Local ISPs have been making a variety of attempts and efforts to reroute local traffic to bridge the virtual shut-down of the connectivity of those users solely dependent on the SEACOM fibre-optic cable for their Internet access.

Internet Solutions in South Africa have put in place a variety of rerouting options which, depending on the downstream ISPs, should result in improved browsing availability. Alternate international routes by IS were confirmed to be up in semi-live state yesterday late afternoon.Other ISPs have decided to set up proxy servers to route through their hosting infrastructure provisions – typically with better peering and relying in part on Telkom and NeoTel data lines – in order to provide international access to the Internet — though slow at times. The major drawback of the proxy solution to users has been that only web-based traffic (not mail services, for example) is routed, thus partly crippling full functional usage (but anything’s better than nothing, by use of webmail services that most providers offer).

Last night, I-net Bridge quoted MWeb ISP CEO Derek Hershaw as saying “As an interim measure MWEB was able to secure alternative capacity on the SAIX network (Telkom-owned) from about 17:00 on Monday July 5, until about 14:00 on Tuesday July 6.

At that time, SAIX withdrew the capacity due to concerns over their bandwidth commitments to FIFA for the Soccer World Cup.

“MWEB is in urgent and ongoing discussions with a number of providers to obtain alternative bandwidth until such time as the Seacom capacity has been fully restored.

“We are hopeful to have some relief during the course of this evening.”

Hmmm…