Taiwan Quake Halts the Net

Telephone and Internet services were disrupted across Asia yesterday morning after a powerful earthquake (7.1 Richter scale; Tuesday 1234 GMT) off Taiwan's southern tip damaged undersea cables used by phone customers and web surfers from Japan to South East Asia, and even the United States.


That explains the forever-crawling loading time in Bloggers!

The earthquake damaged submarine cables that form part of the region-wide Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2), disrupting local access to Internet services and websites hosted overseas to a practical standstill.

APCN2 is a 19,000km long fibre-optic cable network linking Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Europe, and Australia. The network has been up and running since Oct 2002 and is jointly operated by 26 Asian telecommunications carriers, including TM Bhd.

TM Net said Malaysian Internet users would experience "bumper-to-bumper-crawl" in accessing contents and websites hosted overseas, especially in the United States, Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Europe. TM Net added it made no estimate of how long it would take to restore normal access, but other service providers in the region said the damaged cables could take several weeks to repair.

To the message posted by mad max, the slow-loading sidebar could be due to the widgets which scripts are hosted in overseas servers. If all goes well after the cables are repaired, and I sure hope it does, that must be the reason. Sigh... this is disrupting the refurbishing process of ҜαίخόρЋЯзпїα™.

Source: The Star Online