This definitely shouldn't have happened. Internet traffic is seriously disrupted after an earthquake south of Taiwan damaged undersea fiber optic cables. The CNN website and many other websites in the U.S. and Europe were not accessible for most of the day or even not at all. Sites in China were accessible, because to reach them traffic is not routed through undersea cables.
The Internet came into existence to prevent just such a breakdown in (military) communications. When one link breaks down, traffic would be routed through other links and communications would not be interrupted. In theory. What happened today proves that the Internet is still vulnerable. On a virtual level there are a hundred routes from A to B, but if 99 out the 100 routes go through one fat cable on the physical level and that fatty goes down, the result is a communications breakdown.
A cable cut as a result of an earthquake or enemy action can paralyze Internet traffic around the world. Something has to be done about it. Who would have thought this could still happen in the dying days of 2006?
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