17 ms·

Submarine cable map rendered onto a globe

684 points by Daviey 5y ago

Daviey 5y ago
Source is here: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl
- doerig 5y ago
  Specifically here: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl/blob/master/example/submarine-cables/index.html https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl/blob/master/example/s....
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Cool visualization! Would be great if a cable's landing points and capacity were shown (e.g. by hovering/clicking it).
gus_massa 5y ago
It's interesting that most countries have a single entry point (near the capital city), or only a few. One big exception is Chile that has a cable that goes along the cost and reach many cities. I a similar pattern in the east of Brazil and both sides of New Guinea.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  Check out cables in the Arctic.
  - abruzzi 5y ago
    its interesting that there seem to be cables connecting locations on the North Alaska caost, but nowhere else. I would have thought those locations would be too remote for land based connections, unless there is fiber running from Prudhoe Bay along the oil pipeline south.
- cableguy 5y ago
  All the way back to the early days of the cable industry in the 1800s, it was easier and safer to lay a cable along the coast of undeveloped countries than to try and run a landline on poles across rugged terrain. Both coasts of Central and South America had telegraph cables running down them, with spurs for inland connections. Same with Africa. Here's a map on my cable history website showing the network in 1902: https://atlantic-cable.com/Maps/1901-Berne-Map-BPL-Leventhal.jpg https://atlantic-cable.com/Maps/1901-Berne-Map-BPL-Leventhal...
deleted 5y ago
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veb 5y ago
yikes, only 5 cables for NZ. still... better than it used to be I suppose1 superb visualisations though. really cool to see.
- snicker7 5y ago
  I mean, it’s far worse for Africa given their geographic size and population.
- w-m 5y ago
  At ~1 cable per 1M pop they are probably leaving most countries behind them in a cable/person ratio, being topped only by the transit hubs in the pacific.
gorjusborg 5y ago
There's no submarine cable to Antarctica? Is this because it would be too difficult to terminate given the expansion/contraction of the ice shelf?
- MivLives 5y ago
  I'm guessing there's also not enough people to be worth it. There's only between 1k and 5k people down there depending on the time of year.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    But they're all scientists who have a lot of data to send back and because of the isolation are desperate for live streaming media and video calls.
- throwbigdata 5y ago
  No. It’s because no one is there.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  Little need, it's essentially all government run bases down there and they get their internet through various satellite links. You could maybe run one to McMurdo Station since it's on solid land and by a bay but there's just not enough data to justify the cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_Pole_Station#Communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_P...
- luxuryballs 5y ago
  Only thing more secure than a firewall is an ice wall!
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Unless you have a dead dragon
  - temptemptemp111 5y ago
404mm 5y ago
I’m surprised that none were damaged in Suez Canal when the ship (Ever Given) got stuck.
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  There is no reason to run a submarine cable through a canal, because there is land adjacent to the canal.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    There's land adjacent to many of these cables. It is cheaper to bury cables in water -- there's a lot fewer shovels needed and fewer property disputes.
    - cableguy 5y ago
      Also cables laid underwater are better protected from theft and vandalism than those on land in possibly hostile territories.
    - i_am_proteus 5y ago
      Man-made canals are constantly dredged. The Suez telecom connections run overland.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  It makes little sense to lay cables in the water in the canal, since they're always doing construction, digging, and dredging in and around it.
- dathinab 5y ago
  The ship only hit the grounds on the sides where it's less deep, but the cables probably go through the middle area where it's the deepest. So there wasn't much of a chance for the ship to damage any cables.
philipov 5y ago
Fascinating, I didn't know Guam was a hub for cable intersections in the pacific ocean.
tantalor 5y ago
It's kind of hard to distinguish between land and water when they are both black. Improving the contrast or adding a border would help.
- contravariant 5y ago
  Indeed, especially for those few spots seemingly in the middle of the ocean where the cables converge it would be interesting to know what land masses (if any) are nearby. Right now this is very difficult to see.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    I actually think there's a real unique and distinctive visualization caused by this decision. We're typically very geo-politically focused when we look to evaluate this sort information, but think about it without differentiating between land and ocean, without countries or borders. Think of nodes and edges in a graph, with the size/volume of edges weighing priority. Totally different way to view "earth".
  - intpete 5y ago
    It appears to be Guam.
  - rkuykendall-com 5y ago
    Switching between this and Google Maps the answers appear to be, predictably in hindsight, Hawaii / Guam / American Samoa.
genghisjahn 5y ago
Gotta mention this article from Neal Stephenson... Mother Earth Mother Board >The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
- DanTheManPR 5y ago
