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Re:Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlan... by uejfiweun on Monday January 24, 2022 @03:15PM (#30063377)
What exactly would this do to the US internet? I don't intuitively understand - if I am in NYC and the server is in VA, how would a broken undersea cable impact my internet?
Re:Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlan... by iam-TJ on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @08:02AM (#30071297)
First and foremost would be financial transactions, especially banks, that if these links were lost might be unable to make settlements and reconcile daily balances with overseas subsidiaries, partners, and correspondents. That would have an immediate impact on any business that relies on making or receiving international payments to/from suppliers/customers - think SWIFT [0].

Secondly is the affect on 'cloud' services (AWS, Azure, Goggle) with their complex inter-dependencies across services and geographical regions. We've seen several instances over the last couple of years where even a minor failure in one system has a knock-on effect to tens of thousands of other organisations that rely on it. Also, consider the reliance that AWS globally appears to have on US-East. If AWS Europe data-centers loose their link to US-East there could be major disruption of many services hosted on AWS, even those that use multiple availability zones.

Third would be the knock-on effect of switching to other routes (BGP) and the consequent 'traffic jam' as traffic between North America and Europe attempts to use alternate routes - maybe via Latin America and Africa or Asia.

Fourth, telecommunications ('phone) and VoIP services linking North America and Europe, Africa, and Middle East.

Fifth, and possibly the hardest to mitigate, is the by-product due to extensive use of CDN 'edge' services (Cloudflare, etc.). Most web sites nowadays have many dependencies on externally hosted services. Many are behind CDN edge servers. If the origin servers for those are on the other side of a major break then suddenly services you'd expect to be fully local will break in unexpected ways.

[0] https://www.swift.com/

Re:Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlan... by speedgoose on Monday January 24, 2022 @04:31PM (#30064335)
Not everyone lives in America on this website.
Re:Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlan... by seattle_spring on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:49PM (#30066858)
GPs reply doesn't imply that, it just seems they're asking about their own consequences. Will you reply "not everyone lives in Ireland" if someone else asks about what would happen to Ireland?
Re:Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlan... by bettynormal on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @06:19AM (#30070591)
It goes without saying that you would have to have traffic that went over one of these cables.... having said that somethings have strange dependencies that only come to light when there is a problem.
Re:Ask HN: Are you prepared for loss of multiple trans-atlan... by giantg2 on Monday January 24, 2022 @04:01PM (#30063978)
Probably shouldn't in most cases.