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Combining data from different measurement/monitoring systems, our analysis provides insight into how the cable outages affected Internet connectivity:
The Mediterranean cable crisis demonstrates the importance of adequately dimensioned redundant connectivity, ideally following different geographical paths. When the first cable went out at 04:30 (UTC), the other cable was still in service. It could have been used by those ISPs who lost connectivity due to the first outage.
The International Cable Protection Committee provides a lot of background information on submarine cable systems, particularly in the Information and Publications sections of their website. The About Cables [PPT] presentation on submarine cables and their role in today's world is a good starting point.
The June 2005 issue of info@CITEL, the electronic bulletin of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), features an interesting article on fibre-optic submarine cable networks: http://www.citel.oas.org/newsletter/2005/junio/submarino_i.asp
Atlantic Cable is a website dedicated to the history of the Atlantic cable and undersea communications. It features background information on the first Atlantic cable projects as well as chronological records of all major submarine communications cables ever deployed.
http://www.atlantic-cable.com/
I Love Bonnie.net have produced a write-up of the chronology of events, including pointers to the news articles that first reported the outages: http://www.ilovebonnie.net/2008/02/12/the-submarine-cables-a-complete-guide-to-the-2008-internet-outage/
Technology Review, published by MIT, also featured a good story on the events:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/?a=f
Renesys presented analysis of their BGP data in a lightning talk at NANOG42: http://www.renesys.com/tech/presentations/pdf/nanog42-lightning.pdf
SLAC analysed the data from their PingER project, an active measurement service based on ICMP echo reply. Results were published on the web: https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean
[1] Research by Telegeography. Capacity is shown in bottom right of the maps at http://telegeography.com/products/map_cable/images/Cable_Map_big.gif and http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg
[2] The Economist: Of cables and conspiracies, http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10653963
[3] M.E.Kordahi, S.Shapiro: Worldwide Trends in Submarine Cable System Faults, http://www.scig.net/Section11a.pdf
[4] http://iscpc.org/cabledb/Mediterranean_and_Red_Sea_Cable_db.htm