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Submarine Cable Map
- antonioaguilar 6y agoOld but gold. I love this map because it reminds me to pack my stuff and move to Tulum or Cancun to start operating my company from there as they have submarine cables landing there
- tachyonbeam 6y agoI'm surprised to see that there are so may cables just going along the coast. I guess it makes sense, because if you want to connect coastal destinations, by going through the ocean, you don't have to dig or install telephone poles, you just lay the cables down there.
- octoberfranklin 6y agoNo, utlity poles are MUCH, MUCH cheaper than undersea cables. Not even close. Plus you can run 216-strand on telephone poles whereas undersea cables (due to repeaters) are generally 6-strand and almost never more than 12-strand. Utility poles are cheaper even including the cost of the poles themselves. However in order to put up utility poles you need a ROAD in order to get vehicles to the poles for maintenance. That's why you see offshore cables: when there are no roads through politically-stable territory. Look at Alaska: the fiber runs overland all the way from the southern coast to the northern coast because the oil companies built a road next to the pipeline. Then it goes offshore along the arctic coast because there are no roads between the coastal communities. Once you have roads and political stability, utility poles win every time. Underground is more reliable but more expensive. Undersea is insano-expensive.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI believe it. But I wonder how the line between Texas and Missouri got there. And the one between California and Washington: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/pacific-crossing-1-pc-1 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/pacific-... (I get that it's to complete a ring, but if subsea is so expensive, they couldn't put together an in-land route to make it a ring?). Or is it cheaper to make your sea cable 5% longer instead of licensing land-RightOfWays install/access? And Perth+Sydney: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/indigo-central https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/indigo-c... I guess they could end up being lower latency than following a road.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago> But I wonder how the line between Texas and Missouri got there. Would not be surprised if there were an offshore oil drilling platform in the middle of it. > And the one between California and Washington: Pretty sure that's just how the map is drawn -- the consortium that laid the subsea lines to Japan probably bought six strands of terrestrial fiber between the two US endpoints to make the ring.
- iptrans 6y ago> Or is it cheaper to make your sea cable 5% longer instead of licensing land-RightOfWays install/access? Yes. Subsea cable is often cheaper and easier to install than an overland route. Octoberfranklin is just wrong on the economics.
- daniellarusso 6y agoThis was my thought, particularly with the number of municipalities one would traverse by land, and all the varying local and state governnments one would encounter.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI think that’s why so many will follow a rail, pipeline or highway right of way. Often these are state or federally regulated, sometimes letting them do whatever they want. In Canada, the railways pre-date the country and have some interesting rights and privileges. But if a subsea line is 6 fibres, you’d think they’d license one of the 288 strands on an existing run from some less else for less than that cost.
- iptrans 6y ago> But if a subsea line is 6 fibres, you’d think they’d license one of the 288 strands on an existing run from some less else for less than that cost. This is easier said than done. There may not be spare strands on the route in question, or if there is, it may not be available at a reasonable cost. Remember dark fiber is an unregulated asset, nobody can force network owners to play ball. The available terrestrial routes between the landing stations may be suboptimal. The route between landing stations may be required to be diverse from terrestrial route. There's a whole another level of control between owning a full route and leasing some strands in somebody else's cable. ... And the list goes on.
- rags2riches 6y agoSo how do we explain the cables along the coasts of Norway, Chile and Brazil, for example?
- desas 6y agoWell for Norway that proves the point. Have you saw the coast of Norway? It's heavily punctured by fjords which mean a lot of up and down. Many communities are connected to many of their neighbours by car ferries, not roads.
- iptrans 6y agoNot really. Subsea cable is often cheaper and easier to install than an overland route. Octoberfranklin is just wrong on the economics. In fjords you can just use a barge to lay the cable or, this being Norway, you can just roll out the cable on the ice and let it sink in the spring.
- iptrans 6y agoSubsea cable is often cheaper and easier to install than an overland route. Octoberfranklin is just wrong on the economics.