  You can find the FLAG cable referenced in the article on this map. The easiest landmark for finding it is the narrow section of the Malay peninsula. Stephenson spends some time in the article covering the overland construction there.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  That detailed research by Stephenson also served as the foundation for the fiber optic cable laying and data haven subplot in Cryptonomicon.
  - blamazon 5y ago
    The Philippines was the first place I looked on this map because of this book.
todd3834 5y ago
It’s amazing to see that we are essentially just having one huge LAN party. I wonder if the inventors of the phone or internet could have ever imagined this. Now with low orbit satellites connecting the world too, the innovation is incredible on this planet.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  They did imagine it. That's why it works. Even though it's stretched to its limits, most of the traffic on there is IPv4 which dates back to the 80s.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Alexander Graham Bell was alive to see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#/media/File:1901_Eastern_Telegraph_cables.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...
bluesmoon 5y ago
Obligatory mention of Greg's Cable Map which has been around since forever: https://cablemap.info/ https://cablemap.info/ and now under new ownership at https://www.infrapedia.com/app https://www.infrapedia.com/app
- quakeguy 5y ago
  Another one here: https://www.submarinecablemap.com https://www.submarinecablemap.com
lmilcin 5y ago
For me the most fascinating thing about this is vast distances through Pacific covered with the cables. One would assume it would be easier to cover the distance around Pacific and not directly through the middle of it, but it seems those milliseconds are truly precious.
msmith 5y ago
It's interesting that there are so many cables running through the Suez Canal. I wonder if it's because of geopolitical reasons for avoiding going over land through the Middle East.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  Well, it's also easier to run a cable underwater. As far as I know, the cables are literally just laid down there. You can't just lay a cable on land. You've got to bury it or elevate it on poles. I wonder how they deal with dredging the canal, though.
- degenerate 5y ago
  Likewise, what's the "benefit" of spreading the cables out by a few kilometers when space allows? If you zoom in you can see all the cables scrunched through the canal, but on more than one occasion they are fanned out to spread evenly across the given space. Likely it is only a visual eyecandy in the way this map was created, and not a true indication of the cable formations... but I tried looking for some answers on https://www.iscpc.org https://www.iscpc.org and gave up. I would assume once a suitable cable path is found, most subsequent cables would be laid right alongside for higher chance of success avoiding coral/trenches/etc. edit: The more I look at the map, the more it becomes clear these lines do not indicate true cable locations. The lines are too perfect... even for fiber optics. The ocean floor is a treacherous beast!
  - detaro 5y ago
    that also increases the chance of something hitting a cable taking out multiple cables at the same time.
  - finnh 5y ago
    Just guessing, but the benefit could be not cutting a cable by accident as you lay yours?
- finnh 5y ago
  per another comment[0], it's cheaper to just stay in the water unless you specifically want to attach to a land network. I don't have the knowledge the other commenter seems to have, but that certainly seems believable to me. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642764
neals 5y ago
Very obvious of course, but never thought about it: Europe to Asia (and back) takes a lot of routing.
willvarfar 5y ago
There’s some interesting military history and tech regarding submarine cables. The first act of WW1 was to sever a cable, for example. And during the Cold War the Americans planted bugs on Russian cables and were eventually exposed by a spy. Nowadays the Russians have some interesting capabilities that can be inferred. http://www.hisutton.com/Undersea_Cables.html http://www.hisutton.com/Undersea_Cables.html
- cableguy 5y ago
  Some years ago I was contacted by the descendants of an English engineer who was working at the Long Island NY cable station of the German Atlantic cable via the Azores at the start of WWI. Back in the 1950s a family member had recorded him on open reel tape reminiscing about his experiences, and this was later converted to audio cassettes. They sent me the tapes, and I cleaned up the audio for them, and they gave me permission to post the transcription and audio on my site. Turned out he was actually watching the signals coming in from a German operator when the cable was cut by the Brits, and he talks about this on one of the tapes. The story and short audio file are on my site: https://atlantic-cable.com/CableStories/Claypoole/index.htm https://atlantic-cable.com/CableStories/Claypoole/index.htm
nonfamous 5y ago
Inspired by https://twitter.com/tylermorganwall/status/1440669533157556227?s=21 https://twitter.com/tylermorganwall/status/14406695331575562... , or vice versa?
- hun-nemethpeter 5y ago
  This animation was featured at Daily Dose of Internet at 09/23 at 2:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRhnpFzIlx0&t=120s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRhnpFzIlx0&t=120s
hnarn 5y ago
This might be a stupid question, but is it implicit that these "submarine cables" are all fiber cables? If so, are they of similar or very different bandwidths? I would think there are cables of differing ages that are used for different things, or are all non-fiber cables taken out of service long ago, or are they just not included on the map? Also, the "Polar Express" cable on that map is fascinating, but it seems like it's not planned to be completed until 2026.[1] [1]: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-africa/polar-express/russia-builds-polar-express-subsea-cable-along-arctic-coastline https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-afr...
