One of these days we had a sudden disruption of net connection at my workplace. The next day coffee table was abuzz with discussion on this topic. Many of us knew that one of the national backbone connectivity is through undersea cable connecting to Singapore but none of us knew if the undersea cable cuts how would the location of the cut be detected (the Indonesia earthquake had happend the previous evening). It turns out that a device called ‘Time Domain Reflectometer” is the right tool to use. The basic principle being that if there discontinues along the transmission path then a part of the signal is reflected back. Also checkout this cool map of the under sea links of the world : www.cablemap.info
(PS: The office net disdisruption, incidentally, was because of somebody digging through the cable right outside our campus)
