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How the Internet Travels Across Oceans
- mediocrejoker 8y agoIf anyone is interested in a really well written travel essay about how one of those cables was installed in the 90s, this one never seems to get old: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
- EvangelicalPig 8y agoCryptonomicon/Reamde sized too! (It's a expression, but I'm sure someone else will get it :) )
- auvi 8y ago~41530 words
- nemild 8y agoAnd for an older take, I loved this book on the first transatlantic telegraph cable as a child: Cyrus Field's Big Dream: The Daring Effort to Lay the First Transatlantic Telegraph Cable
- frosted-flakes 8y agoFor more on the history of the telegraph, I recommend The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage, which also covers in detail the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cables. Fascinating stuff.
- lb1lf 8y agoI have a quite good book on the shelves on the very same subject, but I am unable to locate it at present. For a slightly wider take, Arthur C. Clarke's "How the world was one" is a most readable account of how telecommunications has made the world smaller, starting with the first submarine cables, proceeding with satellites (of course he would!) before devoting a section to fibre optics at the end. Brilliant account.
- acomjean 8y agoThere is a museum on the cape cod massachusetts called the "French Cable Station Museum", that has a lot of the old euqipment used back to transmit telegraph data from Europe to America. Its not open year round apparently. I did the tour a few year ago, run be retired engineer who was enthusiastic and excellent at explaining the difficulties in getting it all working. As an added bonus, old school html: http://www.frenchcablestationmuseum.org/index.htm http://www.frenchcablestationmuseum.org/index.htm
- gkanai 8y agoStephenson's "Mother Earth, Mother Board" is still, I believe, the longest piece published in Wired. A tremendous piece that still holds up.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoHere's the link for Neal Stephenson's Motherboard Earth: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ Indeed well worth a read even this long after it was published.
- cjjl 8y agoThanks! Somehow I missed this essay, looking forward to reading in later tonight. Interesting to note that submarine cables played a significant part in the plot of Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson.
- troxwalt 8y agoCryptonomicon really hammered home how very much we depend on undersea cables to power the internet. Great read for those who have not had the pleasure. Plus you get to learn something.
- rosege 8y agoThere is also this book Tubes by Andrew Blum about the cables: https://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Internet-Andrew-Blum/dp/0061994952/ https://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Internet-Andrew-Blum/dp... Someone gave it to me at a previous job but never left a note to say who so I couldn't thank them.
- bpp 8y agoCame here just to post this link; it's really stuck with me over the years.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoHow the Governments Physically Look at the Internet that Travels Across Oceans. [1] [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russian-spy-submarines-are-tampering-undersea-cables-make-internet-work-should-we-be https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russian-spy-submarine...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- blancheneige 8y agokinda funny that the headline reads "Russian Spy Submarines Are Tampering with Undersea Cables" while the article does not provide actual evidence that Russian Spy Submarines Are Tampering with Undersea Cables. maybe they were just trying to sow discord into the cables.
- godelmachine 8y agoWould anyone kindly name a major company that install these mammoth cables underneath oceans? Surely they should be huge in valuation yet hidden away from the public glare.
- shereadsthenews 8y agoThey are built by the usual telecom and heavy industry names like Alcatel and NEC.
- lclarkmichalek 8y agoI wouldn't say they're that hidden. Marea (MS & FB trans atlantic cable) has a nice promotional site with videos and suchlike: https://news.microsoft.com/marea/ https://news.microsoft.com/marea/
- karambahh 8y agoOrange is a big player on this market, probably thanks to the fact that (as another user mentioned) Alcatel is one of the largest manufacturer (both historical french companies). You can follow Jean-Luc Vuillemin [0] on Twitter for very interesting pictures of ships laying cables around the world. One of the largest undersea cables plant is Alcatel in Calais, France (Dover straits). The factory is linked to the port by huge tunnels under the city. Unfortunately the Wikipedia page is only available in french but contains nice pictures[1] [0] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin [1]https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel_Submarine_Networks https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel_Submarine_Networks
- godelmachine 8y agoChecked out the Twitter feed. Really great!
- lb1lf 8y agoTyco / TE Subcom and Japan's NTT are two of the major players.
- gkanai 8y ago
- bibyte 8y agoI remember discovering them when I was young and thinking how mundane it is. I also thought that satellites are a integral part of the internet just like the TV network.
- est31 8y agoRelated map of submarine cables on the globe (with clickable links for the cables): https://www.submarinecablemap.com https://www.submarinecablemap.com
- vxNsr 8y agoThis is perfect. Can't tell you the number of times I've had someone insist that the internet was on satellites. Using terms like "the cloud" and with everything bring wireless definitely doesnt help with people's misconceptions. Even after I carefully explain that the internet uses under sea cables and generally either buried wires or above ground stuff I get dubious looks they say "yeah, right. You're probably just confused..."
