Southeast Asian undersea cable suffers major damage

On Wednesday a piece of the Asia-Pacific Cable Network2 (APCN2) undersea optical cable that provides connections between China and Taiwan was damaged. As a result, Internet traffic had to be rerouted onto other undersea cables, and Internet access users in Southeast Asia saw slower connections. While the damage shut down service, customers were soon rerouted to other cables. Owned by a consortium of 26 service providers, the ACPCN2 cable system links Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Japan.

Although the source of the disruption is unknown, a network alarm revealed that the cause was "single point of failure" such as a technical failure or a cable cut. This interruption follows a string of recent incidents. Previously, a network disruption occurred on APCN2 Segment 7 between Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the other APCN2 Segment 1 that connects Singapore and Malaysia. However, sources close to the situation said that these disruptions had minimal impact.

For more:
- PC World has this article [1]

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