- octoberfranklin 6y agoHey iptrans, instead of just saying "octoberfranklin is wrong" over and over, how about posting a verifiable link with pricing information? You know, like I did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25030968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25030968
- iptrans 6y agoOh, but you are so very wrong. And in so many places. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25037733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25037733
- iptrans 6y agoThe above isn't correct. Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer. This is about the same cost as aerial construction, excluding the poles. You pay for the poles separately with yearly fees. You also don't need roads to put up and service utility poles. It's just more convenient to put them by roads. As an aside, you can and do have subsea cables with 216 or other high count strand numbers. The reason you use 12 strands or less in long haul systems is that it is cheaper to use fewer strands and higher bandwidth rates per strand than to build high count subsea cable systems. You could build any terrestrial fiber system with just one strand, but it's cheaper and more convenient to use more strands since you are constantly bifurcating the network. Source: I have built both subsea cables and terrestrial fiber networks.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago> This is about the same cost as aerial construction, Not even close. 12-count ADSS cable costs $3,000 per km, one tenth of your low-end. And for three times that price you can get 144-count which isn't even remotely an option for subsea cables. I used to buy from FS.com, but they've stopped shipping large spools due to the COVID shipping disaster situation, and took the pricing down off their website. Here's another company (never dealt with them) charging $1,400 per km: https://multicomstore.com/ofs-f12smadss350f-fiber-optic-cable-adss-aerial-12-count-singlemode-sold-by-350-meters-1-000-feet.html https://multicomstore.com/ofs-f12smadss350f-fiber-optic-cabl... Source: I lease aerial dark fiber, included some that was constructed at my request. > Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer. Including repeaters/amplifiers and power delivery? Yeah right. Link? > you can and do have subsea cables with 216 or other high count strand numbers Show me a 216-count subsea cable long enough to need repeaters/amplifiers.
- iptrans 6y agoThis is very amusing :) It's a typical rookie mistake to confuse the cable costs with construction costs. > And for three times that price you can get 144-count which isn't even remotely an option for subsea cables. I know for a fact you can get 192 count subsea cable. >> Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer. > Including repeaters/amplifiers and power delivery? Yes. > Link? http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=subsea+cable+system+cost+per+km > Show me a 216-count subsea cable long enough to need repeaters/amplifiers. I know reading is hard, but repeat after me: "The reason you use 12 strands or less in long haul systems is that it is cheaper to use fewer strands and higher bandwidth rates per strand than to build high count subsea cable systems." If you want high count subsea cable segments with amps, but which does not use in-line amps, take a look at https://crosslakefibre.ca/ https://crosslakefibre.ca/ To spell it out for you, subsea cables which are only a few hundred kilometers long do not require in-line amps, only head end amps.
- mshockwave 6y agothough this doesn't show military cables, it reminds me a good book [1] about US eavesdrop operations against Soviet Union by literally surrounding their underwater cables with a special kind of "ring" that tapped electronic signals under it. (Fun fact was that USSR did not even encrypted those communications) [1]: Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag et al.
- Already__Taken 6y agodark docs on YouTube has a great video in it. I just can't tell how much is bullshit in the editing. but that one seems pretty good.
- kitteh 6y agoDark docs is kind of watered down history. The previous mentioned book is great. Back in the 90s Discovery actually had documentaries that covered this from the people actually involved (including the person who proposed the operation) - now we have SHARK WEEK.
- Already__Taken 6y agoIf you watch most of those old documentaries though TV is 50% filler 30% recap 20% content.
- dilyevsky 6y agoUS military now eavesdrops on its own citizens using similar methods (and more)
- mywacaday 6y agoThanks for that, I read that book when it came out but forgot the name. Every time the cable map was linked I think about that book. Some great stories in that book about tapping the cables and how used to be a relatively common occurrence for subs to crash into each othe because they were running silent.
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- trotFunky 6y agoI always love this map, you can find a lot of intersting info. Sometimes it makes me wonder about the history of such or such link. Is there any map of this quality of the entire world's underground backbones ? I would love to have the other half of the story.
- vmception 6y agoThe links not connected to the rest of the nodes are for money and trading data.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago> Is there any map of this quality of the entire world's underground backbones ? Not anymore. The last time somebody compiled one they tried to have his thesis classified as a matter of national security. https://gizmodo.com/for-decades-the-public-was-not-allowed-to-view-maps-of-1731650394 https://gizmodo.com/for-decades-the-public-was-not-allowed-t...
- trotFunky 6y agoI figured there would be something like that. But then, why are the submarine cables not hidden as much ? Because they are physically harder to access ? Because they travel in shared maritime territory ? Anyway, thanks for the read, the article and paper were interesting !
- iptrans 6y agoSubmarine cables need to be marked on marine charts so that boats don't hit them with anchors and other implements.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- computator 6y agoSome very offbeat places like Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Madagascar(!) have lots of cable landings. Would it be safe to say that they have excellent Internet connectivity? I mean good bandwidth and reliable service, although latency to Europe or the USA may be high due to distance.