- azernik 5y ago
  I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables. Fiber's main strength is range; trying to run signals over electrical conductors over hundred-km-plus distances is not cost-effective and hasn't been for decades. (It's been done historically, but with very heavy cables, very high endpoint power levels, lots of repeaters, and really poor throughput.)
  - hnarn 5y ago
    > I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables. I strongly doubt electrical cables are fiber cables for example :-) On a more serious note, I was thinking that there are perhaps copper cables used for telephone communications that are still used simply because they haven't yet failed, but I assume fiber has perhaps been the standard for backbones long before it became something people have in their homes.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      Wouldn't it make sense for some electrical cables to have some fiber in them? When you're already laying them, you could get two services for the price of one.
      - hnarn 5y ago
        I suppose it would, I guess I'm just wondering for how long fiber cables have been the standard, and if there are any operational cables from the time before that. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of cables dedicated for one purpose (e.g. electricity only) that do not contain fiber simply because there wasn't a need or requirement when it was planned. edit: Here's an example: > The world record from 1994, for the longest HVDC cable with the highest capacity, was equalled in 2000 with the successful completion of the Swedish-Polish HVDC transmission link between Sweden and Poland: > 1. Stretching over 250 km, it is one of the two longest submarine HVDC cables ever laid. > 2. At 600 MW, the cable is one of the most powerful HVDC cables in commercial operation. > 3. At 450 kV DC, this cable together with the cable between Sweden and Germany, has the highest voltage rating of all existing submarine HVDC cables. This cable doesn't seem to have any other purpose than transferring electricity, and it was installed "only" 21 years ago.
dgritsko 5y ago
I found a couple that have interesting or creative names - Bifrost, Polar Express, Apollo, Grace Hopper, Amerigo Vespucci. Most of them are pretty dry by comparison, which feels like a missed opportunity.
unknown_apostle 5y ago
No direct cable between US and Russia... e.g. linking up the Bering Strait. Anybody know the reason for this?
- sigg3 5y ago
  Cold war?
- m-app 5y ago
  There’s not a lot of content to be exchanged between Siberia and Alaska. And running long stretches of fiber over land is actually more costly and subject to failure than under the sea, so going from Moscow -> Vladivostok (or something) over land, then going subsea, and then Alaska -> West-coast US over land, is not really beneficial.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  Few people live there. Coincidentally that's why there's no bridge up there, either.
gus_massa 5y ago
Another visualization, not as nice, but it's easier to spot all the landing sites: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
- johncena33 5y ago
  Actually I find it way more comprehensible than the posted link. The posted link seems to prioritize form over functionality.
  - gnabgib 5y ago
    Given the URL, it looks like this is a demo of the globe software.. there are a few others in the root.. this one's impressive: https://globe.gl/example/countries-population/ https://globe.gl/example/countries-population/
    - fourthark 5y ago
      Wow, not sure how useful that is (standard caveat about choropleths and density vs raw numbers) but very impressive! Even the text overlays work nicely.
- savingGrace 5y ago
  The two critiques I have of the OP link are solved in this one: - The land/water contrast and the dark/light should be inverted - Zoom speed is terrible in the OP link, but much better in this map
- joshspankit 5y ago
  Awesome resource. Anyone have one that shows the land cables connecting the undersea ones? I’d like to see how (and which) traffic gets to my particular inland city.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
(2019) ? Though I supposed the latest commit is to use live data from Telegeography
jkonline 5y ago
I've always enjoyed Hurricane Electric's 3D network map [1^], it includes a submarine cable filter view which always [2^] blows my mind. [1]: https://he.net/3d-map/ https://he.net/3d-map/ [2]: of course, today the desktop I'm using doesn't support WebGL and I can't see the submarine filter on my phone. YMMV
xwdv 5y ago
What would it take to lay down a fat pipe to Antarctica and finally connect all the continents?
- aaronmdjones 5y ago
  Money. Lots and lots of money. Given the population is always under 10k, and it doesn't serve as an interconnection point for any further points along the way (unlike e.g. Hawaii or Guam), it's just not worth it, apparently.
- mosburger 5y ago
  Another commmenter posted this above: https://www.convergencialatina.com/News-Detail/324197-3-8-Datco_announced_in_NPlay_Southern_Cone_2021_that_it_projects_a_1026_km_submarine_cable_to_Antarctica_through_the_Drake_Pass https://www.convergencialatina.com/News-Detail/324197-3-8-Da...
- modeless 5y ago
  Starlink will be available there in less than a year and should be quite sufficient. Possibly even better latency than fiber.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Related discussion from earlier in the year about the latest submarine cable map: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133
alexpotato 5y ago
I'm fascinated by that Gulf of Mexico cable. Is that for oil wells?
- zweifuss 5y ago
  Yes: https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/products-and-services/gom-fiber-optic-network.html https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/products-and-ser...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
zweifuss 5y ago
I'm suprised how well connected Guam is. Are there reasons?
- dagw 5y ago
  The US has several large military bases on Guam
- felideon 5y ago
