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JEDDAH – The Internet services unit at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has completed the second application phase for Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) at the units network making it now possible for Internet users to explore websites using the new version.

Vice President of KACST Abdullah Rasheed said that the KACST Internet unit was one of the first sectors in the Middle East to operate with the new Internet protocol, which provides Internet users with new services, and would assist universities with the application of the new version as soon as possible. ­- Okaz/SG

RIYADH – King Saud University has topped universities in the enrichment of the Arabic Internet content. The KSU led the contenders in the competition “the enrichment of Arabic content on the world wide web” which concluded last Thursday. This has been the result of cooperation between King Abdullah Initiatives for Arabic Content and Google-Knol. KSU advanced the nearest competitor in the number of participation with more than 5,000 knols as it recorded 7,062 knols. – SPA

RIYADH: The Saudi Journalists Association (SJA) is to write a letter to the Ministry of Culture and Information and the Communication and Information Technology Commission calling for a new set of rules regulating the issuing of website and online newspaper licenses.

The SJA will also demand that site owners be questioned should they publish content that creates social harm and negative images. In a periodic council meeting, the SJA discussed the story of 13 women Saudi journalists who have lodged complaints against a Saudi online newspaper.

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RIYADH – The repair work of the three severed Internet cables is still underway. Because of the complications involved in the severed cables the repair work requires one more week from now before the services are fully back to normal, Saad A. Demyati, Vice President Wholesale Sector, Saudi Telecom Company, told Saudi Gazette on Monday.

Speaking from Cairo, Demyati however said the Internet services in Saudi Arabia were never affected because of the availability of alternative routes. The STC clients in Saudi Arabia are using full load Internet services, “rather the load is 20 percent more than the capacity,” he said.

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ALKHOBAR: The Kingdoms Internet woes were due to end on Thursday and by then connectivity appeared to be back to normal for about four hours.

We witnessed more than four hours of complete recovery for this link, from 9 p.m. Thursday until 1:30 a.m. Friday. Then another problem happened in the link, said the Technical GM for Nesma Internet, Mohammad W. Bazaraa.

It was not clear for two days what the exact problem was, but now industry sources say that there appears to be a second cut in the so-called SeaMeWe4 cable that runs in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Egypt. SeaWeMe4 is the newest and most vital line affecting the Gulf region.

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Despite the fact the unemployment in the kingdom dropped by 1.4 percent this year, Saudis also ranked first in their online searches for unemployment and job recruitment websites, particularly in Mecca which came first in terms of the number of navigators searching unemployment-related websites.

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Looks like Sahara Net is the only ISP in Saudi Arabia, compensating its customers.

Sahara Net would like to apologize to its customers for the problems that affected all users during the past few days. The problem was caused due to STC hardware failure.

The problem was rectified by STC after mutual efforts from both sides and we are monitoring the service stability with STC until complete resoration of the service. At the moment, all services are running smoothly and users are connecting without major problems.

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