Onsight Data

December 19, 2008, 2:01 PM

Internet and voice traffic to much of the Middle East and south Asia has been disrupted by the overnight loss of three major cables spanning the Mediterranean.

According to a notice from France Telecom, the three provisioning cables linking Sicily to Egypt were lost within about 40 minutes of one another Friday morning (local time). A France Telecom-owned maintenance ship will be dispatched to inspect the site within a few hours. Until then, it's not known what might have caused the cuts.

The three cables involved carry about 75% of telecom traffic to the region. The release states that much traffic between Europe and Asia is being re-routed through the US. Internet service seems to be most affected in Jordan, when it's estimated that connectivity is down by 50%. Estimates given for voice-service disruptions indicate that the hardest-hit countries so far are Maldives (100% out of service), India (82% out of service), Qatar (73%), Djibouti (71%), and United Arab Emirates (68%). Anecdotal reports also suggest that Egypt's widely affected as well.

The Internet Traffic Report at press time showed, as seen in the chart pictured (live view available), that traffic's certainly down and packet loss is up.

It should go without saying that fixing a fiberoptic cable at the bottom of the sea isn't as easy as swapping one strand of CAT5 for another under your desk, but some may be surprised to hear how exposed such cables often are. Many simply lie on the seabed and are buried only by whatever silt or debris collects over them. That certainly speeds up the process of getting to them when necessary, but if a cable is snagged by something dragging along the bottom (e.g., an anchor from a ship heading for the nearby Port of Alexandria), trouble can result.

At least one of the cables cut, the $500 million, 19,000 km, 1.28 Tbps SEA-ME-WE-4 stretching between France and Singapore, was one of the two cables involved the last time this happened, back in late January. That well-studied outage affected much the same area and, though storms in the region were suspected of having caused debris or an abandoned ship's anchor to sever the cables, no cause was ever identified. Four other significant cables were cut or damaged in the general region at about the same time, leading to much concern over the fragility of the Interwebs.

The other affected cables are SEA-ME-WE-3 (an earlier cable from the same 16-nation consortium, which took up much of the load during the January outage) and FLAG, a newer and supposedly more resilient cable.

France Telecom representatives currently think that SEA-ME-WE-4 could be fixed by Christmas Day, and that things should be getting back to normal by New Year's, marine weather permitting. Meanwhile, users around the world may see some congestion as traffic is re-routed.

By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews

November 24, 2008, 6:49 PM

The public comments period has officially ended for the NTIA's consideration of requiring domain name servers within the Internet's root zone to, at long last, encrypt their communications. Could there really be any opposition?

For well over a decade, the Internet has had available to it a security measure called DNSSEC, that would enable DNS hosts to request that communications between each other be encrypted, using public key cryptography. That way, all DNS messages could be traced back to a verifiable source, conceivably thwarting any possibility of a cache poisoning nightmare on the order of the one that security research Dan Kaminsky warned about last summer.

As with all major upgrades to a platform infrastructure, the big problem is rolling out changes in a way that's downwardly compatible with the older system. With a security upgrade, that's a problem because in any situation where security is an option, admins may choose the easiest system to control, and malicious users will always exploit the insecure option.

But last month, Microsoft revealed it planned to support DNSSEC with its next versions of Windows, including Windows 7. That could be a major boost for the long-standing security option's chances of being integrated into the infrastructure of the Internet, now that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is considering public comments with respect to a proposal to implement DNSSEC at the root zone of the Internet.

"Over the years, a number of vulnerabilities have been identified in the DNS protocol that threaten the accuracy and integrity of the DNS data and undermine the trustworthiness of the system," reads an NTIA statement last month. "In particular, due to technical advances, vulnerabilities in the existing DNS have recently become easier to exploit. Malicious parties may use these vulnerabilities to distribute false DNS information, and to improperly re-direct Internet users. DNSSEC was developed to mitigate these vulnerabilities. Accordingly, the Department is exploring the deployment of DNSSEC at the top level of the DNS hierarchy, known as the root zone."

DNSSEC is not a particularly complex system. If you understand public key cryptography, you know that an unshared private key is used to encrypt communications between entities, but a public key that is a mathematical function of the private one, can decrypt them. The fact that it decrypts them serves as proof that the holder of the private key must have authored the communication, so the public key is shared with everyone. DNSSEC enables a DNS host to request a public key from a DNS server -- something the typical DNS server does not provide.

