Internet Access Hiccough(s) In Suriname

Despite what you may believe, I have had internet access in Suriname - pretty reliable, too. But this morning, when I was about to post a book review, I found the internet wasn't working right. In fact, it simply wasn't working. DNS was resolving, but everything was timing out.

Being myself, I did some digging around and found the smoking gun to be consistent: 81.199.1.161 was dropping the ball. Obviously, this has since resolved itself or I wouldn't be able to post this - and track down who 81.199.1.161 is. Israel. IP Planet.

'Why am I in Suriname and dropping data through Israel when the servers are in the United States ?', he asked curiously...

Probably since Miami blew chunks. Here's what the tracert looked like this morning:

Tracing route to google.com [64.233.167.99] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 37 ms 37 ms 36 ms 200.2.188.254
3 33 ms 30 ms 30 ms 200.2.168.1
4 38 ms 36 ms 36 ms 200.2.167.3
5 38 ms 37 ms 48 ms tls-bgr-01.sr.net [200.2.167.8]
6 600 ms 603 ms 600 ms 81.199.1.161.ipplanet.net [81.199.1.161]
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out. Trace complete.

This caused me to do a ping -t:

Ping statistics for 81.199.1.161:
Packets: Sent = 2024, Received = 1440, Lost = 584 (28% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 536ms, Maximum = 1480ms, Average = 593ms

For the record, this is what it's supposed to look like:

Tracing route to google.com [72.14.207.99]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 376 ms 586 ms 621 ms 200.2.188.254
3 729 ms 1280 ms 726 ms 200.2.168.1
4 852 ms 580 ms 216 ms 200.2.167.3
5 386 ms 233 ms 428 ms 200.2.167.5
6 564 ms 688 ms 1232 ms border4.p5-3.telesur-1.mia003.pnap.net [216.52.162.145]
7 * 877 ms 310 ms core1.t6-2.bbnet2.mia003.pnap.net [69.25.0.65]
8 * 1159 ms 334 ms xe-1-1.r03.miamfl02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [157.238.179.165]
9 380 ms 598 ms 769 ms xe-0-2-0.r20.miamfl02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.2.178]
10 977 ms * 1103 ms as-2.r20.asbnva01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.3.8]
11 773 ms 929 ms 822 ms if-5-0.core4.AEQ-Ashburn.teleglobe.net [209.58.27.57]
12 935 ms * 667 ms if-0-0-0.core3.AEQ-Ashburn.teleglobe.net [216.6.51.13]
13 706 ms 931 ms 894 ms ix-2-0.core3.AEQ-Ashburn.teleglobe.net [209.58.27.130]
14 348 ms 381 ms 522 ms 209.85.130.12
15 1395 ms 796 ms 1182 ms 66.249.94.234
16 434 ms 1111 ms 346 ms 72.14.236.213
17 1139 ms 1023 ms 992 ms 216.239.49.157
18 291 ms 551 ms 364 ms 66.249.94.92
19 789 ms 1356 ms * 66.249.94.118
20 505 ms 1133 ms 358 ms eh-in-f99.google.com [72.14.207.99]

Trace complete.

Obviously, the problem was my English data getting converted to Dutch and then into Hebrew. On a more serious note, I am told that this is not a new problem for Suriname, French Guiana and Guyana since all of these countries are dependent on the 'Line of Americas' - a submarine cable which is supposed to be owned by AT&T. I am told internet blackouts like this are known to happen and can last as long as a week.

When I was at the Caribbean Internet Governance Forum in 2005, I mentioned then that CARICOM should be using its economic weight to help deal with getting better prices (and implicitly, service!) for bandwidth. It doesn't seem like that is being taken too seriously, and I suppose that if countries think that a week without internet access will not harm their economies... Then maybe they should start looking at the future of their economies. Bananas and oil will only go so far.

Perhaps it would be appropriate to combine some oil with a banana to get someone's attention. Or perhaps just a green banana would do...