said by Wily_One:Did I say we lost connection to customers over the Internet? In this case the "customers" I'm referring to are internal users and systems in Europe, which cross dedicated WAN links connecting our LANs. Thanks to Sandy, they lost both the primary and the backup link for a brief period of time.
But please, keep pontificating.
It doesn't matter what protocol you are using. Your diagram is of transoceanic Internet cables, so you implied that your connections are TCP/IP whether they are open to the general public or only those with engraved invitations. Even in 1970s, when I started in the industry and we used point-to-point connections, the underlying transports could take secondary routes if the primary was out. Heck, even the ancient long distance and overseas voice services could choose alternate intermediate routes to reach a destination.
No matter what the topology, if everything could go kaboom because of NY, that is a deficient design for something considered "critical." There should be at least a secondary data center somewhere other than the NY area. And your routing should be able to reach it or the primary by going over EMEAP routes.
If you want to take my calling this fundamental design flaw as pontificating, so be it.