Wants priority to be given to businesses and other, more important interests than downloading movies and MP3s, after damage to 2 undersea cables forced all traffic onto a single cable backup system.Egyptian users of P2P and file-sharing services are being asked to help out after two of three cables that carry Internet traffic deep under the Mediterranean Sea snapped, disrupting service Thursday across a wide swath of Asia and the Middle Eas The cables lie undersea just north of the Egyptian port of Alexandria, but repairs could take a week once workers arrive at the site, and engineers were scrambling to reroute traffic to satellites and to other cables. "Two of our cables are affected; everyone will go onto a third cable," ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur told AFP. "But that will not be enough bandwidth. The cable will be overloaded and no one will be able to get access" unless people honour the ministry request. "People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do," he said. |
 
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They say that the cables will be fixed within a week anyway. Though I can understand going without P2P for a week can be hard on some people, I would probably just find something else to do for that week if I lived in Egypt.
If everyone did that or at least cut down on their p2p use, it would probably help them get banking and other information from businesses out and help the net from shutting down completely for that country.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg