You may have noticed a few things in the past few days:
1. Very unfortunately, there has been an earthquake in Taiwan
2. ChinesePod just hasn’t been responding quite as promptly to your discussion comments and blog comments.
Well, low and behold, these two are related. For some reason, when we arrived back today from Christmas to answer your comments, queries and screamingly urgent questions, we couldn’t access the internet! (Luckily we have a few ChinesePodders who are overseas who can do things like post this blog entry and answer urgent emails!). Apparently there are some important wires that were disrupted in the quake, thus disrupting our internet connection.
We hope that you’ll be able to answer each others questions in the meantime and we’ll be back as soon as we can.
-Colleen
Your link refers to an earthquake that took place in March 2002??
Hi Colleen,
aren’t you right now enjoying your well-deserved Hawaii vacation (after a perfect Saturday Show!)?
CPod works perfectly here - much unlike the Chinese literature pages my wife craves for…
Hi, Andrew, yes it appears that they got the link wrong. However there was an earthquake yesterday of the south coast of Taiwan. If you look in the general asia-pacific area of the BBC news, you can also see that communications have been disrupted due to damage to undersea cables.
The earthquake measured 6.4 - 7.2 depending on which source you look at. Fortunately there have been very few casualties.
Andrew - Wow, I must have been too relaxed on vacation and not checked the date! Bu Hao Yisi! Thanks for pointing that out:)
-Colleen
Hey Mike, get your arse over here and tell us the earthquake didn’t hurt you. Oh, right, maybe you can’t get on the net either. We’ll have to wait.
I didn’t know about this earthquake until now, I should watch the news more often.
I just got connectwed after most of the day without. We haven’t been able to fcall Taiwan either. The earthquake happened off the south coast of Taiwan. There were a couple of unfortunate casualties, but nothing near where Mike is. I think it’s safe to assume that he is OK.
Ken Carroll
The internet access thing is a bit strange…some of my friends in Taiwan have access and some don’t.
I also tried calling a friend in the south, but have been unable to get through since yesterday. But as Ken mentioned there have only been 2 confirmed casualties, but i think that was in Pingtung. My friend tends to be in Kaohsiung.
It’s clogged up the internets as far southwest of Taiwan as Singapore.
Most of the chinese Web is cut out from the rest of the world today.
It’s funny to see what a “small earthquake” in a so fortunately quiet time of the year can do to show chinese technological vulnerability.
I thought there was something wrong with my firewall, as it hasn’t been showing any activity. This news may solve the mystery, though I don’t mean to imply anything good from such a tragedy.
It also shows another reason to have portable (offline) solutions.
Well, everyone have a safe and Happy New Year!
I hope all of our friends in Taiwan are fine. The number of casualties have been a few, fortunately very different from the last earthquake a couple of years ago.
TWO ROADS - I got to practice my Chinese today, after calling up my internet provider and hearing that something had gone wrong in Taiwan (I had yet to figure out why), I asked if it was all of China, and when I was told yes, something something Beijing, I subsequently said well, if it’s the WHOLE country then well there wasn’t anything to do.
But when she kinda apologized, but said it wasn’t the company’s fault (the largest China telecom) I kinda flipped. In a very nice manner (depending on one’s point of view) I told her that they should have had a backup route through Singapore. I told her that in my former company the internet was mission-critical and that yes we had capacity out two separate roads and data-centers in two different parts of the country. Umm I also might have mentioned something about China being a girly-boy country. j/k yah I told her ‘wo kai wan xiao’.
Anyway, can you tell it stressed me out to not have internet today. By this I mean that for me (and lots of others) in China we only have internet for internal sites within China. No Yahoo, Cpod, etc. I only figured out what was happening after looking at Google.com.cn which has servers in China.
And yah I would have probably not sweated all this, but I had two projects I was supposed to email today….but couldn’t. And there were NO alternatives. It’s still EXCEEDINGLY slow, so I’m not sure how they re-routed, maybe this post is bouncing up into space now…the costs of which are probably helping the trade balance.
That’s it, tommorrow’s another day. Nite all.
