THE INTERNET IN WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA IS DOWN. WHAT’S THE REASON?

So the “Internet” is down. Due to cable damage
But Google seems to be going, and Starlink users are completely unaffected. Why?
I would explain, but first, you need to understand how the Internet works.

So the “internet” is you opening a document from another’s person computer. Think about it this way: If I have a Word document on my computer, and you connect your computer to mine using an Ethernet cable, you’ll be able to see “Daniel’s computer” on yours and open my folders to open that Word document that’s on my computer. That document, however, is not a Word document…. It’s an HTML document. and typically HTML documents make references and pull data from other documents such as CSS AND JS to make up the beautiful website you see.

Just like MS Word opens DOCX files, the software that can open all those HTML/CSS documents and make sense of all those data, is called a browser. For example, Google Chrome…. means that, if I have an HTML and CSS document on my laptop and you connect your laptop to mine using a cable and with my permission, you see those documents on my laptop using your laptop and open those documents using a browser.
Boom… You just discovered basic internet 101.

But really, that’s just networking, How about the main internet?
That is like me connecting everyone’s computer on my street with a cable. (well, multiple cables, but you get) and all of us, have HTML and CSS files on our laptops. So I can see the ones on other people’s laptops, and they can see mine. I can just go to my web browser and say, “Show me Daniel’s HTML Files” And because Daniel’s laptop is connected via the cables, my browser will find the HTML Files on Daniel’s laptop and open it. We will come back to that cos right now, I know what you are thinking.

How does it know the HTML files from Daniel specifically if they are multiple laptops connected? And someone else might also be bearing Daniel right? Well, that’s where usernames come in. But not actually usernames cos it’s not letters, it’s more like numbers and 3 dots dividing them, it’s called an IP Address. Each HTML file on the network is always assigned a unique set of numbers called IP addresses. So really, all you need to type into your browser is the IP address of the specific file you want, and the browser knows which one you want and will open it.

An IP address looks like this: 142.251.46.206
The IP address above is for an HTML file belonging to a company called Google. You can go ahead and type that number into your browser address bar and see what file it opens. I know nobody types IP Addresses in the browser and IP Addresses would be hard to remember, imagine trying to recall 142.251.46.206 So to make IP Addresses easier to remember, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) was created. And from the name “Uniform Resource Locator” You already know what it does.

It’s a combination of words that helps locate the actual IP address and, eventually, the HTML files you need. So when you type in the URL http://google.com, your browser uses that URL to locate the IP address 142.251.46.206 to open the actual file. So now if I want to open the HTML file on Daniel’s computer, I just need to type in Daniel’s URL, and that’s how the internet works. Well, at least in basic simplified form, that’s how it works.

So back to linking everyone’s computers with cables. You can imagine the stress of trying to do that, trying to connect everyone with a physical cable. We would have had network poles similar to those of electricity, and that’s what was done in the early days of the internet (and even until now in some cases)—not until we discovered wireless and connected everyone within the local region wirelessly using wireless technologies such as 3G, 4G, 5G, and of course Wi-Fi, amongst others.

However, while going wireless was certainly convenient, it’s far from perfect. The problem with wireless technology is, that it cannot travel very far, and it’s way slower. So even if we enjoy 4G wireless connectivity beamed from our local network mast, for the internet to get to the mast, it has to be wired. And some people, with the funds, just go ahead and run the wires directly to their homes and offices, that’s where you heard about Fibre.

Now Fibre is the act of running cables instead of wireless, Fibre Optics, is the kind of cable. They are different kinds but Fibre is the fastest cos it’s made of glass and uses light to transfer data, so data transfers sort of at the speed of light, if we ignore resistance. Whichever way, wireless can never be as fast or travel as far or as reliable as cables, not even 5G If you choose to run cables over 5G and use an ethernet cable over Wi-Fi, your network is going to be so much better.

No wonder that for everyone to be truly connected, all over the world, between continents and countries, we need to use cables. Fibre Optics cables. The whole world is connected by many cables running under the sea, which is how we have the World Wide Web of cables. But that’s not how the term World Wide Web (www) came about tho, I’m just pointing out that’s how it is.

Anyway, because of these networks of cables and wireless technologies, I can now tell my browser to fetch me an HTML file from anywhere in the world belonging to anyone in the world, and it will open right up.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Internet we know today. Okay, so who has access to those cables and redistributes the network, wired or wirelessly, to your local region? Well, those are your Internet Service Providers (ISPs). They are also responsible for setting up and managing all the logistics and equipment to make the network get to you at home, that’s why you pay them to use their network and “buy data.”

The internet itself belongs to nobody. You pay no one to be on the internet, just to access it. The question now is: what if Daniel disconnects his laptop from the network, or rather, the internet? well, I won’t be able to open his HTML file any longer. When I type his URL, it gives me an error. The truth is, people do not save those files on their personal computers anymore; they save them on what’s called a server.

A Server is a bunch of computers specifically used for keeping those HTML files (or, you can say, for hosting websites). And just like Daniel disconnecting his laptop from the network, a server can be disconnected; that’s where you hear the server is down, and the website would not load up. But imagine that the server is not down but rather, the cable was cut or damaged. That’s what happened today and is still happening.

So when you type in a URL and it doesn’t open, it’s because that server has been disconnected. After all, it is in another country, and the cable connecting us has been damaged. so my browser can’t find the file.

But Google is going?
Well, while every server across the Atlantic might have been disconnected, servers within the country are still connected. So any websites hosted locally on local servers should still open up. Similarly, someone in the US might not be able to open a website hosted in Nigeria because of the damaged cables, but they would be able to open all other websites hosted in the US. But it’s not that straightforward because of many other factors.

However, big tech companies like Google like to host different versions of their websites locally in each country they have a presence in. For speed. The further away the server, the longer it takes the website to load up because the data has to travel, but if it’s hosted locally, it’s much faster. That makes sense, right? The only problem is that it’s very expensive, so only big tech companies do it. And even if it is hosted locally, it still has to be updated and synced with the rest of the world, so it might eventually go down too if things aren’t fixed early.

So yes, Google and Co. are going because they are hosted locally in Nigeria. But that other website wouldn't go because it’s hosted in some other country and connected by a damaged cable.

And Starlink?
Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being developed by SpaceX. Instead of relying on physical cables, Starlink users connect to the internet via satellites orbiting the Earth. Because Starlink operates independently of traditional terrestrial infrastructure, its users are unaffected by cable damage. As long as the satellites remain operational and within range, users can maintain their internet connection.

You might say, but hey, that’s wireless, true, so shouldn’t it be slower and travel less distances than wired? That’s also true. To explain, the distance part would be too long, but for the speed part, Starlink is slower than a proper wired connection and many times even slower than 5G. It was made to reliably speed up internet to remote places, the only reason it seems to be so fast in Nigeria is because our local ISPs are just all very useless, with a lack of infrastructure and overcrowded bandwidths. So Starlink becomes faster, which shouldn’t be the case.