Akamai Views Cable CutsAkamai Views Cable Cuts

Akamai unveils unique view of Internet latency disruptions caused by recent undersea cable cut

February 13, 2008

1 Min Read

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- It has been two weeks since two underwater telecommunications cables were cut and disabled in the Mediterranean Sea, impacting Internet communications to Egypt, India and Gulf Arab countries. The incident demonstrates the continued vulnerability of the Internet's infrastructure, and the significant economic impact that lack of Internet communications can have on multi-national businesses. Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the leading global service provider for accelerating content and applications online, announced today a first-of-its-kind view of the impact that the severed cables had on Internet latency.

Available atwww.akamai.com/mideast-outage, data collected by Akamai's global network shows the increased time -- beyond the average for a specific connection -- it took for data to traverse individual network points. Yellow lines represent a 1.5 times increase over the average latency. Orange lines represent a 2 times increase over the average latency. And, red lines represent a 3 times or more increase over the average latency.

"The availability of an enterprise's Web operations is vital to building and maintaining its brand equity and customer loyalty," said Robert Hughes, executive vice president, Global Sales, Services and Marketing, Akamai. "When a critical part of the Internet's infrastructure is damaged, whole regions of the world can be impacted, as we've seen from this latest example. It is not that the Internet's infrastructure is inferior in this region. What this event shows is the inherent vulnerabilities of the Internet to be disrupted at any time. Akamai is unique in both its viewpoint of these problems and our ability to remedy them on behalf of our customers."

Akamai Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: AKAM)

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