Earthquake in Taiwan - access to international websites close to impossible

[gougou]

In case you are wondering why it takes so long today to open this webpage (among others): there has been an earthquake in Taiwan which destroyed many of the international lines. Bandwidth thus is rather limited, getting to this page to write this post took me about 20 minutes...

There is a relevant article here (in Chinese, of course, as other websites don't open anymore...)

[self-taught-mba]

Thanks for posting. I wanted to post it earlier also but I couldn't get to post anything. In fact I'm going to try not to write so much so that I keep the data transferred to a minimum seriously. I'm afraid it won't go through.

I also wanted to first verify the text messages that told me the reason. I didn't want to use news sources in this case that came from within China. Thank you for posting it, but please tell me you verified information elsewhere first and not just from the Chinese media. Using the Chinese media as the source to explain why we can't access parts of the Web? I've now seen it verified with other sources.

Stop spending money

I don't want to make a panic, but if you are like most people here short-term (many people even long-term) you withdraw your money using foreign ATM/debit/credit cards. These international transfers used the same underground cables. Currently much of Korea is without ATM service has two of the largest banks are now out. Kind of scary. So make sure to hold on to some cash.

[skylee]

I returned home and my mom told me that the internet problems had to do with the earthquake and I was like . hmmm ....

[roddy]

Just to reassure everyone, we're coping ok in Beijing. There's been a bit of panic buying of bottled water, and firewood and candles are in short supply, but on the whole we think we're going to get through this.

[tuxoar]

I haven't experienced any problems with loading International pages from Taiwan. I was vpn'ed in to the US before, during and after the earthquake hit and I have no problems.

Edit: Looks like us islanders down here got lucky, still got everything except Singapore, HK, etc.

Roddy- What is with the panic buying in Beijing for an earthquake that was hundreds of miles away and only made the internet slowdown?

[roddy]

There are certainly major issues at the moment - see here. Although now I can't even load that page . . .

Things seem to have got better over the day, but international websites are still painfully slow.

Edit: Forgive me my sense of humour

[roddy]

Current situation on Beijing Netcom:

Http is fine for most sites. A few are timing out sometimes.

Mail: Pop3 is out. Webmail is working. Haven't tried SMTP

FTP: Nope

Skype: drops the connection a lot

Yahoo Messenger: Nope

MSN: Can log on, but nobody online. They might all be in bed though.

[tuxoar]

Sounds like "cold turkey" for all you internet addicts on the mainland... 好辛苦了!

[roddy]

Actually in between getting home 30 minutes ago and now it seems to have fixed itself. It's all a bit unreliable though - I'm currently able to get this site, but someone I'm chatting to on skype, who is only a few kilometers away and on the same ISP, can't.

Actually, my Internet is probably faster than it's ever been. Guess I ate all the bandwidth.

Emule: Nope

MSN update: Everyone can log on, but nobody shows up as online and you can't send messages to anyone.

[self-taught-mba]

I am about 10 minutes away from Roddy (in ErLiZhuang at the student center)

Things have been pretty bad here all day and are no better. Trying to get Yahoo web page will take five minutes of loading time if it works at all. Most sites are the same. However, this site is a little bit better for some reason.

Humor appreciated actually. But I am worried about the banking situation not fire would:mrgreen: . If it cut out 2 of the largest banks in Korea...

I have had trouble in the past with the ATMs here making international transactions. A previous client also did as well. It was a "communication error" or so it said. The transaction wouldn't come through. In some cases the bank back in the US said the money went through and the bank here in China said that it didn't and it took months to correct the situation and get the money recredit did.

Currently, we have a client who has lost his ATM card. So for the past two weeks I've been stuck loaning him money out of my own pocket until his new one arrives from Britain and his funds transfer in . (He's a big spender too) Plus salaries all due, classroom rents, office rent... Accordingly I'm having to run to the ATM all the time. So I just hope the ATM and international transactions are okay. I've seen too many times here how difficult it is for foreigner to get money to begin with.

A lot of foreigners here seem to only get more money from the ATM when they run out and they don't have a local bank account. Especially being the holidays and all when bank branches back home have reduced hours and staff and people here will probably spend a lot out on the town, I hope it's not a big problem where people could end up in a world of hurt for a few days.

