C2C cable outage strains Sucuri connectivity across Asia

A recent disruption on the C2C submarine cable network is straining internet connectivity in parts of Asia, according to website security firm Sucuri. Sucuri detected the issue at 15:00 UTC on September 22, noting that multiple simultaneous submarine cable outages were limiting the capacity of their upstream network provider. As a result, traffic was being redirected along other routes, causing intermittent packet loss, slower response times, and potential connectivity degradation for customers utilizing affected routes.

Sucuri classified its Website Firewall service as experiencing degraded performance, with Asia East and Australia being specifically impacted. While the company's management console, dashboards, DNS infrastructure, APIs, monitoring platform, remediation platform, and backup services remained operational, Sucuri cautioned that any restoration estimates from the provider should be considered tentative due to the potential for changes in repair and investigation schedules as engineers determine the nature and location of the faults.

The company did not specify the exact segment of the C2C system affected, the cause of the outage, or a firm restoration time. Sucuri also refrained from naming the other cable systems affected by the concurrent outages mentioned in its notice, nor did it provide a region-wide packet-loss percentage, customer count, or traffic-volume estimate.

The C2C system, a long-standing intra-Asia submarine network, connects major telecommunications hubs and was originally established in 2001 and 2002. Owned by Telstra since a 2014 acquisition, C2C spans approximately 36,500 kilometers, with landing points in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Singapore.

The impact on end users can vary widely, as internet providers employ different carriers, peering arrangements, and backup routes. A cable outage does not always result in a complete loss of service, but rather may lead to slow page loading, failed requests, unstable sessions, or intermittent access, depending on how traffic is redirected and the availability of spare capacity on alternative links.

For security and content-delivery platforms, degraded international transport can be notably visible, as requests may pass through multiple networks before reaching an inspection or filtering point. Sucuri's Website Firewall, situated between protected websites and their visitors, screens traffic and aids in mitigating malicious requests and distributed denial-of-service attacks.

The discrepancy in connectivity is attributed to the upstream provider's backbone rather than a direct outage of Sucuri's own dashboards, DNS, or security APIs.