The academic community has been left in the dark since a fault on Seacom caused failure of international connectivity to all Tenet (Tertiary Education and Research Network of SA) sites, as it has no backup measures in place.
The break, which occurred two days ago, has affected South African research institutes, tertiary educational institutions and associated support bodies, such as library consortia that use Tenet's services through the Sanren backbone.
The academic intuitions have confirmed they are having difficulty accessing international bandwidth.
The chief technology officer for Tenet, Andrew Alston, says even though this comes at a time when tertiary institutions are on vacation, research institutes are still affected by the break in international traffic.
Alston says the network has been up and down since Monday, and that they are currently working on backup measures. “Backup plans are very expensive,” he points out. “However, we are doing everything we can to bring back the international bandwidth while Seacom is still working on the problem.”
According to Tenet, service has been intermittent and is currently down. “Until the root cause is addressed, any service availability should be regarded as transient. Tenet is pursuing alternative connectivity as a workaround,” it says.
Alston adds that Tenet is concerned about the break, because if Seacom goes down, Tenet also goes down. “However, this is only the second Seacom break that has occurred since they first began operations and we just have to roll with the punches.”
He points out that the majority of breaks Tenet has experienced have been on the backhaul, or national network, which has nothing to do with Seacom.
The only other break happened at the end of May, says Alston, and at that time there was a backup plan in place, via Neotel.
A Seacom spokesperson said yesterday that redundancy measures or alternative routes to get international bandwidth were the responsibility of the Internet service providers, and that they should have plans in place. “However, we will actively work with our clients to find alternative routes,” he added.
According to a Seacom statement released late on Monday, the overall repair process may last a minimum of six to eight days.
The cable company said the actual duration is unpredictable, due to external factors such as transit time of the ship, weather conditions and time to locate the cable. For this reason, the estimated duration of this repair remains uncertain.
At the moment, Tenet advises academic institutions to visit its Web site to get the updates on this issue.
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