  Well, it is a US territory and our most western one, at that.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Well, it is a US territory and our most western one, at that. If you move the prime meridian to run through (e.g.) D.C. or NYC, sure.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    It is and so is one of the (uninhabited) Aleutian islands. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_the_United_States#Westernmost_points https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_the_...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
hipokampa 5y ago
No cables between South America and Africa? Flat Earth!
- edoceo 5y ago
  What? There's loads across the Atlantic. Why would anyone take the long way? Pacific + Indian oceans are huge!
forinti 5y ago
Some interesting places that caught my eye: - Cocos Islands has their own cable and they don't even have 600 people; - Saint Helena has its own cable (googled to find out it is very recent and will start offering 18Gbps in 2022); - French Polynesia seems well served. Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn probably will never get their cables.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  St. Helena has been lobbying for years to get one. I was glad to see that finally working out for them.
- myself248 5y ago
  I suspect that some of those places host strategically important communications facilities. Perhaps spy satellite downlink facilities, perhaps GNSS ground-segment base stations, perhaps earth stations for other communications satellites. Oddly, those two specific islands don't. Saint Helena is specifically courting such business, but I don't see any indication that they've attracted anyway. But several other small islands are definitely fibered-up on account of their satellite facilities.
antattack 5y ago
I wonder if UK can use the fact that most US - EU links go through UK as a leverage. EDIT: answer is yes: "LONDON (Reuters) - High-speed sub-Atlantic cables may force banks to keep their armoury of currency trading hardware in London for some time, even if the dealers themselves go elsewhere when Britain leaves the European Union." [1] [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex-cables/transatlantic-cables-may-keep-fx-routed-through-london-post-brexit-idUSKBN13P1JA https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex-cables/trans...
- tailspin2019 5y ago
  A good idea in theory, but I believe phase 2 of our flawless and perfectly thought out Brexit execution plan is to sever all of those cables to prevent unwanted "foreign" bits from coming in and taking up British bandwidth. We're then going to individually renegotiate brand new communication transport/protocols with each foreign nation separately. On far better terms, over the next 20-25 years. I think the current plan is to use a different breed of carrier pigeon for each country so that we can tell where the data is coming from and where to send our responses back to.
- not2b 5y ago
  That article is 5 years old, it would be interesting to see an updated view on this.
- zokier 5y ago
  Actually bit weird how there is not a single cable going from Ireland to France (or elsewhere in the continent). I guess going through UK works, but there are so many cables all around the place that you'd think one of them would cross that gap.
cableguy 5y ago
A short timeline: 1850 - first telegraph cable laid across the English Channel between England and France. 1858 - first Atlantic telegraph cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. 1866 - first permanently successful Atlantic telegraph cable. 1891 - first telephone cable laid across the English Channel. 1902 - two telegraph cables laid across the Pacific Ocean. 1956 - first telephone cable across the Atlantic. 1988 - first fiber optic cable across the Atlantic. My cable history website has records of over 2,200 telegraph, telephone and fiber optic cables laid worldwide between 1850 and 2021: https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/CableTimeLine/index.htm https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/CableTimeLine/index.htm The front page of the site links to over a thousand individual pages on cable history: https://atlantic-cable.com https://atlantic-cable.com
- jrsdav 5y ago
  I'm a bit curious about something that I've never thought about before -- how were telegraph signals routed? Was it just a one way street, or did they have a frequency range to work with?
  - cableguy 5y ago
    This was long before there were any electronic devices to amplify or otherwise manipulate the signal. The telegraph signals were just short electrical pulses representing Morse code, with a positive voltage for a dot and a negative voltage for a dash. The lines could only be worked in one direction at a time for many years, but eventually circuits were used at each end to "duplex" the cable, allowing messages to be sent in both directions at the same tim.
a9h74j 5y ago
If you haven't viewed the OP, one surprise: apart from in the Pacific, the relative dominance of coast-hugging routes.
neilv 5y ago
Cool. We take it for granted, but the intercontinental data (and voice) connectivity cables are an impressive achievement for humanity -- technical, and for global community. And globe.gl has me "seeing" for the first time a particular cable for which I have a much smaller personal story. One of those submarine cables being severed accounts for one of only two software/hardware downtimes for a B2B startup's launch MVP, which had been deployed in critical production overseas. Our station appliances at the facility needed to talk with servers (at the network-closest AWS AZ) multiple times a minute, for cryptographic security reasons. The appliances had a boot-time check for network connectivity (which saw extreme latency and packet loss as network unavailable). For reasons, the facility powered off all equipment at night. One day, the facility said the appliances wouldn't "turn on", I quickly found they were having network problems, but facility insisted their LAN and Internet connectivity was fine. I was able to carefully SSH in (with terminal responsiveness like a bad dialup to an overloaded timesharing system), and relaxed the timeout on the check that was in a retry loop, and the stations came to life (albeit network requests during operations much slower than normal). The facility manager advised later that day that it turns out a submarine cable had been severed.