BACK IN TIME: reaching websites outside of China is slower than a 256k modem right now. Remember the days of having a magazine next to the computer to read while a website loaded, if it could load. Yup, that’s my day today.没有网络真难受，不能做工作，看国外的报纸，没办法用MSN 和 email 联通 等等。我正在等。。生活好像休息一下了。不过没有外地的上网报纸有一个好事，就迫使我读中文的报纸！
I’ve been trying to reach some friends in Taibei. So far no response, but I’m hoping all the world travellers were safely home and not wandering around S. Taiwan.
BTW, a 6.4 - 7.2 quake is not a small one. Remember that the Richter scale is logorithmic. One definitely doesn’t want to be standing in an unreinforced brick house during a 6 or 7 point quake.
I hope none of our CPoddies have experience with a 6 or 7 point temblor. It’s definitely a “where were you when…” moment.
Hi
Well Mike is OK because I was in Tokyo when it struck. Up in Jubei I guess there was a very small shake. Down South yes it must have been pretty severe. There is a large Semiconductor Industrial Park in Tainan and I know many of the tools in the fab automatically shut down.
Just got back to Jubei a few moments ago. Foolish me forgot to take my plug for my computer so I had to limit my computer usage since I was running on battery.
I’ve got some catching up to do now.
Again thanks for thinking of me.
Mike in Jubei
Here is the answer with some new vocabulary :
̨ϲ7.2Ӱ캣£ڵطʹվ.
: earthquake
: optical cable on the seafloor
: block
Here is the answer with some new vocabulary :
台湾南部海域发生7.2级地震，影响海底光缆，导致内地访问国际网站海底光缆
地震: earthquake
海底光缆 : optical cable on the seafloor
海底光缆: block
(sorry for last 2 posts)
Here is the answer with some new vocabulary :
台湾南部海域发生7.2级地震，影响海底光缆，导致内地访问国际网站受阻
地震: earthquake
海底光缆 : optical cable on the seafloor
受阻: block
Lantian says:
“reaching websites outside of China is slower than a 256k modem right now”
256k?? Haha, around here that’s the lightning fast link only available to the lucky few. Now you can feel why we don’t like streaming media without download options. Makes it hard, eh.
Mike, thanks for reporting in, glad you’re ok.
HALF FULL - I guess it’s important that there’s some water. Right now it’s past 1:00 am China time and there’s just barely enough bandwidth to get some email out and sporadic occasions when sites don’t time out. The zh.Cpod site is inaccessible past it’s intial homepage, some Cpod availability though.
My apologies for the long quote below. But right now I’m being forced to read in Chinese, now there’s a reason to learn hanzi!
liu2lan3 浏览 surfing/browsing, as in surfing the web
dai li fu wu qi 代理服务器, as in proxy
Did you know there are 150,000,000 MSN users in China. So although many Chinese are not trying to reach overseas websites like I am, they are extremely upset over their MSN outage. I guess I should be like Aric and get my QQ account instead.
I see that Google News has some coverage, but I can’t read anything past the summary. I wonder if this has made the national US tv news shows, like ABC Tonight, NBC, Nightline? or is this just getting minimal coverage?
The article below isn’t too tough to read, not that I get all of it. It’s very interesting how the Chinese are covering it, and there are some reader questions and responses. I thought some other poddies might be interested in seeing the coverage.