Conceivably, DNSSEC's biggest potential boon has been its ability to harden the security of IPsec, the encryption of all IP packets between server and client...which typically takes place after their DNS names have been resolved. Microsoft has supported IPsec for some time, and has embraced it with the latest Windows Server 2008. But for IP hosts to make use of it, they have to use some makeshift protocol for exchanging their public keys with each other -- a process that, frankly, looks a little obvious to anyone who happens to be sniffing for such transactions. If DNSSEC were in place, those public keys would be returned by the DNS servers instead, enabling hosts to use IPsec with one another without the unsightly social miscues.

Renton, Wash., October, 13 2008 - Parallels today launched the beta of Parallels® Plesk Control Panel 9.0, the upcoming new version of its popular control panel, used by hosting providers around the world for shared, virtual and dedicated hosting offerings. The solution is designed to simplify the management and administration of websites by automating a large number of tasks, enabling service providers to reduce operating costs and resources while at the same time increasing profitability, efficiency and customer satisfaction. Parallels Plesk Control Panel 9.0 will include more than 100 new features designed to increase ease of use and functionality.

"The new version of Parallels Plesk Control Panel has been specifically developed to meet the evolving demands of our users: service providers, resellers, domain owners, and end-user organizations," said Jack Zubarev, President of Service Provider division, Parallels. "Increased functionality such as a more intuitive interface and full integration with the APS catalog will not only enhance the user experience, but also enable service providers to build more flexibility into their service offerings, helping them increase their revenue streams."

Beta testers will have a preview of the features in greater detail during a live webcast held tomorrow, October 14^th from 1:00pm - 2:00pm EST (10:00am - 11:00am PST). All attendees will be invited to join the beta program. Details and registration are available on our website at http://www.parallels.com/webcasts/.

New features in Parallels Plesk Control Panel include:

• Vista-Style Interface - Version 9 boasts a completely upgraded user interface designed to help users navigate and perform their tasks faster and easier. The most popular and important actions are available right on the user Home Page. Navigating is faster than ever due to the ability to select Resellers, Clients, Domains and Mail accounts via the path bar.

• APS Catalog Integration - Browse web applications packaged in the APS Format and published at www.apsstandard.com/app/ directly from the Parallels Plesk Control Panel. Also, you can add them to the server Application Vault online without the hassles of manual uploading. These applications can be made available to all customers or their distribution can be restricted for provision on a per-user basis, allowing you to conveniently sell the applications according to the hosting plans you provide.

• Resellers Level - Parallels Plesk Control Panel's user hierarchy is enriched with a Reseller level account in version 9. Resellers are given the same capabilities as admin level accounts with the exception of server access. This enables resellers to sign up their own clients and resell web hosting services to them.

• Total Control Backup - Completely revised Backup/Restore functionality provides users with a more powerful and flexible backup solution than ever before. Selective data backup and restoration through is now a comfortable, painless, and fully controllable process. On-the-fly restoration conflicts resolution offers a variety of ways to resolve restoration conflicts prior to actual update of the system, thus guaranteeing success and complete control over the restoration process.

For more information on Parallels Plesk Control Panel, visit: www.parallels.com/products/plesk/

About Parallels - Optimized Computing
Parallels is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and service providers across all major hardware, o company with 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit http://www.parallels.com/.

Onsight Data is pleased to announce that our data center has signed deals with both Verio and Level3 to get a 10G link from each of them in Seattle.

This requires building out fiber paths so the ETA is late October or November time frame. This will bring xeon.onsightdata.com's network uplink capacity to 50Gs.

Seattle, WA (sea01) - 30Gs now going to 50Gs
Internap - 2x 10G
Qwest - 1x 10G
Verio - 1x 10G (coming Q4 2008)
Level3 - 1x 10G (coming Q4 2008)

Primus Telecommunications Canada is opening its newest Internet Data Centre (IDC) in Edmonton, Alberta.

The new facility addresses the demand from local small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) for better IT support by housing and managing mission critical computer server hardware and software assets in the province.

To demonstrate further its commitment to the Alberta market, Primus has added 12 sales employees and five network staff in Edmonton, and seven sales employees in Calgary.

"Our SMB customers have told us that in order to stay competitive, they need to avoid a crisis of complexity - too many IT options and not enough clarity," said AJ Byers, Senior Vice President, Primus Business Services. "With Alberta's economy growing so quickly SMBs need complete solutions that allow them to focus on their core business."

Primus Canada's new, larger sales force will allow the Company to service the majority of the province, allowing SMBs in both urban and suburban settings to take advantage of Primus Business Services' offerings and realize business efficiencies.