Business | Telecoms
etisalat's new tech to safeguard Net from cable cuts
The next time a ship's anchor cuts through a submarine cable and cuts off internet services in the region, MySpace users in the UAE may still be able to access their sites.
- By Scott Shuey, Chief Business Reporter
- Published: 01:04 March 1, 2008
Dubai: The next time a ship's anchor cuts through a submarine cable and cuts off internet services in the region, MySpace users in the UAE may still be able to access their sites.
According to Ali Amira, the executive vice-president for carrier wholesale at etisalat, the telecom is now using technology by Akamai, a company that manages internet content for companies such as MySpace, the National Basketball Association, and Adobe.
The technology "mirrors," or moves, popular Internet content to local servers, so that information regularly accessed in the UAE would be based locally, instead of on a server in Europe.
In the event that internet connections between the UAE and other parts of the world are cut, some websites here would still be accessible.
"This is our attempt to keep our costumers connected," he said, adding that it won't "totally" restore Internet services if a cable breaks.
Companies that do not use Akamai's technology, and even less-frequently accessed information from those who do, could still be affected.
"Akamai does not mirror or cache all our customers' content," said Robert Blumofe, senior vice-president of Network Operations for Akamai.
"Rather, popular content is pulled to an Akamai server, closer to where the end user is requesting that content, ensuring secure, higher performance delivery of content and applications." The company estimated that it handles 20 per cent of web traffic.
Web pages that require access to a database, such as in the case of an online purchase, could also be effected, even if the site is "popular."
Akamai said its software has a number of techniques to help address these issues when connections are broken. Amiri said the servers which will use the Akamai technology will be located in Jebel Ali.
etisalat said it was just introducing the technology into its system when four submarine cables, some of which provide the UAE's Internet connection to Asia and Western Europe, were cut in late January.
The cuts resulted in some disruptions here in the UAE, but some areas of India suffered massive Internet blackouts. "It helped slightly, but planning for capability really is what helped," he said.
A du spokesperson said via email that the company did not currently have any similar technology in place.
etisalat also said that they were currently working with a consortium of 9 companies to lay another submarine cable that will run from Asia to Western Europe.
The cable, which will be able to handle multi-terabytes of information, should be operational by the fourth quarter of 2009.
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