- vidro3 8y ago>Can't tell you the number of times I've had someone insist that the internet was on satellites. It has to go to space!
- vxNsr 8y agoAre you referencing the Louis CK thing? I cringe every time I see that.
- SnowingXIV 8y agoI'd hear that all the time too but satellites do play a role. I'm just unsure exactly how they fit in.
- lovich 8y ago>Inside the ship, workers spool the cable into cavernous tanks. One person walks the cable swiftly in a circle, as if laying out a massive garden hose, while others lie down to hold it in place to ensure it doesn’t snag or knot. Even with teams working around the clock, it takes about four weeks before the ship is loaded up with enough cable to hit the open sea. How is that not automated? I cant believe that companies would rely on humans doing a boring and repetitive task without error for weeks on end when a single error could cause double digit percentage of time at port. Is this is just such an uncommon task that automating this wasnt worth the time saved at port? edit: Even in the picture in the article you can see a single worker has removed their shoe covers that all the other employees are wearing[1]. Doesnt that degrade the cable right there? [1]https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2019/02/15/undersea-cables/assets/images/lying-down-2000.jpg https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2019/02/15/undersea-ca...
- lclarkmichalek 8y agoThe cable is going to be sitting in the sea. Shoes are likely not the biggest issue it will face in its lifetime.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThe cable will never again have the rest of the cable on top of it. I'd be slightly worried about sand/dirt facilitating chafing/abrasion in the outer layers of cable on its way to its final resting place. Shoes shouldn't be an issue as long as you can keep mud caked work boots out.
- danaliv 8y agoNo, but it will have the ocean on top of it!
- lb1lf 8y agoI work for a company which make the full deployment line for submarine cable laying ships; first time I visited one -Incidentally, a sister ship of the CS Durable referenced in this article- I wondered about the precise same thing you did, beginning to sketch solutions in my mind while looking down into the tanks. A supervisor comes over to me and says something like "I can see what you are thinking. There's no use - it is cheaper this way." The point was that while the ship was in port taking on cable, it was fully manned anyway. Crews need something to do - so might as well stow cable. That's our kit in the topside photos. Small world! ) We do all sorts of other things as well - relying on cable laying alone would be too much of a niche market!
- RileyJames 8y agoI’ve blown a few minds explaining that the Internet is delivered via light, sent through very long fiber optic cables under the sea. I thought this was common knowledge until the first time I explained it, and the disbelief... Everyone had a revelation that day. I always knew about fiber optics, growing up with dial up and dreaming of one day having a fiber connection. But I guess now that everyone is focused on mobile that piece of infrastructure is abstracted from even reasonably tech savvy people.
- stingraycharles 8y agoHow did they think it was done before you explained it to them?
- profmonocle 8y agoI’ve met quite a few non technical people who assume the Internet is carried by satellite.
- antjanus 8y agothat was my own assumption until I learned about the under sea cables.
- closeparen 8y agoI distinctly remember "learning" this in K12, before getting deeper into the technology industry. One of our textbooks had a diagram with lines showing signals flowing from continent to satellite to continent. It wasn't until I got deeper into the industry that I learned satellite latency is awful, bandwidth is limited, and everyone uses cables or microwave point-to-point links when they can. (Actually, the role of those point-to-point links is drastically undersold for how ubiquitous they are in our cities. Worked with some Ubiquiti gear professionally once, and now notice them everywhere).
- cbg0 8y agoIt's actually a very reasonable assumption, as most people don't really know about the limits of fiber, but they do own mobile phones which seem to work almost wherever they are thanks to wireless technology.
- puzzledobserver 8y agoAside: Is it just me, or do others find animated charts annoying? It takes me time to understand what's being shown, and before the realization has sunk in, the graphic restarts causing the whole mental process to restart. Rather like a strobe light.
- FabHK 8y agoAgreed. I'd love to examine the map as of today, or 2021, say, in some detail and whoops - it's gone. Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, there - aaaand gone. No controls to stop it or skip to a specific year. Very annoying.
- mongol 8y agoI always wondered if there are not problems in the spot a new cable is laid to cross an older cable.
- dmlittle 8y agoUnlike data cables which cary information with a voltage, fiber optic cables carry information through light impulses. An advantage being that light is not susceptible to electromagnetic interference or radio frequencies. Having multiple fiber optic cables next to each other doesn't cause any issues. The electromagnetic interference between cables is the reason why you shouldn't wire a house with data cables and power cables next to each other.
- martin_a 8y agoI think his thoughts are more like "what if you need to do something with the cable that lays under the other one?" At least that's what I'm wondering about. ;-)
- mongol 8y agoYes exactly
- dmlittle 8y agoI'm not certain but it seems if two wires were crossing and you absolutely needed to move the one under you could cut the wire and fusion splice[1] the two ends together afterwards. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_splicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_splicing
- Oren-T 8y agoOld but good article by Neal Stephenson https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass
- gtr32x 8y agoInterestingly I was just thinking about this the other day, and hoping that someone here would have the answer. I'm really curious what is the total bandwidth per second across different continently globally without accounting for intra-continent bandwidth?
