02 Jul, 2012 | 7:39 PM | By Doug Madory
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Prior to the recent activation of Internet service to Lebanon via the IMEWE submarine cable, Internet service in Lebanon was labeled the “world’s slowest” due to its dependence on a combination of antiquated submarine cables built in the mid-1990′s and high-latency satellite service. However, as high-speed Internet service via IMEWE expanded in recent months, today’s outage reveals Lebanon’s new dependence on this lone modern connection to the outside world.
For almost three hours today, Lebanon experienced a near complete nationwide Internet outage. Between 16:13 and 18:59 UTC, we observed as many as 842 of the approximately 900 routed prefixes in Lebanon withdrawn from the global routing table, as illustrated in the graphic on the right. During this period of time, we saw almost every routed prefix downstream of incumbent Liban (AS42020) withdrawn. At 17:45 UTC, we saw these networks restored only to be withdrawn once again minutes later.
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In an interview immediately following the restoration of Internet service, Lebanese Minister of Telecommunication, Nicolas Sehnaoui, stated that the outage was a result of unannounced maintenance on the IMEWE cable serving Lebanon and has threatened to file a complaint with the Attorney General of Lebanon against top officials at OGERO, Liban Telecom’s fixed line arm.
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The two graphs below illustrate traceroute measurements into Lebanon through the two largest International internet providers serving the Lebanese market. Like the routing outage graphic above, we observe a near—total cessation of completing traceroute measurements except for a brief restoration of service at 17:45 UTC. The red in the graph on the right is satellite provider, SatGate, (AS30721) coming online to provide backup service.
Just as in the routing data, we can observe a brief restoration of trace-based reachability at around 17:45 UTC before service is lost again. If it does turn out that this outage was caused by maintenance on IMEWE, then it is likely that the networks which survived the outage connected to the Internet using one of the other older cable systems serving Lebanon.
What does it all mean? Lebanon has struggled for years to find the political and technical keys to sustainable Internet growth and stability, and the landing (and activation) of the IMEWE cable has been a major step forward. But today’s outage demonstrates that building provider-level and transport-level diversity are equally important strategic goals. Following worldwide best practices, Lebanon’s banks, businesses, universities, and government offices need to study their connections to the Internet and, if necessary, request that they follow multiple independent paths. A single provider’s temporary difficulties shouldn’t switch off the entire nation.
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