- dgrin91 6y agoSpeculation, but I would guess no. Having good service means you need an ISP that provides last mile service. You can't just directly plug into the undersea cables, and I doubt the places you listed have good ISPs
- zinekeller 6y agoAlso understated is that they are essentially transit points, so the bulk of bandwidth is dedicated to bigger places (more Asia-America and less in between).
- lumost 6y agoThe preponderance of interconnects is a necessary but insufficient condition for good internet. A good number of those lines will be allocated as dedicated circuit, private dedicated lines, and other purposes.
- Scoundreller 6y agoLook at what Saint Helena is going through. They're kicking in a bunch of extra bucks so that their island is a landing point for a cable under construction, but the minimum spend is for a 200gbi/s connection. https://spacenews.com/st-helena-looks-to-unlikely-patron-to-pay-its-subsea-cable-bill-the-satellite-industry/ https://spacenews.com/st-helena-looks-to-unlikely-patron-to-...
- jfrunyon 6y ago200 Gbps is 30Mbps for each resident.
- aosaigh 6y agoThis is fascinating and leaves me with so many questions. What do these cables look like? How are they made? How do they lay them? Are they in sections? How are they connected? How much maintenance do they require? How much data can they carry?
- aosaigh 6y agoWhere do they connect to from the sea? How do they secure those locations? Are they all privately owned? How much “public” vs “private” traffic is on them? So many questions
- octoberfranklin 6y agoThey go very deep underground (rather than lying on the seafloor) quite a distance out from the coastline, and stay deep underground until they get to the "landing manhole" which is nowhere near the beach. The manhole is generally surrounded by a security perimeter. The "landing station" where the NSA's equipment sits is either in the same compound or (less ideally) very nearby. In the latter case the cable run from the manhole to the landing station has to be protected as well. The digging that they do on the beach is quite disruptive. It often involves blasting. Beachfront landowners fight these things tooth and nail, which is why the landings tend to be in either highly industrialized port locations (Portland, OR) or middle-of-nowhere rugged rocky beaches that nobody visits or lives near.
- Stratoscope 6y agoNow I'm curious. Portland is nowhere near the ocean. Do the cables run 100 miles up the Columbia River?
- Scoundreller 6y agoBy the looks of the map, yes, there are several that land in Hillsboro (a suburb of Portland, OR)
- anonu 6y agoI visited Fiji a number of years back. I was totally expecting the internet to be of pretty poor quality in the middle of the South Pacific - but it was fantastic - on almost every island I visited. I later learned what this maps shows... its a stopover for pretty big fiber lines from Hawaii to Australia....
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoFiji historically has been a tax haven, so it is important for them to have good internet. You can usually get good internet in a tax haven.
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThat's a strange correlation to make. I've had some good and terrible connections in Fiji, highly location dependent. Find the term tax-haven amusing, are countries not allowed to set their own taxrates and laws? Is the real problem that other countries can't properly enforce their own laws or create new ones that solve the problem overnight and instead divert blame while all their lobbyists and trust funds use the same jurisdictions? Is Ireland some evil country for creating favorable business conditions? It's a slurword without meaning that can be used selectively to bully others into giving up their sovereignity.
- ycombonator 6y agoIt would nice if there was terrestrial fiber map which shows fiber lines in cities and towns. Also is there is a map available that shows where active fiber connections are available by address. FIOS doesn’t have a coverage map.
- zinekeller 6y agoThat would be nice, but I haven't found any, even in other countries. Seems this is due to national security (if someone can break down the network, it will paralyze that country). But at least an idea of exactly where they are willing to install should exist (and does exist in other countries).
- Scoundreller 6y agoHeh, I once figured out where most/all the lines came into the city I was living in. Drove out there and was able to identify it: probably all the providers shared a group of fibre there. I'm sure it was a part of a ring, but fun to learn I knew where the internet came into town :)
- zinekeller 6y agoProbably your city is considered a low-risk or low-value militarily or they have other plans for communication, like separate runs.
- Scoundreller 6y agoIt's probably the same story for any mid-size Canadian city: there's fibre in two places: the way in and the way out. Probably over-time the 'way-out' got rung around so any cut isn't a total outage, but just a guess on that.
- dawnerd 6y agoI found one a couple years ago that showed all the fiber lines on the streets and all that. I was using it to plan out talking Comcast into offering their 2gig.
- p1mrx 6y agoWhen I first saw this map, there were no links between South America <-> Africa, and Europe <-> India was pretty limited. The last major gap seems to be South America <-> New Zealand; the Pacific Ocean is pretty big.
- alister 6y agoWhat's the location with the greatest connectivity? It's not New York City. Not Hong Kong (though it could be number 1 if you include some very near cities). And amazingly, San Francisco and the Bay Area have no cable landings at all near them. It looks like it's Fortaleza (Brazil) with 17 cables making landfall there.