- afterburner 8y agoDidn't realize Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple outright own some of those cables.
- NegatioN 8y agoThat's exactly what I was thinking as well. And what's more, it seems like they are laying more new cables than what "public" infrastructure is, going forward. That can literally mean GooFaceAma has better global performance than competitors. Or that competitors will be forced to get hosted on one of those cloud providers to get similar performance. It makes me feel a bit worried that "the internet" is not as neutral as I would like it to be. (Or that I thought it was before)
- FabHK 8y agoWeird, the article always mentions Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon, but then once at the end in a footnote does mention "Apple, Google, Microsoft or Netflix". I'm left wondering whether it's Amazon or Apple or both that own some of those cables.
- afterburner 8y agoWhoops I meant Amazon (from the map).
- cm2187 8y agoWhat I find fascinating is that they also have many repeaters given the massive distances covered by these cables so they need to provide electricity through the cables on such long distances.
- lordnacho 8y agoI've rented some of these lines as part of a financial trading infrastructure. What's immediately obvious is the line is much faster than going over the public internet, and there's no jitter: every time you ping it comes back in the same amount of time, whereas the internet pings will vary by several ms. You also become acutely aware of cable breaks. Somehow this happens quite often under the English Channel. The network operator will start sending you emails that say - Cable break detected - Loading ship (can take ages) - Found the break - Patched it - Back up Occasionally bad weather would delay it.
- gear54rus 8y agoHow costly is such renting?
- 6nf 8y agoYou're unlikely to rent the whole thing so it just depends on how much bandwidth you need. If it's only a couple of TB per month it's not that expensive.
- sieabahlpark 8y agoBut that doesn't answer actually how expensive.
- 6nf 8y agoIt depends on what you want. Starts at maybe a couple of thousand bucks a month I would guess, I haven't looked for the cheapest in the market. Depends on the link and availability and so on.
- est31 8y agoMaybe it is expensive. They could be seeing "trading" and charge more because those folks have deeper pockets. Like how the DLSR industry is suddenly charging astronomical prices when the feature set of their devices is for cinematographers. Edit: Why the downvotes? Adjusting the price to how much the customer is ready to pay instead of just offering the cheapest possible price is usual business practice.
- lprd 8y agoThis is so neat! Few questions though, if anyone can answer: 1) The cable still looks pretty thin, is it being housed in some sort of protective layer/tube before it is laid? Seems like an anchor snag could easily break that line. If that happens, is it possible to 'patch' a fiber cable? 2) Once it nears the coast, how deep is the line being buried? 3) This may be a dumb question (I'm no engineer), but does the light travel from the source all the way to end without any "relay" mechanism? 4) How much bandwidth can travel through one of these lines?
- lota-putty 8y ago5) Does anyone know how to save that(cabling-world) animated image alone? All I can make out is 'g-map' div ;-)
- Moru 8y agoMake window fullscreen, press Windows-G on a Windows 10 computer with halfway good graphics card. Pump it into VLC and crop away the stuff you don't want ... and profit? :-)
- factsaresacred 8y agoHere you go: https://giant.gfycat.com/UnderstatedLinedBird.gif https://giant.gfycat.com/UnderstatedLinedBird.gif
- est31 8y agoThat animated image is made up of a canvas background of the world and an SVG foreground of the cables. Both are created using js from downloaded json data, ne_110m.json and fusion-cables-2019-02-27-simplified.json. Quite tough to get that into something that's not using pixel graphics and self-contained (aka only displaying the stuff in the page).
- lb1lf 8y ago1) The fibre pairs are housed in multiple layers of armor to protect against the elements, supply power to inline amplifiers and -most notably- provide the structural strength needed to survive being deployed. Outside diameter is still less than one inch, though. 2) Depends, but a metre or two (tops!) would be the right ballpark. 3) Not a dumb question; while loss in fibre optic cable is very low, repeaters are installed at regular intervals along the cable. they are powered by high-voltage DC supplied through the cable armor. The ocean acts as the return path. 4) Lots.
- wyred 8y agoI don't think it's right to say data is in the ocean though. They are stored in datacenters on land. And they travel through the ocean. Unless when we start putting more of these datacenters in the ocean like how some company has been experimenting with.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cyberjunkie 8y agoI have a certain admiration and appreciation for this sort of thing, and every article that describes how the internet is physically interconnected. Having seen internet connectivity in India slowly grow from only satellite-based connectivity, to having private internal interconnecting hubs within the country for bandwidth providers and ISPs to reduce latency, then news of every new submarine line improving bandwidth and latency, thereby reducing pricing. Going from getting 135ms - 200ms via dialup locally, to getting 60ms to Singapore and Hong Kong while playing Counter Strike and Quake 3. It was such a high! Each development was so critical and it brought me great joy, and excitement. Still does!