台湾地震受损海底光缆抢修困难
2006-12-28 07:37更新 来源：北京娱乐信报 第1页/共1页 >
点击看大图
雅虎幻灯放映
海缆2-3周恢复 画报：台湾大地震全记录
替代性IM用户猛增 MSN一周后恢复
12月27日：台湾南部海域地震情况追踪
12月27日：地震影响访问国际网站 抢修难度大
背景：第二条中国直通光缆将开建
MSN无法登录！境外网站无法浏览！电子邮箱无法打开……昨天，大部分网民意外地被“困在网中央”。受台湾地震影响，中美海缆、亚太1号等至少6条国际海底通信光缆发生中断，造成我国大陆至台湾地区、美国、欧洲等方向的通信线路大量中断，互联网大面积瘫痪，除我国外，日本、韩国、新加坡网民均受到影响。
中国电信集团公司随后表示，受余震影响，抢修工作遇到较大困难，预计影响还将持续一段时间。
断网事件 表现
上千万MSN用户困在网下
“MSN根本没法登录！”“试了N次了，就是上不去。” 昨天8时，秦先生上网时发现MSN无法登录，随后他询问了一些在线的QQ好友，他们也多表示无法登录MSN。
在一家网络公司上班的李先生也遇到了相同的情况。他和他的同事都发现自己的MSN无法登录，李先生说，他们只能放弃这种平日习惯的联系方式，改用QQ和客户联系，因为电话信号也出现了问题。
在MSN不能正常登录的同时，记者注意到，QQ等国内聊天工具仍能正常使用。国内某即时通讯网站更是称，MSN的不可登录可能会持续1个月时间，并乘人之危大打“拉客战”。
据了解，目前中国的MSN活跃用户至少有1500万。
境外网站无法正常浏览
除了MSN无法登录外，昨天，很多网友浏览境外COM域名也遇到困难，特别是像雅虎、微软等访问量巨大的境外域名网站均不能正常浏览。
据在国内某知名体育媒体工作的付先生称，这样的网络问题其实早在昨天凌晨就出现了，当时他们报社因为联系不上国外的合作图片社，只能紧急向国内图片社求助。
为此，一些网友纷纷采取使用日韩甚至俄罗斯等国的代理服务器的方法浏览网页，但效果并不很好，网友普遍反映速度较慢。
在新加坡留学的董先生说，从当地浏览国内网站还勉强可以。但记者尝试浏览他所提供的新加坡网站时发现，根本无法打开。
断网事件 根源
地震造成多条海底光缆中断
面对突如其来的网络问题，很多网友都不知所措。一时间，网上病毒大爆发等流言纷纷出现。为此，中国电信集团公司昨天中午在其官方网站上解释了事情的真正原因：受台湾以南海域强烈地震影响，中美海缆、亚太1号、亚太2号海缆、FLAG海缆、亚欧海缆、FNAL海缆等多条国际海底通信光缆发生中断，造成附近国家和地区的国际和地区性通信受到严重影响。我国大陆至台湾地区、美国、欧洲等方向通信线路受此影响亦大量中断，国际港澳台互联网访问质量受到严重影响，国际港澳台话音和专线业务也受到一定影响。
断网事件 影响
电子商务率先受到冲击
电子商务方面，易趣受到一定影响。昨天，该公司表示正在积极采取措施补救恢复，公司已于当天发布了相关声明。很多从事电子商务的网民在网上多次疾呼尽快修复。
留学多担心延误申请
由于12月底是美国很多大学的招生截止期，很多学生反映，网络故障令他们无法查询学校信息，同时担心无法按时在线提交申请表格。也有外企及外贸公司员工留言，称MSN及雅虎、Hotmail等邮箱无法登录影响了他们与国外同事或客户的正常沟通。
部分语音长途受影响
长途电话方面，拨打至台湾及美国的话音电路受到影响；至台湾地区及美国、日本的用户租用电路也受到影响。
昨天下午，台湾“中华电讯”台北客服服务人员介绍，海缆中断影响大陆用户在台湾的漫游通讯，而台湾用户拨打大陆电话或国际长途均受到影响。
断网事件 进展
境外网站短期内难畅行
截至记者发稿时，内地访问国外网站仍未恢复正常，中国电信及网通人士表示，正在积极联系境外合作运营商、海缆管理组织和卫星管理组织，争取利用一切可用资源，疏通业务，将影响减少到最小程度。但受余震影响，抢修工作遇到较大困难，加之海缆施工具有一定难度，预计影响还将持续一段时间。此次断网事件造成的损失尚无法估计。
昨日，中国网通综合部总经理、新闻发言人赵中新在接受记者采访时也说，由于强震后余震不断，海底电缆抢修工作遇到了很大的困难，他们已经做好了准备，只等余震一停即刻开展抢修工作。但其强调说，海缆和陆缆不一样，海底作业的条件限制很多，同时，还要视被损光缆的损坏程度检测结果出来后，才能确定最终的恢复日期。
COM域名再度遭质疑
记者从CNNIC方面了解到，由我国自主管理的CN域名，未受到此次地震的影响。
有关专家在接受记者采访时表示，中国网民访问COM等境外域名时，大多仍需要经过国外的域名服务器进行解析，中美海底光缆一旦断裂，便会发生解析问题。其实COM等境外域名访问不仅主动权掌握在国外，对国外通信条件的依赖度很高，地震等天灾以及政治摩擦等原因都可能导致COM等境外域名访问中断。
