Internet Outage Covers 2 Continents Today

Food for thought. How far do we trust the Internet? Not far. The Internet is like a pyramid. There is a peak and at the peak are very few routers and cables. A failure in one of those takes down huge swaths of Internet coverage. Further down the pyramid, were we all are, things are inter-connected and mesh like. But at the top are very few routers and cables.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- High-technology services across large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.

Hi-tech Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

Industry experts are blaming damage to two undersea cables but it is not known what caused the damage.

Reports say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan and India, are all experiencing severe problems.

Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the damaged cables collectively account for the majority of international communications between Europe and the Middle East.