Internet Slowdown in China

These last few days we have been experiencing a big slowdown for internet websites located outside of China. We just now know the reason; the undersea network cable between Mainland China and Taiwan suffered damage last Wednesday. The Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 that is used to link China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea amongst others and took damage in a “single point”.

Much of the Internet traffic is being rerouted, causing slowdowns in several Asian countries. In Beijing we can feel it right now and the whole China seems affected; details of the incident are still not clear.

In 2006 an earthquake south of Taiwan caused damage to the cable and the repairs took more than a month; this time an earthquake is ruled out as a cause, at least as the direct cause. How long it will last until our connection gets restored completely is uncertain just like the time for our blog to load.