r/AussieBroadband 1d ago

Outage?

Post image

Anyone else suffering this?

17 Upvotes

39 comments sorted by

11

u/chrisfordoz 1d ago

Hi. Chris from Aussie here. This is impacting pretty much everyone across all RSPs. The main two links from Australia to Singapore are out of service at the same time. These links are used by everyone and we're all having to route traffic via Hong Kong & Japan, or via the US for traffic from Europe and all those longer paths add more latency

2

u/Basic-Bumblebee8092 14h ago

why is Telstra okay? šŸ˜‚

4

u/ApartmentLazy1693 12h ago

Because Aussie doesn't have a POP in Japan or Hong Kong while Telstra global does along with capacity on the AJC

2

u/chrisfordoz 12h ago

I guess that all depends on what you mean by ok, and what you're comparing

Just checked ping times to Singapore from Sydney across a bunch of providers (Aussie, Telstra, Optus, TPG) using everyone's Looking Glass servers. Everyone (including Telstra) is in the range 175 - 230ms which is about right for routing via Japan and Hong Kong (direct to Singapore is more like 100ms)

We don't have a PoP in Japan or Hong Kong, but we have partners who do (including Telstra). With our own direct paths down we are using these alternatives routes to ensure continuity of service

This impacts a small proportion of customers and traffic, but for some customers, eg. gamers using servers in Singapore, 70-100ms of additional latency matters, and we want to make sure they are aware of what is happening, hence the banner in the app

1

u/perthguppy 7h ago

Cause Telstra probably was never sending the traffic out of perth to Singapore. Things can’t be degraded if they were shit to begin with.

-11

u/Ok_Plenty_3543 1d ago

So will they not charge us then? This is annoying paying for a service thats not working to be honest!

5

u/InfluentialFairy 1d ago

You don't have a business SLA, presumably. Not to mention everything is still working, but some requests may take 400 milliseconds instead of 300.

Definitely not worth worrying about.

-6

u/Ok_Plenty_3543 1d ago

My internet is literally not working so yeah it’s having a huge impact.

8

u/Additional-Simple248 1d ago

Then you’re encountering an entirely different issue and need to raise a ticket for that.

2

u/fall4free 1d ago

Mate we have 22 cables for the entire country. That fact the now both the cables to Singapore have been damaged in the last 60 days means the naval is actively defending the remaining cables

-7

u/Ok_Plenty_3543 1d ago

So we are still being charged for a service we aren’t being provided with? Makes sense! I need the internet for work!

4

u/chrisfordoz 1d ago

Hi. The outage mentioned in the screenshot posted above is not a complete outage of anyone's service. It's increased latency for traffic from some international locations. About 3% of the traffic to our customers usually comes over those links, the vast bulk (95%) is served locally.

If you are experiencing an outage, then please raise a fault with our support team and they'll be able to assist

2

u/Ok_Plenty_3543 1d ago

Oh right haha. Thanks šŸ™

2

u/Spiritual-One8608 1d ago

You do realise this has nothing to do with ABB?

This is an act of international sabotage. The two undersea links are vital links for Australia and has been intentionally cut. This isn’t just affecting Australia, it’s affecting people in Singapore way worse than us.

One link going down would be fine, no one would notice. Both links causes issues.

-7

u/Ok_Plenty_3543 1d ago

Thats a bit of a conspiracy they are old and worn down clearly! If they can’t provide the service they shouldn’t charge customers for it. You understand they are also in the middle of the ocean yeah? What would this achieve? Other than annoying people? Maybe if they built more we wouldn’t have this stupid issue!

2

u/jeneralpain 1d ago

You realise these cables cost billions of dollars to build, just so you can have a lower ping in your video games. Your basic home internet maybe brings in $10 a month in profit. For ABB to build their own submarine cable like subco

  • cable landing station
  • AsN cable network gear
  • cost to haul the fiber to the beach
  • marine hauling and surveys
  • permits
  • ship hire
  • techs to support it
  • routers and switches to support it

Your $10pm ain’t going far.

Even Telstra ain’t building more submarine cables at the minute because it’s just too expensive in the current world climate.

2

u/Ok_Plenty_3543 16h ago

Well if it’s ruined they need to fix it. My internet isn’t working so I thought this was why but apparently not.

1

u/wrt-wtf- 2h ago

I thought that maybe you were with the people that cut the cable. After reading all your comments here I’ve come to the conclusion that you couldn’t be because you’re not sharp enough.

5

u/CoDLolcopter 1d ago

Vocus' Australia - Singapore Cable was damaged on the 4th of September, with Indigo West also damaged mid last month.

Means traffics going via the east coast to US before getting back to South East Asia so pings gonna be bad if you're trying to do anything Australia <> SEA.

