test

Repair of submarine cable systems damaged by earthquakes completed: press release

Connexions? We have connections (yet another update)

Update. Partially restored optic fibre cables:

Flag North Asia Loop, owned by India's Reliance Communications Ltd.; Reach North Asian Loop, owned by Hong Kong's PCCW Ltd. and Australia's Telstra Corp.; Se-Me-We3, owned by a group including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. and France Telecom SA; and APCN and APCN2, owned by operators including China Telecom Corp. and Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Co. A segment of Asia Netcom Corp.'s EAC cable system will be repaired today . . . Ofta did not receive the repair status on the seventh cable, C2C, owned by C2C Group Ltd . . .

Source: Bloomberg

Connexions? Noun, chiefly British: dictionary

During the day it's not too bad, but of an evening . . . of an evening this Netvigator 3MB DSL customer experiences speeds you'd get with a 56k dial-up.

Of an evening, it's been like that since connections were patched in the wake of the earthquake south of Taiwan on 26 December 2006 which damaged and/or severed seven fibre-optic cables.

Today, Mister Bijou did some DSL speedtesting to see what's what -- in the knowledge that connection speeds are affected by time of day (here and there), level of traffic, the local node, computer hardware and software settings, and (probably) the waxing and the waning of the moon. To name but a few.

For those who may be interested, Mister Bijou's operating platform is Windows XP . . . with super-tweaked Internet connection settings.

The tweaking thanks to Speedguide TCP Optimizer. Recommended. But Mac users are out of luck. It's for Windows' users. It's free. More information: Speedguide

Now, speed. The first number is download speed, the second refers to upload speed. The first set of tests were done around 4.30pm (Hong Kong time):

London: 2396/205 kpbs
NYC: 2345/206 kbps
Los Angeles: 2356/208 kpbs
Hong Kong: 1435/531 kpbs
Yokohama: 3091/398 kpbs
Sydney: 774/197 kpbs
Singapore: 3198/518 kpbs

It's the download speeds we are really interested in. They are, all in all, fairly good speeds, excepting Sydney. However, Mister Bijou is puzzled as to why Hong Kong did not come out top.

Now, around 10pm:

London: 37/45 kpbs
NYC: 47/82 kbps
Los Angeles: 62/76 kpbs
Hong Kong: 3027/531 kpbs
Yokohama: 3093/120 kpbs
Sydney: 495/195 kpbs
Singapore: 3193/497 kpbs

Anyway, those are some numbers which show how slow. For London and New York City, a 56k connection and modem would have been sufficient.

Which is a real drag, literally. For the US hosts many of the websites Mister Bijou visits and access to many websites in the UK and continental Europe is routed via the US.

Mister Bijou tried out several speedtesters and got similar results. There are numerous sites for speed testing . . . google 'em. The speedtests above were via: speedtest

Is anyone else experiencing similar slowdowns?

Word is, it will be middle to end of February 2007 before PCCW's Netvigator isp gets back to the DSL high speeds which were previously customary. Further details: Hong Kong Standard.

Happy surfing!

Hong Kong: Legislative Council Questions

Some of the questions (and answers) from the LegCo meeting of Wednesday, 24 January 2007:

LCQ5: Discussion with power companies
LCQ10: Damage on HK's external telecommunications services by earthquake in Luzon Strait
LCQ14: Demolition project of the old Star Ferry Pier clock tower in Central
LCQ15 : Enforcement action against illegal motor racing

Connexions? We have connections (update)

Connexions? Noun, chiefly British: dictionary

It was only after the earthquake off the southern tip of Taiwan on 26 December 2006 severed IDD and Internet links that users hereabouts learned most international telecommunications are routed eastwards along undersea cables through the Luzon Channel and onto (and through) the USA -- regardless of final destination.

For the American security services, this long-established eastbound routing has, since at least post-9/11, proved to be a a mighty useful facility in their so-called War on Terror. How so? Because of the routing of a good chunk of international telecom traffic through continental USA they are able to scan and sniff most such telecom traffic emanating from the Far East, easy-peasy. But I digress.

In the Far East, connections on Ye Olde Internet have been restored.

Yet accessing some web sites can be grindingly slow -- most especially of an evening when local traffic congestion is at its most congested. It doesn't look as if things are going to improve any time soon:

Workers couldn't apply any electrical technologies or dispatch a robot, as the damaged cables are 4,000 meters deep under the water, said John Walters, general manager with Global Marine, one participant in the repair.
It will be a long time before Internet access is fully recovered between Asian and the US as workers are using "technologies of the 19th century to solve problems of the 21st century," Sina.com said today.
Workers have to adopt a method used in the 19th century to identify the location of the slender cables, whose diameter is about 21 centimeters, Walters said.
---
No single cable has been fully repaired till now, Walters said.

