- Cloudflare says European countries saw “little to no observable impact” following cable damage
- BSC East-West Interlink and C-Lion1 cables were recently damaged
- Various layoff options kept affected nations in line
However, recent damage to undersea internet cables in the Baltic Sea that affected some European countries may not have been so bad at first, after Cloudflare claimed the potential sabotage had “little to no observable impact” at all. .
The company attributed this to Europe's strong internet infrastructure, which demonstrates a high level of resilience backed by a network of redundancy options to keep the continent connected to the internet.
Two lines were affected: the BSC East-West Interlink cable between Lithuania and Sweden and the C-Lion1 cable linking Finland with Germany.
The damage to the Internet cable didn't really affect us
Cloudflare used metrics such as Internet quality, latency, and bandwidth in the supposedly affected countries to reveal that networks remained stable.
The BCS East-West interconnection, damaged on November 17, normally carried around a third of Lithuania's Internet capacity; However, alternative routes allowed the country to remain connected without major interruptions.
A day later, C-Lion1's cable was damaged. Minor fluctuations in Internet performance were observed, such as a slight change in bandwidth and latency in Finland, but were remedied within just a few hours.
Although undersea cables are critical to keeping countries connected to the Internet, various redundancy options make it extremely difficult to completely isolate a nation.
Sweden is connected by more than 20 undersea cables, while Finland and Germany have 10. They also benefit from terrestrial fiber networks, all of which help keep countries and their critical infrastructure connected during such outages.
However, the threat of sabotage to submarine cables remains a key focus for many countries. The Danish Navy recently intercepted a suspicious Chinese ship, highlighting the need to protect these physical connections.
In early 2024, we reported that NATO had revealed plans to use satellite-based connections to protect against undersea cable attacks, while other consumer options like Starlink promise to keep citizens connected.