专家称，我国的海底光缆发生故障已不是第一次，2001年时中美海底光缆就曾被渔船走锚钩断，造成了通信中断。在上次事故后，COM域名的使用安全问题已经受到了质疑，如今台湾地震的发生，让COM域名的安全问题再次突显出来，相关问题值得有关部门的重视。
断网事件 解答
为啥有些网民能上MSN？
因为他们使用的服务器不在光缆影响的地区，这次受到影响的主要是在美国的服务器。
造成的损失能否索赔？
对于一些网友表示因为这次事件导致自己重要邮件丢失、重要生意延误，希望索赔的说法，昌久律师事务所的吕峰律师表示，这次事件是由于地震造成的，属于不可抗力，有关方面有权不予赔付。
境外刷卡是否受影响？
一些网友想知道，在境外的刷卡是否受到影响，对此银联公司的人表示，目前尚未接到这方面的报告，金融业务未受到影响。
【相关链接】
●同类事件回顾
2001年2月9日，跨太平洋的中美海底光缆在上海崇明岛段受损被鱼网撕断，导致国内用户无法访问国外网站。
2001年3月9日，刚刚修复的中美海底电缆在另一处发生断裂，台湾的互联网络一时间出现严重拥堵，近400万互联网用户受到影响。又经过10多天抢修，终于在3月22日维修完成。
2003年10月28日，上海崇明的海底光缆被意外拉断，造成崇明岛上至少3万有线电视用户信号接收受阻。
●中美将新添通信光缆
12月18日，中外六大运营商联合在北京签署协议，共同修建中国和美国的首个兆兆级海底光缆系统——跨太平洋直达光缆系统，对于中国的互联网宽带基础设施建设将具有重要影响。
据预计，到2008年，现有的跨太平洋海缆网络将难以满足中美间高速增长的互联网带宽需求，为了满足共同需求，中国电信等六家运营商决定兴建这条跨太平洋直达光缆系统Trans-Pacific Express(英文简称TPE)。
据透露，全部工程预计2008年第三季度完工。
【不吐不快】被震断的其实是“集体依赖”
张煦
即使把电脑系统重新装了一遍，杀了两次毒，登录N次，MSN依然无法登录。昨天中国大部分MSN用户集体“失语”，受“灾”者数量，是曾被微软炫耀的1500万。
除此之外，一些国际网站无法访问；有外企公司员工无法与国外同事或客户沟通……“若没有分别痛苦时刻，你就不会珍惜我。”昨天，受海缆中断影响的互联网产品，用这句老歌词，让大多数人感觉到了其存在的意义。
事实上，此番的意外，与相关企业将部分甚至全部服务器安置在境外不无关系。如果将部分服务器搬至境内，多少会有所缓解。跨国公司的本地化，仅招中国员工，为中国客户服务，还远远不够。用最大的投入使本地用户体验得到最牢固的保障，或许是本地化最根本、最单纯的落点。
无奈互联网。集体的力量，也意味着集体的脆弱。这一次“震断”的，或许不仅仅是电缆，还包括对相关公司本地化进程的信心，和对其服务的过度依赖。
John & Ken:
If you are *really* spontaneous, flexible & fast you turn this uncomfortable situation into a lesson: “The Quake and the Internet-Breakdown”. Next Thursday? 开玩笑。当然不可能工作得那么快 (:
I guess since most of you are not high tech folks you all thought that all of the internet transmissions went thru thin air, eh?
Well, many years ago, several underwater internet pipelines were laid into the Pacific Ocean to connect the States to Asia. I heard this a long time ago.
Just like cable and fiber optical cables that transmit internet traffic are either via telephone poles or laid underground in the States/Canada.
So some transoceanic transmisson go via under water cables and some go via satellite transmission.
Ian,
We’ve got here a high speed fiber optical cable between Europe and Singapore. After there are some smaller cables between Singapour to the rest of Asia.
Do you know why we’ve lost Singapore last tuesday as Taiwan is not really on the way ?