(Picture the foreigner standing next to the old guy with the beard and tin cup (pianzi) that's always outside of Lush )

[roddy]

Well, I'm alright Jack. Just uploaded my dinner, time to go to bed now as I'll have a backlog of work to do tomorrow (spent the day wandering around with my camera trying to decide if I wanted the Internet to get better or not . . .)

[roddy]

Paaaaaaaaaaainfully slow today - I can get through to most sites I need to with the aid of a proxy, but even then it's snail's pace stuff - it's not a blocking issue, there just isn't enough bandwidth. I think it might have been fine last night as it was 2am and everyone else was in bed.

MSN Messenger is functioning again, Skype is still fine. Yahoo Messenger is still out.

Roddy

[liuzhou]

I'm able to reach anything via a proxy and the speed is faster than normal. I guess everyone else has given up and I have the city's entire bandwidth to myself!

Strangely, the only international sites I can reach without the proxy are Google and Gmail! They are working perfectly.

[Ian_Lee]

As of today, I still cannot access Mainland-based websites like Qikoo or Tianya from Hawaii. And strangely even on the day of earthquake and subsequent days, there have been absolutely no problems to access Taiwan-based websites like China Times or Liberty Times. For HK-based websites, some were not accessible on the 27th but as of today it seems they are all accessible.

Does anybody else encounter the same problem?

[gougou]

And strangely even on the day of earthquake and subsequent days, there have been absolutely no problems to access Taiwan-based websites like China Times or Liberty Times.

I heard the same was true of Taiwanese accessing US websites. Possibly the line goes from China to the US by way of Taiwan?

[roddy]

Things seem a lot better today - not sure if its because it's the weekend and all the offices are closed. Regardless, I'm going out to play in the snow.

[tuxoar]

Quote:

And strangely even on the day of earthquake and subsequent days, there have been absolutely no problems to access Taiwan-based websites like China Times or Liberty Times.

I heard the same was true of Taiwanese accessing US websites. Possibly the line goes from China to the US by way of Taiwan?

I was surfing the web and vpn'ed into the states DURING the earthquake... there were no subsequent problems. The only sites that have problems loading in taiwan seem to be ones that are based in mainland china, hong kong and maybe even signapore.

I remember reading some articles a few weeks ago about how there were serious talks between large communications companies and mainland China to make a bigger pipe between there and the US. I think I may even have read about it in this forum, right now I don't have time to look it up. It seems like people realized there were some scale problems and redundancy problems with the mainland's connections, but mother nature beat them to the punch....

[pandaxiongmao]

I am down in Hainan right now, and today is the first day since the quake I've been able to load this website. Apparently my previous attempts to contact the site got through, since the forum page says I visited yesterday. Though this is the first time I am able to read anything.

The article about the 60x greater capacity cable is at technewsworld. It won't be ready until after the 2008 Olympics.

The real problem is the fact that all the cables went through the same region of water. The new cable might not fix that, at least as it is currently planned.

There are some very fast links already between Tokyo and North America - it would be nice if some more cables were added between Japan and Korea as well as China to have that route as backup. After the earthquake, I wasn't able to access anything outside of mainland China or South Korea for several days. So it seems the connection to Korea is not part of the problem.

[djwebb2004]

Well, this is the first time I have been able to access this site from Kunming, and it seems that you lot in Beijing have had it easy!! Most of you seem to have been able to access most things, even if a bit slow. Hmm. Google and Gmail are working for me, but it is tantalizing to see Google list sites, none of which I can open. I can't even open all Chinese sites - but that depends on whether Chinese-forums is hosted in China or abroad. Some of you seem to be doing OK with proxy servers. Which do you use? In a way it is a good thing, as it is unhealthy to spend too much time online! But even with Gmail most of my larger emails with attachments have been bounced back!!

[gougou]

but that depends on whether Chinese-forums is hosted in China or abroad

IIRC, they're hosted in the UK, as the subversive content would never get a license in China...

In a way it is a good thing, as it is unhealthy to spend too much time online!

True, but now I spend even more time in front of my computer, hitting that refresh button for hours on end...