- vmception 6y agoAnyone that's tried to understand the internet circumstance in New York City would know there are not dense cable landings there.
- kitteh 6y agoCables don't equal good connectivity. Interconnection facilities are the best places to be (or rather what you want to be connected to in order to establish as many adjacencies). 111 8th in NYC. 165 Halsey in Newark. 350 easy cermak in chicago. Palo alto for the bay (but also eqx in San Jose). Infomart in dfw. Etc. Cable landing stations generally service one cable and the actual networks that use it are generally some distance away.
- kzrdude 6y agoSingapore is in the middle of it. It seems more fair to look at a general area instead of an exactly coinciding point on the map (it's not going to physically coincide on the same point anyway). The general NJ-NYC area seems to be pretty dense with cable landings.
- bxk1 6y agoI thought it was Frankfurt in Germany, but can't confirm, there is only public data on per country connectivity, where Germany is at the top. But Brazil is definitely in top 5, for top 5 connectivity from last year the countries were: Germany, Brazil, Ukraine, U.K., Switzerland. Submarine cables are only a small part of connectivity.
- nixass 6y agoCorrect, Frankfurt and Amsterdam are densest submarine fiber endpoints in Europe at least. FRA is EU's main financial and business hub, and even AMS, which has huge bandwidth, serves only as a transit location for FRA fiber. Frankfurt is about to become Europe's datacentre alley. Dublin is ahead now, but they will take over pretty soon
- a_bored_husky 6y agoCuba is fully surrounded and only touched by two cables.
- adolfojp 6y agoOnly one cable, ALBA-1, is accesible to Cuba. The other cables connect Guantanamo Bay to PR and Florida.
- a_bored_husky 6y agoYou are right
- fernly 6y agoSo I thought I'd try some long-haul traffic and was amazed that the MangaWhai Tavern[1] responds like it was next door. Those bits should be coming (at least when accessed for the first time in some cache-purge period) from NZ to Pago Pago to Kapalei HI, to Oregon and down the West Coast to me. I'd'a thought I'd see at least a little delay. Clearly the network is smarter than me. [1] https://www.mangawhaitavern.co.nz https://www.mangawhaitavern.co.nz
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoIt's Kapolei, with an 'o'.
- initplus 6y agoThat's because it is next door, they are actually hosted on AWS EC2 in us-east.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoThe plot thickens: mangawhaitavern.co.nz is a webflow site. I bet that people in NZ actually get slower load times than people in the U.S.
- dzhiurgis 6y ago> httping mangawhaitavern.co.nz PING mangawhaitavern.co.nz:80 (/): connected to 76.223.27.102:80 (201 bytes), seq=0 time=300.61 ms connected to 13.248.155.104:80 (201 bytes), seq=1 time=288.97 ms connected to 76.223.27.102:80 (201 bytes), seq=2 time=293.50 ms Yep. We can get 4gbps home connections here now, yet general browsing experience can be slowish.
- yeetman21 6y agoWebsite is sponsored by huawei marine. I remember seeing an advertisement for their undersea cable in a times magazine a year or so back
- zinekeller 6y agoIf you think about it, Huawei Marine and Huawei are not that related anymore (if I remember correctly Huawei has a very minority stake left on Huawei Marine).
- judge2020 6y agoKey details in https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/05/huawei-marine-is-being-sold-thats-unlikely-change-threat-it-poses/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/05/huawei-ma...
- ryancnelson 6y agoEquinix used to offer this map as a cool poster to customers (and maybe everyone?). I'd love a not-beat-up replacement, but I don't see an order link like there used to be. I did find the 2019 one for $250(!!), which is a little more than I want to pay.
- alfor 6y agoStarlink is planning to replace all of that and be faster. Crazy the amont of infrastructure in all theses cables
- judge2020 6y agoNot really. The download speeds beta testers are seeing go up to 100mbps and that’s at low load, but the project isn’t aiming to replace submarine cables. The goal is to fix the problem of running fiber being uneconomical for most of the rural US (and elsewhere), so 100mbps is amazing speeds for end users who otherwise would be on slow DSL/satellite connections.
- iptrans 6y agoAdding to the above, Starlink doesn't have but a fraction of the bandwidth of a single wave in a single fiber optic strand. Starlink just can't carry the bandwidth needed to connect the planet. The theoretical throughput of the whole Starlink constellation is equal to just a single subsea cable system.