vanattab 5y ago
I was surprised by how many lines seem to just run along the coasts of land. Is it really cheaper to lay and maintain fiber in the ocean then over land along the coast?
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  I would think so given overland is more likely to hit right-of-ways owned by entrenched telcos - who tirelessly work to screw-over any comm progress that doesn't enrich them as much as they want. Past that there's endless interests that have to be negotiated with. And any part of the cable has to travel above ground will be more vulnerable.
samstave 5y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pt7gu3/earths_submarine_fiber_optic_cable_network_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pt7gu3/ear... Way better version, and he includes the code.
deleted 5y ago
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CobrastanJorji 5y ago
These sorts of projects are always fascinating to me. The hard part of these sorts of visualizations always seems to be acquiring the data in the first place. I would have no idea where to begin looking for a record of exactly how all of the underwater fiber optic cables are positioned. I wonder whether people come across this sort of data and think to do something with it, or whether people start by deciding to make this visualization and then go forth and search out the data.
- slivanes 5y ago
  https://www.infrapedia.com/app https://www.infrapedia.com/app - used to be called greg's cable map.
- cableguy 5y ago
  This cable industry site regularly publishes an Almanac of all current active cables with maps and details for each one: https://issuu.com/subtelforum/docs/subtel_forum_almanac_issue_36 https://issuu.com/subtelforum/docs/subtel_forum_almanac_issu...
tills13 5y ago
One suggestion would be to use a better globe. I want to see where in US the entrypoints are, for example, but it just become a blurry mess when zoomed in.
lifekaizen 5y ago
Very cool! Quick browser note: get blank screen with Brave on iOS iPad (with shields up; does work with shields down), no problem on iPhone.
deleted 5y ago
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wing-_-nuts 5y ago
Anyone else find it utterly fascinating that we have undersea fiber running to Svalbard, the galapagos and keeling island? These are not highly populated areas, and yet look at how abysmal rural internet penetration is in the usa.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Satellite_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Satellite_Station
dang 5y ago
Past related threads. Others? Submarine Cable Map 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 - June 2021 (83 comments) (<-- fabulous top comment) Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020431 - Nov 2020 (134 comments) Greg's Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176011 - Sept 2017 (41 comments) Submarine cable map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 - Feb 2017 (35 comments) Map of Undersea Internet Cables - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 - Sept 2015 (13 comments) Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 - March 2015 (39 comments) Submarine Cable Map 2014 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242448 - Aug 2014 (110 comments) (<-- also a great top comment) Submarine Cable Map 2013 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5151469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5151469 - Feb 2013 (10 comments) 2012 Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218909 - July 2012 (68 comments) Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749 - Feb 2012 (109 comments) Interactive Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481944 - Jan 2012 (1 comment) Map of worldwide undersea cables - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606366 - Aug 2010 (49 comments) Map of All Undersea Internet Cables - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423730 - Jan 2009 (2 comments)
killjoywashere 5y ago
Protecting the sea lanes of communication is actually a core US Navy mission (and probably high priorities for several other world Navies as well). Particularly the major choke points: Strait of Gibraltar, Strait of Malacca, Strait of Hormuz, the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Bab el Mandeb, Turkish Straits, and the Cape of Good Hope.
retrac 5y ago
This is slightly tangential, but it's Atlantic-cable-related, and I just learned about it. Let me set the stage. By the 1920s, analog fax technology was established and there were a variety of experimental and early commercial systems in use. One of the first uses of modems was to transmit faxes over the long-distance telephone network, turning a voltage into a pitch, and vice versa. The electronic marvel of the 1930s in the newsroom, aside from the teletypes, was that you could take a photo in San Francisco and have it published just hours later in New York. But how do you get a picture across the Atlantic Ocean? Those analog fax systems suffer from noise and in the experimental systems of the 1910s and 1920s long-distance was impractical. Shortwave to get over the Ocean was right out. There were no transoceanic telephone links. But there were submarine telegraph cables. Morse code or Baudot telex. Not very fast with no amplifiers along the lines yet. But you could send a telex across the Atlantic ocean. Enter the Bartlane transmission system. First, five photographs were developed from the original negative, at different exposure levels, using a conductive developer. So each point of the image is more or less conductive depending on its exposure. Each of these photos is scanned, as if it had pixels, and a 1-bit intensity value collected for for all five photographs, creating a five-level greyscale bitmap image on tape basically. (Five bits worked with existing Baudot code equipment.) This enormous tape was then sent over the wire. On the receiving end a printer, with intensity controlled by the level indicated, would then selectively expose a spot on a photographic plate to light, as it stepped through the tape. Six hours to send a small image. But digital was the only way to send a photograph from London to New York overnight from its early trials in the 1920s until the 1950s. http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Interesting
