Report
See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/336416-how-south-africas-internet-survived-cable-breaks.html and the aftermath at https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/336426-slow-internet-speeds-in-south-africa-at-least-12-more-days.html.
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“SAT-3 will be attended to thereafter. This information may be subject to change.”
Cable Maps
Maps of the cables (from https://www.submarinecablemap.com/) to Europe are shown below:
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RfS = Ready For Service so the current backups to Europe and probably the US are ACE going West and SAFE going East.
Result as observed by PingER
Looking at the minimum RTT seen from SLAC to 20 targets in Southern Africa we see a step function going from a 25%-75% of ~ 300-320 ms to 325-355ms. See the statistics below.
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For the 7 targets in South Africa the 25%/median/75% before 2016 and after are ~294/300/306ms and 327/345/356ms.
Traceroute
The route measured 19:00 hrs 1/28/2020 PST from SLAC to South Africa goes East across the US via Chicago, Washinton to London and thence S. Africa:
Tue Jan 28 18:59:32 2020: executing exec(traceroute -m 30 -q 1 -w 1 -A 196.24.110.67 140)=traceroute from 134.79.197.214(www.slac.stanford.edu) to 196.24.110.67(brunsvigia.tenet.ac.za) for 134.79.138.4
traceroute to 196.24.110.67 (196.24.110.67), 30 hops max, 140 byte packets
1 rtr-serv01-02-serv01-dmz-webserv.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.197.131) [AS3671] 0.788 ms
2 rtr-core2-p2p-serv01-01.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.254.65) [AS3671] 0.591 ms
3 rtr-fwcore1-trust-p2p-core1.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.254.134) [AS3671] 1.123 ms
4 rtr-core1-p2p-fwcore1-untrust.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.254.137) [AS3671] 1.538 ms
5 rtr-border1-7k-p2p-core1.slac.stanford.edu (134.79.252.173) [AS3671] 1.482 ms
6 rtr-border2-7k-p2p-border1-7k.slac.stanford.edu (192.68.191.214) [AS3671] 1.614 ms
7 sunn-cr5-ip-p2p-border2-7k.slac.stanford.edu (192.68.191.233) [AS3671] 1.858 ms
8 134.55.40.145 (134.55.40.145) [AS293] 4.548 ms
9 134.55.40.150 (134.55.40.150) [AS293] 46.417 ms
10 washcr5-ip-a-chiccr5.es.net (134.55.36.46) [AS293] 63.692 ms
11 *
12 londcr5-ip-c-aofacr5.es.net (134.55.37.22) [AS293] 138.575 ms
13 *
14 lt-0-0-0-2-ldn1-ir1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.208.28) [AS2018] 331.160 ms
15 londcr5-sdn-a-newycr5.es.net (134.55.220.21) [AS293] 137.494 ms
16 xe-11-3-0-201-ldn1-ir1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.212.106) [AS2018] 137.352 ms
17 lt-0-3-0-1-mtz1-pe1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.152.20) [AS2018] 329.393 ms
18 et-1-0-0-0-ams1-ir1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.1.80) [AS2018] 328.407 ms
19 xe-1-3-0-0-isd1-pe2.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.1.60) [AS2018] 339.301 ms
20 eth3-39-cpt3-p1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.1.37) [AS2018] 354.698 ms
21 lt-0-3-0-0-mtz1-pe1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.152.21) [AS2018] 330.381 ms
22 et-0-0-1-0-cpt2-p2.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.64.64) [AS2018] 354.586 ms
23 eth3-39-cpt3-p1.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.1.37) [AS2018] 353.473 ms
24 et-0-0-1-0-cpt3-p2.net.tenet.ac.za (155.232.64.61) [AS2018] 353.617 ms
25 196.24.111.221 (196.24.111.221) [AS2018] 357.517 ms
26 pinger-cpt-01.tenet.ac.za (196.24.110.67) [AS2018] 354.664 ms
traceroute -m 30 -q 1 -w 1 -A 196.24.110.67 140 took 5secs. Total script traceroute.pl time=5secs,AS3671 is ESnet and AS2018 is TENET