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The Lowdown

"The most secure internet route"

There’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the AAG (Asia America Gateway) cable is yet again having issues after having two months of repair work in October to December 2011.

The good news is that it appears that the problem should be fixed shortly with Friday, 13th January 2012 as the estimated completion date. Ironic date.

How does this affect me?

If you’re living in the Southeast Asian region, you may be experiencing slower than normal performance to US, North Asia and Europe (that basically covers half the known world and perhaps more than 90% of the internet).

The Official Statement

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) wishes to announce that our consortium members have detected a fault on the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable network between Tungku in Brunei and Lantau in Hong Kong linking Malaysia to the United States and North Asia. Immediate restoration works are underway from Saturday, 7 January 2012 and are expected to be completed on Friday, 13 January 2012.

TM has taken pro-active steps by optimizing our networks to reduce congestion, thus, minimizing the impact to our users.

However, despite these initiatives, customers using Internet nationwide may experience some degree of service degradation during this exercise.

Internet users may experience some degree of service degradation such as slow browsing and high latency while accessing international websites mainly hosted in the United States (US), North Asia and Europe. Customers using Virtual Private Network (VPN) and other critical business applications linked to US, North Asia and Europe may also experience some level of service degradation.

TM shall provide necessary updates on the progress of the restoration works, and would like to elicit feedback from our customers on the quality of service experienced.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused and would like to assure customers that we are undertaking all necessary measures to ensure that customers experience uninterrupted service.

We wish to thank our customers for their understanding and patience during the affected period. Should you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to email us at help@tm.com.my for TM Phone and Broadband customers and unifi@tm.com.my for UniFi customers.

It appears that the AAG fault that happened way back in early October has been finally restored after almost 2 months of repair. This probably explained the high loss and connectivity problems yesterday which was experienced by Malaysian users (and perhaps other users in the SE Asian region who are members of the AAG) as they were rerouting it back through the AAG. The problem appeared to disappear late yesterday and currently we aren’t observing any degradation in speeds.

Quoting a recent tweet from TM:

So be prepared to face some slowdown while connected to servers hosted in the US, North Asia and Europe.

Following a tweet from @TMcorp, the repairs are expected to progress between 23-29 October. Customers are expected to face service degradation while accessing servers in… well, everywhere else.

The original tweet as follows:

Cable faults on AAG will b repaired by consortium mbrs frm 23-29Oct. Cust may exp svc degradn when accessg cntnt hosted in US,North Asia&EU.

So your question’s “Why would it take so long?” Quoting them again:

Cos it takes time for our consortium mmbrs to get to the loc u c,as d loc of d affected cble is situated somewhere far.

Update:
A new tweet about a temporary solution.

While consortium mmbrs work 2 restore d AAG cable, traffic r being diverted 2 other alt routes via North Asia&EU to alleviate d congestion.

Cheers!

Faulty cables detected affecting internet traffic to the US as announced here.

Those of us in the Asia Pacific region may be experiencing slower than normal speeds to US and Europe because of the recent earthquake. As a great number of cables run to Japan before heading across the Pacific to the US, any earthquake in the region will tend to sever major internet cables.

Report from Telekom Malaysia:

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) wishes to inform our customers that TM and its consortium members have identified that the earthquake occurred in Japan earlier today has affected Japan – US Cable Network (JUCN) and Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) cable networks linking Malaysia to The United States of America (USA) and Hong Kong (HK).

Customers using Internet services nationwide may experience some degree of service degradation such as slow browsing and high latency while accessing international websites hosted in the USA, Europe and North Asia. Customers using Virtual Private Network (VPN) and other critical business applications linked to USA, Europe and North Asia may also experience some level of service degradation. Meanwhile, to alleviate the problem, the traffic has been diverted and managed effectively to ease the situation.

We will make further announcements on the progress of the restoration works and TM apologizes for any inconvenience caused by the disruption. We would like to assure our customers that all necessary measures is being taken to restore the services as soon as possible.

As we reported a couple of weeks ago, SMW4 will be undergoing maintenance.

Source: TM Announcements

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) wishes to announce that its consortium members have detected cable faults on the South East Asia Middle East Western Europe (SMW4) submarine cable network linking Malaysia to Europe (EU). The consortium will be carrying out repair works on site on Sunday, 13 February 2011 and the works are expected to be completed on Thursday, 17 February 2011.

TM has taken pro-active steps to minimize service degradation by diverting traffic to other networks to reduce congestion, thus, minimizing the impact to our users.

However, despite these initiatives, customers using Internet, data and telephony services nationwide may experience some degree of service degradation during the restoration process.

Internet users may experience slow browsing and high latency while accessing international websites hosted in the Europe, United States and North Asia. Customers using Virtual Private Network (VPN) and other critical business applications linked to Europe, the United States and North Asia may also experience some level of service degradation.  Meanwhile, for telephony customers using TM International Direct Dial (IDD) and Toll Free telephony services, a mitigation plan has been implemented to eliminate the impact of congestion.

TM shall provide necessary updates on the progress of the restoration works, and would like to elicit feedback from our customers on the quality of service experienced.

We apologize for any inconveniences caused by this disruption, whilst at the same time, would like to assure customers that we are undertaking all necessary measures to ensure that customers experience uninterrupted service.

There will be maintenance works carried out on the SEA-ME-WE-4 submarine cable in the 2nd week of February and the work is expected to complete within 1 week. During this time, they may be slightly slower access to European locations if you’re in SE Asia.

The announcement is as follows from Business Video News

AMMAN – Internet users in the Kingdom are likely to witness a “slight” slowdown in connectivity speed in mid-February due to maintenance work on the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable, according to the Jordan Telecom Group (JTG).

“Maintenance of the optic fibre submarine cable system will start during the second week of February. No major disruptions are expected, but there is a possibility that Internet speed will slow down,” Raslan Diranieh, chief financial officer of the JTG, told The Jordan Times over the phone yesterday.

He added that Jordan, along with other countries in the region, will be affected by maintenance work on the cable, which links South East Asia to Europe via the Indian Sub-Continent and the Middle East with terminal stations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.

Work on the cable is scheduled to last for one week, according to Diranieh, who noted that the JTG already has plans in place to move the traffic on the cable to other cables, as the JTG relies on five routes for Internet connectivity and international calls.

The $500 million SEA-ME-WE 4 submarine cable system spans approximately 20,000 kilometres, comprising the main backbone across the Eastern and Western worlds plus the extension links in various countries, according to the project’s website.

Last week, Reliance Globalcom, a division of Reliance Communications, conducted maintenance work on the FLAG Europe Asia undersea fibre-optic cable. The maintenance, which lasted for eight hours, had no impact on international calls or Internet services, Diranieh said.

Source: TM Malaysia

There is a reported fault affecting connections to the US for Malaysian users:

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) wishes to inform its Internet services customers we have detected some faults affecting the Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable network linking Malaysia to the United States (U.S).

Hence, customers using Internet services nationwide may experience some degree of service degradation such as slow browsing and high latency while accessing international websites hosted in the U.S. Customers using Virtual Private Network (VPN) and other critical business applications linked to the U.S. may also experience some level of service degradation. Meanwhile, to alleviate the problem, the traffic is being managed effectively to ease the situation.

Restoration works are currently in progress and we will make further announcements on the progress later.

TM apologizes for any inconvenience caused by the disruption but would like to assure customers that it is undertaking all necessary measures to restore the service to our customers as soon as possible.

TM wishes to thank its customers for their understanding and patience during the affected period. Should you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to email us at help@tm.com.my for TM fixed line and Streamyx customers and unifi@tm.com.my for UniFi customers.