- andrepd 5y ago
  Wow, that's insane.
- chiph 5y ago
  > Six hours to send a small image. Imagine the price of exclusive use of a transatlantic telex line for that length of time! Teleprinters back then commonly ran at 50 baud, so a 400x300 dot photo would take a little more than 40 minutes (120000 dots / 50 baud / 60 seconds) The linked article mentions that the punched tape could be cut into several pieces then transmitted in parallel over several telex lines at once. At the receiving end the punched tapes would be spliced back together in correct order, and then used to create the photographic negative. That's an interesting piece of historic technology. Thanks.
divbzero 5y ago
Along the US west coast, it surprises me that Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Diego each appear to have more submarine cable connections than San Francisco.
divbzero 5y ago
What happens when cables need to cross an isthmus like the Suez? Looks like they don’t literally go through the canal from Suez to Port Said but they run pretty close by to minimize distance over land. Most connections appear to run from Suez to Alexandria and from Zafarana to Abu Talat. [1] [1]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/google-egypt-suez-digital-internet-flow-change-middle-east https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/google-egypt-suez-digital...
quotemstr 5y ago
I'm surprised the Greenland Connect cable connects Newfoundland to Iceland by way of Greenland instead of just terminating at Greenland. I wonder how much non-Greenland through traffic the cable gets. It'd have been cheaper to skip the Greenland<->Iceland leg, right? It's also interesting how it looks like it's easier to go around the west coast of Africa than to run cables overland across the Sahara.
enono 5y ago
This is so cool. Thank you for building this. Does anyone have insight into how the fuck he built this?
voldacar 5y ago
Interesting findings from this map: - Guam is a significant data/telecoms hub for the western pacific region - There are some short cables installed in areas that don't seem to make much sense, Such as the one in the gulf of Mexico, or between Italy and Croatia - Many extremely sparsely populated islands and archipelagos have their own undersea fiber, such as Svalbard. Super cool site.
jamal-kumar 5y ago
Interesting fact if you're in latam/caribe... if you're down here you have situations like DDoS saturation on MAYA-1 (caribbean side) and then you have to make some phonecalls and re-route your BGP over the PAC (Pan-American Crosssing on the pacific side). Fun shit to do getting woken up by your boss at 1am!
bob229 5y ago
Awful awful map. Terrible colours. Unintelligible
Groxx 5y ago
A question! Are the parallel lines of cables actually spread out that far, or is that to make it look nicer?
- Etherlord87 5y ago
  I also found that interesting, found a comment on Reddit thread linked here: submarinecablemap.com's FAQ *Are the submarine cable paths shown the actual route taken by the cables?* No. The cables routes on our map are stylized and do not reflect the actual path taken by the various systems. This design approach makes it easy to visually follow the different cables and the points at which they land. In real life, cables that cross similar areas of an ocean, take very similar paths. These paths are chosen via comprehensive marine surveys which select routes that avoid hazardous conditions that could potentially damage a cable.
elihu 5y ago
I assume these are all communications cables, but I'm curious if anyone knows what the logistical issues would be to laying high-capacity high-voltage DC lines across oceans? The idea being that as renewable and specifically solar power becomes a larger percentage of electrical generation, it'd be really nice to be able to buy and sell power between the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. It's either that or use a lot of batteries, and power lines seem like they ought to be the more efficient, effective solution. HVDC losses can be reasonably low even for thousands of miles* [1]. I'm thinking of having undersea links, for instance, between Brazil and Western Africa, or Canada to Greenland to Iceland to mainland Europe, or Alaska to Russia. (Wikipedia shows a number of short-distance undersea HVDC links in Europe [1].) * "Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50% less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
c54 5y ago
I would love to be able to plug in two locations and visualize on a map the path my packets would take travelling from here to there. A sort of visual traceroute. One problem I've had with existing tools is that it's hard to find a server in a given place, even if you know that place has internet. For instance I was facetiming with my partner who is abroad in africa right now, but I'm not sure of a server to [traceroute] against in the country she's in.
tempestn 5y ago
Huh, surprised me to see how many run along the coast. I would've thought it would be cheaper to run cables by land if they weren't going to cross the ocean. I can see how that might not be the case though, as you can't just lay a cable down along the ground on land like you can in the ocean.
tertrand 5y ago
It would be good if there's an option in which we can increase its brightness. It's too dark, I can't properly distinguish each continent, and some parts of the world are missing.