- jdkee 6y agoSee https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
- libraryofbabel 6y agoEssential reading on this subject: Neal Stephenson’s essay “Mother Earth Mother Board” (Wired, 1996). https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ And really his whole superb novel Cryptonomicon. But that’s 1,000 pages.
- dang 6y agoIf curious see also 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 2015 (a bit) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749
- tomgp 6y agoIt’s nice to see how this simple site has been maintained and improved gradually for like 10 years now. Just doing it’s one thing better each time.
- godelmachine 6y agoDoes this map cover every single submarine cable in the world, irrespective of the vendor/ provider?
- topbanana 6y agoNo, there are quite a few near me shown on a nautical map. Perhaps it's all the international cables?
- virtuallynathan 6y agoAlmost all of the fiber ones, there are other sources as well like the Submarine Cable Almanac.
- aborsy 6y agoIt’s worth seeing also the transatlantic cable map from 1800s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraphy_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraphy_in_the... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cabl... Various maps can be seen in Google maps. Nowadays the cables are fiber-optic rather than electric copper cables.
- sokoloff 6y agoThey’re a composite cable, with fiber for the data portion and copper for the power needed to drive the fiber optic repeaters. I was able to tour a fiber laying/maintenance ship back in the 1990s. Had it explained that they lay the cable powered and under end-to-end test (shore to ship). This makes the spool of cable into a giant electromagnet, meaning there were signs all over portions of the ship banning steel tools, watches, etc.
- aborsy 6y agoYes. They are probably amplifiers not repeaters. The latter is now obsolete in long-haul transmission.
- abainbridge 6y agoDoes anyone know if the paths shown for the transatlantic cables are anything like accurate? I would have expected them to follow "great circle" routes since they are the shortest. For example, the shortest path from Long Island to the Bristol Channel goes through Newfoundland and the southern tip of Ireland. There are several cables on the map with those end points but none of them are shown as taking that route. I guess this is poetic license that ignores the distortion of the map projection. Is there a map that shows the routes more accurately?
- dzhiurgis 6y ago> Is there a map that shows the routes more accurately? Maybe marine charts do, but also could be classified once they reach massive depths.
- bratch 6y agohttps://kis-orca.eu/map/ https://kis-orca.eu/map/ is a very accurate map, but doesn't cover the whole world. You can compare the cables in and leaving Europe to decide whether you think https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ is particularly accurate or not.
- abainbridge 6y agoInteresting. The westbound cables on that map all look like the are going too far South too. It would be interesting to know why. Looking at the map of the Amitié cable, maybe they try to keep as much of the cable as possible in deep water. https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-atlantic/amitie https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-atlantic/...
- nuccy 6y agoThe extra distance for NY/NJ-Bristol cables to cover is "just" ~400-500km (extra ~7%), plus if you look at ocean floor map [1] it seems they prefer not to put the cable in the relatively shallow waters of Newfoundland or Nova Scotia (maybe this decreases possibility of a damage by anchors, or they compensate a bit in length by going deeper, i.e. shorter circumference due to smaller radius). The other possibility is that the direct path passes underwater mountainous region with quite variable depths in mid-Atlantic [1], so going up-down or follow the valleys anyway would increase the cable length. The right answer is likely a combination of all these to minimize cable cost, maintenance and latency. [1] https://earth.google.com/web/@41.47661069,-40.80459324,-4414.38010268a,8134630.35540462d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=Ci4SLBIgYjczNzM1Y2E0Y2FiMTFlODhlMTU3MTM3ODRlMDYzMjMiCGxheWVyc18w https://earth.google.com/web/@41.47661069,-40.80459324,-4414...
- jonplackett 6y agoFor some reason I was surprised to see so many cables not spanning oceans. Like all the ones going the Strait of Hormuz and up the the Suez Canal. But I guess it just makes a lot of sense to lay cable where you don’t have to worry about buildings and people being in the way.
- csomar 6y agoQuestion is: Are they being included because they are part of that particular Submarine cable infrastructure; or are they independent of it?
- dmurray 6y agoAn interesting contrast with power cables, which are almost always strung overhead except in densely populated areas.
- iptrans 6y agoCrossing multiple national borders is a major political undertaking. It is far more simpler to lay a subsea cable in international waters, especially when hostile nations are concerned. As to the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, there really are few or no alternatives, that's why there are so many cables there. It's also why Egypt makes serious bank on permits and other fees. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars.
- jonplackett 6y agoU guess it can't help that it makes it (a little bit) harder to tap into them nefariously.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoWasn’t there a new one over the noth pole, UK to Japan or something?
- iptrans 6y agoIt's in the planning stage only.