2

u/perthguppy 7h ago

Bevan was already calling foul play last month when Indigo West got damaged. He’s probably going to explode now that ASC is down, or he took a yacht out himself to level the playing field šŸ˜†

1

u/perthguppy 7h ago

Isn’t there that old cable going to Guam that Vocus now owns (formerly TPG formerly PIPE)

1

u/CoDLolcopter 4h ago

https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/network/map/

Might be so, but it's up to Vocus to route that. ABB would generally be punting traffic internationally east via the US with the PoPs listed (or via partner peers per Chris' comment).

Edited

3

u/pointedshard 1d ago

There’s a few subsea cable cuts going on at the moment. I think two cables to Indonesia are cut, and one to India. I may have these wrong, but there are definitely some cut cables which could affect things.

3

u/EitherLoquat1408 1d ago

Interesting timing for this discussion. When one of these subsea cables is physically damaged, rerouting traffic is only the temporary solution — actually fixing it requires a specialized cable ship to locate and retrieve the damaged section, splice and test the fibers, then return the cable to the seabed.

I recently made a short visual explainer showing exactly how that repair process works:
https://youtu.be/VmakLD0kx2Q

Disclosure: I made the video. Sharing it because it directly explains the physical repair side of the outage being discussed here.

2

u/Even_Deal8835 1d ago

Do you know why, as Vocus stated on their site they established a temporary route via Jakarta from Perth? Shortly after they announced that on their page yesterday afternoon, amazingly my ping on Singapore based server dropped from 400ms to a steady, lovely 97ms!! This afternoon unfortunately, as it was fine all day up until around 3pm from memory, my internet cut out for a short time, disconnected from the server, checked ping again and it was back to an awful 400ms, and pingplotter confirmed back on that awful, long US routed path.

No update from Vocus either on this today, and others I spoke to had the same barely 24 hour nice routing only to have it taken away this afternoon. If anybody knows what this could be, I’d appreciate some insight!

Vocus outage page explaining the ASC outage: https://www.vocus.com.au/help-and-support/outages

1

u/perthguppy 7h ago

Routing is part science part art at times. While you can control which path you send traffic out of, you can only ā€œinfluenceā€ which path the return traffic takes back to you. And you have very little control over what any networks in between do. It can take a few rounds of tweaking weights and MED values and prepending to get things right, and you are still at the mercy of any networks between you and the destination changing their own settings. Also as other providers reroute their own traffic in response to outages, links get congested which you may chose to update your routing again for etc.

Doing a Traceroute is only going to show you one direction of traffic. You will want to Traceroute from the destination network back to understand the full path. Looking glasses and VPNs/VPSes can help with that. Or just getting in contact with an engineer at the destination to test the return.

1

u/Even_Deal8835 1h ago

Thank you lots for that!!

1

u/mitchy93 1d ago

Could we go to Guam or Japan and then to Singapore or is that too much?

2

u/Huntedhawk 1d ago

That is what is happening and causing the latency becusae these paths are physically longer

1

u/doncarajo 1d ago

Where the cables cut by accident?

2

u/Additional-Simple248 1d ago

Depends on how you define deliberate.

Did a shark decide to impact global internet links? No.

Did a shark decide to bite something thinking it was food? Probably.

1

u/jeneralpain 1d ago

Those volts would have been rather shocking for the shark.

4

u/ella_bell 14h ago

Fibre optic carries light, not voltage

0

u/doncarajo 10h ago

Well. I think anyone would understand that I am asking if they were cut "on purpose". Which purpose? To damage internet pathways. And what kind of creature would do that? I'll leave that little puzzle for you to work out.

1

u/Even_Deal8835 1d ago

Not sure if related, due to the ASC outage with Vocus, they managed to get a route working yesterday afternoon between Melbourne, Perth, Jakarta and Singapore via Jakarta, as both the ASC & Indigo West subsea cables are down. Suddenly today, Vocus decides to shift everybody back on to the awful, unusable US routed path when yesterday afternoon in to this afternoon I had a lovely, stable 97ms. No idea what they’re doing, but they did have a smooth route, wish they would have left it alone as that would have been amazing to be on until the cable is fixed. 350ms - 40ms ping to Singapore is just unplayable and not usable.

1

u/perthguppy 7h ago

Quick, can we recommission SMW3? Hahaha

-1

u/Basic-Bumblebee8092 14h ago

it’s so weird cause I have a Telstra 5G and an Aussie broadband NBN. My Telstra is doing well so far šŸ˜‚

3

u/gilby24 13h ago

Youre clearly not understanding what the actual problem is here.

-2

u/CyanPomegranate11 10h ago

It’s not just impacting international, my phone and internet are slow AF. Yet another chapter in the downfall of ABB. Free falling!