684 points by Daviey 5y ago

Daviey 5y ago

Source is here: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl

doerig 5y ago
Specifically here: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl/blob/master/example/submarine-cables/index.html https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl/blob/master/example/s....

theandrewbailey 5y ago

Cool visualization! Would be great if a cable's landing points and capacity were shown (e.g. by hovering/clicking it).

gus_massa 5y ago

It's interesting that most countries have a single entry point (near the capital city), or only a few. One big exception is Chile that has a cable that goes along the cost and reach many cities. I a similar pattern in the east of Brazil and both sides of New Guinea.

theandrewbailey 5y ago
Check out cables in the Arctic.
- abruzzi 5y ago
  its interesting that there seem to be cables connecting locations on the North Alaska caost, but nowhere else. I would have thought those locations would be too remote for land based connections, unless there is fiber running from Prudhoe Bay along the oil pipeline south.
cableguy 5y ago
All the way back to the early days of the cable industry in the 1800s, it was easier and safer to lay a cable along the coast of undeveloped countries than to try and run a landline on poles across rugged terrain. Both coasts of Central and South America had telegraph cables running down them, with spurs for inland connections. Same with Africa. Here's a map on my cable history website showing the network in 1902: https://atlantic-cable.com/Maps/1901-Berne-Map-BPL-Leventhal.jpg https://atlantic-cable.com/Maps/1901-Berne-Map-BPL-Leventhal...

