5 ms·
First-ever fiber optic cable between U.S. and India via Brazil and South Africa
- lolc 9y agoNot knowing much about the cable market I fail to see the import of this. Touching at South Africa seems to be quite the detour between the US and India from my point of view.
- Symbiote 9y agoNYC to India is something like 13000km via the Mediterranean. NYC to South Africa is about the same distance. South Africa to India is about 7000km, so that's the additional distance with this route. But perhaps it's more reliable, there are a lot of ships around Europe.
- dx034 9y agoThe Suez canal is full of fibre optic cables [1], don't think reliability is a big issue. Latency through existing cables US<->Europe<->India is likely lower. [1] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
- rtkwe 9y agoIt sounds like a lot but that's only about 40-70 milliseconds additional round-trip time which for a lot of things isn't that big of a deal.
- ElijahLynn 9y ago40 milliseconds is a huge deal.
- cat199 9y agoIndeed. A big, giant, unqualified, huge deal. I for one am definitely concerned about server lag on my FPS server, as one example of an extremely important mission-critical application.
- cwt137 9y agoIn the world of high frequency trading, 40-70ms is a lifetime. This is more of a big deal than cutting off 40-70ms for some FPS game.
- cat199 9y agoas I said 'unqualified' big deal - It's only a huge deal in some contexts.. Ignoring this within a critique is in my opinion 'focusing on ping times' hence possibly flawed and probably not so clear analogy.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoExactly; this route crosses a lot less international waters and busy sea routes, so less chance of accidental or intentional sabotage, as well as a back-up if the Mediterranean route is somehow broken.
- princekolt 9y agoTogether, Brazil and South Africa have 150 million internet users[1]. At least in Brazil (with which I'm familiar) the connectivity inside the country is quite decent (read "usable"), but most international connections use slow and older networks. This project, together with the one connecting Brazil to Spain[2], will certainly be very beneficial to users in there. [1]: http://www.itu.int/net4/ITU-D/idi/2016 http://www.itu.int/net4/ITU-D/idi/2016 [2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/spain-brazil-telecoms/spain-brazil-plan-subsea-fiber-optic-cable-by-2019-idUSL1N1HW1VO https://www.reuters.com/article/spain-brazil-telecoms/spain-...
- lolc 9y agoThe title is "First-ever fiber optic cable between U.S. and India via Brazil and South Africa". You explain the individual segments. I still don't see the appeal of the entire route.
- tmm 9y agoI think it’s that there are two fiber companies and one was working on New York to São Paulo and São Paulo to Cape Town. The other was working on East London, SA to Puducherry and they signed a joint provisioning agreement. It doesn’t read like they got together beforehand to discuss the best way to connect New York and Puducherry, rather they were both making connections to South Africa and chose to connect their new routes together afterwards. It’s an odd way for an African news agency to write about two major undersea cables landing in South Africa.
- cat199 9y agodepends on what perspective you are viewing it from.. this is great news for SA since they now have direct to USA & much more direct to asia.. (admittedly i'm not in the loop on what was there already)
- raverbashing 9y ago- Increased connectivity to SA and surrounding countries (Angola, Namibia and Mozambique come to mind) - Shorter latency between India/SA and US/SA I agree, it doesn't seem very important w.r.t India-US data transfers
- wallflower 9y agoOne of my all-time favorite Wired articles is "Mother Earth Mother Board". It is the epic adventure tale of laying down fiber in some unforgiving environments. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
- dgritsko 9y agoI came to the comments section to make sure this article was posted, it's such a fantastic read. If you read it and are hungry for more, check out "How the World Was One" by Arthur C. Clarke. It's a fascinating history of telecommunications with a large focus on submarine cables. https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Was-Arthur-Clarke/dp/0553074407 https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Was-Arthur-Clarke/dp/055307...
- 24gttghh 9y agoAccording to the Submarine Cable Map (linked elsewhere in the comments), there are already a number of cables between the USA, SA, and IN. Is it the "contiguous" nature of this cable that is so novel?
- 24gttghh 9y agoIn retrospect, I am very sorry for neglecting Brazil in my list.
- m23khan 9y agogreat development - will not only help networking reliability between USA and India but for whole of South Asia.