Techie
6:21 PM | Saturday | 13 March 2010

Reports confirm that Wednesday's big Internet slowdown was caused by the Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) cable being cut during Typhoon Morakot's brief visit to Taiwan.

Segment 7 of the APCN2 was cut at 10:57am last Wednesday (12 August) just as the typhoon was pummeling the island nation. According to Straits Times, Morakot's effects were so severe that besides whipping Southeast Asia back to the early ‘90s, it also gave Taiwan its worst floods in 50 years.

APCN2 is a major Internet link between SEA and the US and Europe, and any interruption with said cable will be felt immediately by China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan, to name a few.

Locally, Smart has given an official release (via Inquirer.net) stating that they are still looking into the problem and are coordinating closely with their counterparts to restore quality of services as soon as possible.

This isn't the first time APCN2 was damaged. Back in 2006, the earthquake in Hengchun, Taiwan, also crippled the artery affecting the same countries.

The silver lining to this fiasco, however, is that we may have inadvertently discovered a way to prevent Skynet from taking over our computers.

Image from Technogra.ph