- godelmachine 8y agoI read this somewhere that Russia was tying to snoop on US by attaching these cables with electronic surveillance equipments. IIRC military and defect corps have separate cables installed for themselves, and the Russian’s were trying to read the signals. Would someone tell more about it or add the Wikipedia page here please?
- omeid2 8y agoHuh, it was the other way around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
- godelmachine 8y agoPardon my sieve-like memory. I should had clarified I am quite dim visaged about it.
- factsaresacred 8y ago> The ship will carry enough supplies to last at least 60 days: roughly 200 loaves of bread... Unless Jesus is one of the crew members, that isn't nearly enough.
- michaelt 8y agoPerhaps they don't freeze it, so having more than ~10 days of bread would mean throwing out mouldy bread?
- omeid2 8y agoThe graph showing the shift of undersea cable shares from public internet backbone to private companies is concerning.
- FabHK 8y agoYes, very much so, in particular in conjunction with attacks on net neutrality. I hope at least some regulators/politicians stay on top of this.
- black-tea 8y agoThe first undersea cable was laid in 1858 and what's funny is the two guys on either end couldn't agree on voltages and currents etc. and would destroy each other's equipment. It seems silly until you remember that the only way they could communicate is via post, which took 7 days, or the very cable they were working on.
- uvu 8y agoSomeone who wants to learn about the internet. Check out the KhanAcademy one https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/internet-intro#internet-works-intro https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/inter...
- OliverJones 8y agoInteresting stuff. Just as important to education as "how to make a car" was 50 years ago. Things not covered in this article: Expected carrying capacity? How much dark fiber (initially unused capacity)? How much extra cable is required to make sure it stays on the bottom even when going over oceanic mountain ranges? How much of the ocean-floor survey data is open, how much is proprietary, and how much is (military-style) secret? Is there any sabotage? Do nav charts warn about these things?
- pault 8y agoI don't have any links handy, but I have definitely read reports of sabotage and wiretapping. Edit: ah, from another comment down-thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
- anonu 8y agoWhen I went to Fiji a few years back I was astounded by the quality of the internet considering we were in a remote part of the South Pacific. Turns out Fiji is a "layover" for all the underground cables coming from the US West coast to Australia...
- pcardoso 8y agoRelated: Arthur C Clarke has a very interesting non-fiction book about the early days of submarine cables. "Voice across the sea".
- vs4vijay 8y agoMight wanna read this as well: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-t...
- samtp 8y agoWhat happens when they reach the edges of tectonic plates (like in the middle of the Atlantic)? I'd imagine the heat would melt the cables quite easily.
- raviolo 8y ago> Lasers propel data down the threads at nearly the speed of light This is funny. Why “nearly”?
- dagw 8y agoWhen people colloquially say "speed of light" it understood to mean the speed of light in a vacuum. Light travels slower the higher the refractive index of the medium its travelling through. Saying "nearly the speed of light" indicates that the light is travelling through a medium with a refractive index very close to 1.
- raviolo 8y agoTo say that light travels at “nearly the speed of light” in any medium is a bad choice of words. Also with refraction coefficient of 1.40 - 1.45 in fiber, the term “nearly” is not appropriate if the intention was to compare with vacuum.
- longhorn_alum 8y agoBecause no vacuum
- detaro 8y agoMight be weird wording for the fact that speed of light in glass fibre is slower than in air or vacuum.
- chrisrogers 8y agoFiber optic cabling won't transmit at the speed of light due to the refractive index of the medium. So it's slower than the speed of light in a vacuum or atmosphere.
- justaj 8y ago> Last year, Australia stepped in to block the Chinese technology giant Huawei from building a cable connecting Australia to the Solomon Islands, for fear it would give the Chinese government an entry point into its networks. I don't really understand this move. Surely the way that the Internet is designed, you can connect any network to any network. Why would this be any different with a physical cable in terms of security?
- ativzzz 8y agoI don't think most politicians understand how the internet works
- cocochanel 8y agoThis is exactly the reason why I like DigitalOcean name so much.
- brianzelip 8y agoNice visualization at the intro on desktop+. I wonder if Rich Harris and his team were behind it? See recent changelog podcast featuring Rich Harris on being 'a javascript journalist'[0]. Harris is author of the 'magical disappearing UI framework', svelte[1]. [0]http://changelog.com/podcast/332 http://changelog.com/podcast/332 [1] https://svelte.technology/ https://svelte.technology/
- ratsimihah 8y agoCan someone just dive and cut cables?