Interesting map:
http://www.globalmarinesystems.com/cap_maps.asp
Ahhh.. thanks Ian. So much for my theory about satellites being tethered to the earth with giant fiber optic cables.
at last I can get back in to Chinesepod from Hong Kong. Didn’t real;ize how much I rely on you guys until you are not there.
Now got a lot a lot of catching up to do.
I’m in shanghai and the last 4 days with internet access suck. Accessing local sites (.com.cn, etc.) works fine, but accessing any sites over seas like major ones (yahoo, msn, etc. etc.) doesn’t work.
If you are in china you can view english china news sites.. or what ever just goto google.com (this works in china right now) and type in: internet china
and you can find out more info on the problem.
this “disconnection” is a major problem and it is/was all over the news… ofcourse.
TWELVE DAYS - of empty. Although today Jan 2, 2007 I can access my email and read Cpod, I cannot download any podcasts, reach any international sites with any stability, use Paypal, online banking and such. (Internal internet within China is fine).
I can definitely deal with a few days of no internet, but almost 2-3 weeks, maybe a month, this is causing some reflection over here!
I have yet to see any reporting on the ‘economic’ costs of this blackout. I think I might just phone up 中國電信 and tell them Singapore is back up, and practice my ’strong’ words of the day. Heck, they’re not gonna refund any of my internet service fees, so why not drive up the costs of their operations! This just makes we want to go buy some grey-market dvds. It’s grey, cold and fading to black here in China.
我太闷了。
—————–
Jan 2, 2007
“In China, Internet services will not be back to normal until the middle of this month, a news report yesterday quoted the country’s biggest telephone company as saying.
The Xinhua news agency quoted an unidentified China Telecom Corp (中國電信) official as saying that Internet service would be back to normal on Jan. 15″
Maybe we’re privileged here in the Dragon’s Head (aka Shanghai) but we’ver been partly restored - I can access 70% or so of most websites. Videos and mp3s are still hard to download though. Royal pain.
Ken Carroll
RADIO TELSA - Today I decided to let my knee-jerk reaction kick. I put on my boots and went and bought a super duper AM/FM radio receiver. It cost me Y45 kuai and I am listening to it now.
It streams in audio without any hang-time, is totally wireless and free. It takes AA batteries and is pretty light without likely possibility of exploding like my lithium laptop battery. YUP COOL.
The intl internet here (a part of China that is not Shanghai and Beijing) is very deceptive. Although I can now ‘reach’ a lot of site homepages, after one click the packets just hang and vaporize. MSN Messenger is still unavailable, as is YahooMsg. QQ… it is calling out to me.
Now for anybody out there who wants to mock my internet-intervenous drip shunt life I would like to go on record today that I went out today and carried a gas cannister from the local shop back to my apt. It’s the liquid gas cannister that are used to fuel stove top ranges and my hot water. Like the cans that fuel North American bbqs. Let me tell you, it took quite a few
‘xing le, mei wenti’
on my part to convince the shop owner to let me borrow the bicycle, especially after I made him show me how to load the cannister onto the bike. And yah, I know they deliver — but the delivery guy had taken the day off early, and I decided to EMBRACE my new low-tech life.
Yup, gas and radio — those were my Chinese lesson sets for the day. Hao bu hao?!
Lantian, I’ll bet you were a Boy Scout, right? Hang in there pal, better days are coming. Blue Skys, smiling at me….
I STILL CAN’T ACCESS YOUTUBE! ARRRRGG!!!
-Colleen “I heart YouTube” Hamilton
BACK - 2life. It’s Feb 2nd, 2007 and I’ve had two days now of pretty decent overseas internet connection from within China.
*whew*, waited two months to exhale. Okay, gotta go - lots to catch up on!
STILL - slow. I’m betting Shanghai, Beijing are 100% but it’s still not back to the way it was in other parts of China. They fixed most of the cables, but there is still one to go. So although I can now get to overseas sites, it’s sporadic if there is actually good speed to it. Definitely not enough juice to see YouTube and other streaming media.
I saw some crys for mercy from Xian and other hinterlands. I wasn’t able to download the recent full Sat show. It would be nice if Cpod could post internal-China links for a couple more weeks.
Hi there Colleen
Henry here from Shanghai. Have been trying to track you down before you disappear to LSE.
You still around?
If so, email me: henrymakeham@yahoo.com.au
Cheerio!
Henry