Read more? Repair lags over poor equipment, weather: Shanghai Daily Thanks, Gavin!

Connexions? We have connections (bis)

Hmm . . . On second thoughts, the slow connection speeds may be because of that Saddam snuff movie. Who knows how many people on a little island in the South China Sea and Hong Kong are watching it?

Mister B? He's giving the death Pron a miss, thank you very much.

Instead, he'll take the word of that little boy in Heart of Darkness: "Mistah Kurtz -- he dead."

And re-test broadband speed, tomorrow: 1 January 2007.

(This post is further to this previous post.)

Connexions? We have connections

Connexions? Noun, chiefly British.
Hey-ho: dictionary/thesaurus

Whatever. Looks like Ye Olde Internet web access on a liitle island in the South China Sea is back to "Access all Areas".

However, Mister Bijou is accustomed to DSL broadband at high speeds (averaging 2133kbps on a 3 Mbit/s connection) thanks to his finely-tuned machine. PCCW Netvigator is currently delivering speeds at a trifle over a (dial-up) 56kbps.

Mustn't grumble, et cetera.

For broadband speed tests, google.

Van Morrison: Sweet Thing

For the weekend, a guilty pleasure.

Last one of the year. What's it to be? Sweet Thing, from the album Astral Weeks. Van Morrison. Nice video, too.

The vid will, however, take an inordinate amount of time to load for those experiencing post-earthquake telecom disorder: youtube

Hong Kong: The connection has timed out

After Tuesday's undersea earthquake off southern Taiwan, IDD phone services were very quickly re-established. Email, too. But for Internet users in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and a little island in the South China Sea, accessing web sites hosted on Ye Olde Internet outside of one's respective home base has usually achieved the following:

The connection has timed out

Locally, PCCW and Hutchison Global Communications, the two largest telecom companies herabouts, have focused firstly on their business dedicated-line users. No surprise there. But even for residential users, things are marginally better today than they were yesterday: one percent is now five percent successful connections.

Six of the seven undersea data cables that serve Hong Kong are kaput. Four mainland China undersea cables are also kaput. It takes till Tuesday for the cable ships from Singapore and somewhere else to reach the damage zone, before they can even begin the task of repairing one cable and then another.

Even with IDD running and email tickety-boo, Mister Bijou wonders how this communication breakdown will impact on the just-in-time manufacturing output of the Pearl River Delta. Hey! Perhaps they'll eventually have to shut up shop and we will be graced with a New Year that debuts smog-free.

Anyway, all of the above is mindful that Tuesday's Taiwan earthquake occurred on the second anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami. That whatever inconvenience there is hereabouts, is nothing compared to what the people caught up in that 2004 tsunami suffered.

Hong Kong: Earthquake . . . update on the impact on Hong Kong telecomunications

The following is an update by the (Hong Kong Government) Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) as at 11am today (December 28) on the impact on external telecommunication services due to the earthquake near Taiwan on December 26: info.gov.hk

Of note:

Latest Service Status:
Operators have implemented contingency plans and arrange re-routing of the traffic via all other cables which are still in service. At present, voice call services including IDD calls and roaming calls to most of the countries/territories except for Taiwan have nearly resumed normal. However, Internet access to overseas web sites is still congested.

Repairing Status:
Two submarine cable maintenance ships from Singapore and the Philippines are on the way to the scene. Three more ships will depart today.

In general, it requires about five to seven days to repair the cables. However, due to the earthquake, the seabed may have been damaged and there may be further earthquakes that will affect the maintenance work.

Ends/Thursday, December 28, 2006
Issued at HKT 12:39

According to RTHK, Hong Kong is served by seven undersea cables, six have been knocked out.

Update. Oh, the latest OFTA report confirms six out seven . . .

Hong Kong: Earthquake. . . Netvigator?

Statement about the impact on telecommunications of the Taiwan earthquake already from (among others) Hong Kong's Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) and Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank (HSBC).

Here is the statement on the front page Hong Kong's largest Internet service provider, PCCW's Netvigator:

[This Space Intentionally Left Blank]

Yeah, Mister Bijou previously mentioned it in a previous post: "Nothing whatsover, however, on the front page of Hong Kong biggest ISP Netvigator, except the usual service promotions. No surprise there, though."

But Mister B thought it deserved its own dedicated post.

Oh, and Wikipedia is inaccessible. Time to go to bed.


Update. Please read Comments.
Thank you.

