- Magnitude 8.8 Funds of the earthquake off the east coast of Russia
- The epicenter is close to two local submarine cables, which remain operational
- The Pacific is filled with other cables, but they could be sheltered from disturbances
After the sixth earthquake in recorded history struck the eastern coast of Russia, experts quickly reassured that the critical submarine cables used for the Internet and data transfer remain secure.
Assessed with magnitude 8.8, tsunami warnings are now shared throughout the North Pacific region, including Japan and the American West Coast, with waves already arriving in Hawaii, and coastal coastal cities invited to evacuate.
However, so far, there has been no effect on critical infrastructure, the submarine cables remaining in tact.
The Russian earthquake has not caused internet breakdowns
Until now, no breakdown has been reported by communication facilities, cloud computing services or flea manufacturing factories, with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud still operating normally.
Russia’s Rostelecom did not report any disturbance to its submarine cable connecting Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to Anadyr, despite its location near the earthquake site.
The 10-point polar expression submarine cable which is currently under construction, also connecting Russian locations and also located near the epicenter of the earthquake, does not seem to have been disrupted, although the earthquake could cause delays to the project.
Although no other cable transforms near the epicenter, the Pacific is filled with main underwater cable networks, including Topaz and Jupiter from Google, which belongs to AWS and Meta.
However, underwater cables are generally buried in trenches during the first kilometers offshore. Once they are exposed to the bottom of the ocean, they are deep enough not to be mainly affected by the columns of tsunami water. The biggest risk is the underwater landslides triggered by the earthquake that threaten to break the cables, as we can see when nine cables in Asia-Pacific broken in the Taiwan earthquake of 2.0 Taiwan 2006.
Hyperscalers also use several availability zones, which means that even if Russia’s earthquake was to affect an area, traffic could be released in a few hours.
Via The register