Hong Kong: Earthquake . . .HSBC online banking services

HSBC Online Services:

Customers may experience problems in accessing online services

Following the recent earthquake near Taiwan yesterday evening (December 26), submarine cables that serve phone and other telecommunications needs such as the Internet for residential and corporate customers in Hong Kong have experienced significant disruptions. Under this situation, customers may encounter difficulty in accessing Business Internet Banking, HSBCnet and eReceivable Finance services. Our own efforts and efforts of our third-party suppliers will continue until all services are fully restored.

If you encounter delays in using online services and have urgent or critical transactions today, please submit your instructions through alternative means. Should you require any assistance, please call our service hotline on 2748-8222.

I suppose a little island in the South China Sea's three ATMs belonging to HSBC are working, aren't they? That's something to discover after the sun comes up.

Hong Kong: Earthquake . . . OFTA statement

(Hong Kong's) OFTA Statement on Telecommunications Services Affected by Submarine Cable Damages Caused by Earthquakes near Taiwan:

In response to public and media enquiries about external telecommunications services after the earthquakes near Taiwan last night, the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) confirmed today (December 27, Wednesday) that external telecommunications services in Hong Kong, including Internet access to overseas websites, IDD calls and roaming calls had been affected by the earthquakes.

"Due to a series of earthquakes south-southeast of Gaoxiong, Taiwan at around 1226 UTC on 26 December 2006, a number of submarine cables passing over the earthquake region were damaged. According to the reports submitted to OFTA by operators, telecommunications users have been facing severe congestion in a number of external services," said an OFTA spokesperson.

Because of the extent of the damages, the congestion is expected to continue for a few days. The operators are now taking emergency measures to maximize the throughput of the existing facilities and using alternative routings to pass the traffic through other directions.

"Operators of the submarine cables have also arranged urgent repairs of the damaged cables. It is expected that some of the submarine cables will take at least five days to repair. OFTA has been liaising closely with all external telecommunications service operators and monitoring the progress," added the spokesperson.

She also advised the general public to minimize non-essential Internet access to overseas websites and not to repeat making non-urgent overseas calls immediately after failures on the call attempts.

Office of the Telecommunications Authority
27 December 2006

Nothing whatsover, however, on the front page of Hong Kong biggest ISP Netvigator, except the usual service promotions. No surprise there, though.

Hong Kong: Earthquake -- on-line is mostly off-line

Websites hosted in Hong Kong are working, as is to be expected. Those include Hong Kong Government, Hong Kong Observatory and Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK). Also up and running is "do no evil" google.

And -- as you can see -- yours truly, Mister Bijou, whose blog is hosted by google on one of its (who-knows-where?) server farms.

But google is currently not much good for anything, except to look at. It is unscientific, I know, but Mister Bijou research shows that ninety-nine percent of all links are currently inaccessible via google search and google news.

Direct links? You want some examples? Well, the BBC website is very, very slow. The Guardian front page comes up, eventually. But click on anything on the Guardian's front page and nothing returns. New York Times? Forget it!

Is anyone out there in the outside world able to access Hong Kong websites? For instance, Hong Kong Observatory.

Ah, well, the international bankers, stock traders, accountants, manufacturers, money makers and other wallahs based in Hong Kong are now severely disabled and screaming to high heaven. Which means it should not take too long for data transmissions and normal service "to be resumed as soon as possible" . . . money talks.

Hong Kong: Earthquake affects on-line life

That earthquake off the southeastern coast of Taiwan last night damaged the at least six transnational (or more) sea-bed internet pipes to North America.

Since much of the data traffic to and from a little island in the South China Sea is routed via Hong Kong and North America -- yes, even traffic to UK and Europe -- accessing much of the on-line world is very slow or and most is plain inaccessible.

Email seems to be OK. But life on-line is currently severely curtailed. See you later!

Hong Kong: Earthquake

Radio Television Hong Kong reports:

A pair of powerful earthquakes off the coast of Taiwan sparked warnings of a destructive tsunami possibly hitting the Philippines yesterday evening, but the expected waves did not materialise. The Hong Kong Observatory said the first quake, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, occurred at 8:28 pm., and that its epicentre was over the Luzon Strait, about 97 kilometres south-southeast of Gaoxiong. A second quake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale was recorded about nine minutes after the first. The quakes were felt by many people in southern China and Hong Kong. Several listeners called RTHK to say they had felt a tremor at around 8:37, and the effect was also noticed by at least two RTHK staff members in Broadcasting House.

Broadcasting House? That's Kowloonside, a world away. Ha! The shock waves must have finally dissipated there. For Mister Bijou on a little island in the South China Sea at around 8:37 pm, the earth neither shuddered, shimmied nor shook, earthquakes or other tremblers nothwithstanding.