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veb 5y ago

yikes, only 5 cables for NZ. still... better than it used to be I suppose1 superb visualisations though. really cool to see.

snicker7 5y ago
I mean, it’s far worse for Africa given their geographic size and population.
w-m 5y ago
At ~1 cable per 1M pop they are probably leaving most countries behind them in a cable/person ratio, being topped only by the transit hubs in the pacific.

gorjusborg 5y ago

There's no submarine cable to Antarctica? Is this because it would be too difficult to terminate given the expansion/contraction of the ice shelf?

MivLives 5y ago
I'm guessing there's also not enough people to be worth it. There's only between 1k and 5k people down there depending on the time of year.
- jedberg 5y ago
  But they're all scientists who have a lot of data to send back and because of the isolation are desperate for live streaming media and video calls.
throwbigdata 5y ago
No. It’s because no one is there.
rtkwe 5y ago
Little need, it's essentially all government run bases down there and they get their internet through various satellite links. You could maybe run one to McMurdo Station since it's on solid land and by a bay but there's just not enough data to justify the cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_Pole_Station#Communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_P...
luxuryballs 5y ago
Only thing more secure than a firewall is an ice wall!
- dylan604 5y ago
  Unless you have a dead dragon
- temptemptemp111 5y ago

404mm 5y ago

I’m surprised that none were damaged in Suez Canal when the ship (Ever Given) got stuck.

i_am_proteus 5y ago
There is no reason to run a submarine cable through a canal, because there is land adjacent to the canal.
- kube-system 5y ago
  There's land adjacent to many of these cables. It is cheaper to bury cables in water -- there's a lot fewer shovels needed and fewer property disputes.
  - cableguy 5y ago
    Also cables laid underwater are better protected from theft and vandalism than those on land in possibly hostile territories.
  - i_am_proteus 5y ago
    Man-made canals are constantly dredged. The Suez telecom connections run overland.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
It makes little sense to lay cables in the water in the canal, since they're always doing construction, digging, and dredging in and around it.
dathinab 5y ago
The ship only hit the grounds on the sides where it's less deep, but the cables probably go through the middle area where it's the deepest. So there wasn't much of a chance for the ship to damage any cables.

philipov 5y ago

Fascinating, I didn't know Guam was a hub for cable intersections in the pacific ocean.

tantalor 5y ago

It's kind of hard to distinguish between land and water when they are both black. Improving the contrast or adding a border would help.

contravariant 5y ago
Indeed, especially for those few spots seemingly in the middle of the ocean where the cables converge it would be interesting to know what land masses (if any) are nearby. Right now this is very difficult to see.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  I actually think there's a real unique and distinctive visualization caused by this decision. We're typically very geo-politically focused when we look to evaluate this sort information, but think about it without differentiating between land and ocean, without countries or borders. Think of nodes and edges in a graph, with the size/volume of edges weighing priority. Totally different way to view "earth".
- intpete 5y ago
  It appears to be Guam.
- rkuykendall-com 5y ago
  Switching between this and Google Maps the answers appear to be, predictably in hindsight, Hawaii / Guam / American Samoa.

genghisjahn 5y ago

Gotta mention this article from Neal Stephenson... Mother Earth Mother Board >The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

DanTheManPR 5y ago
You can find the FLAG cable referenced in the article on this map. The easiest landmark for finding it is the narrow section of the Malay peninsula. Stephenson spends some time in the article covering the overland construction there.
wrycoder 5y ago
That detailed research by Stephenson also served as the foundation for the fiber optic cable laying and data haven subplot in Cryptonomicon.
- blamazon 5y ago
  The Philippines was the first place I looked on this map because of this book.

todd3834 5y ago

It’s amazing to see that we are essentially just having one huge LAN party. I wonder if the inventors of the phone or internet could have ever imagined this. Now with low orbit satellites connecting the world too, the innovation is incredible on this planet.

globular-toast 5y ago
They did imagine it. That's why it works. Even though it's stretched to its limits, most of the traffic on there is IPv4 which dates back to the 80s.
kube-system 5y ago
Alexander Graham Bell was alive to see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#/media/File:1901_Eastern_Telegraph_cables.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...

bluesmoon 5y ago

Obligatory mention of Greg's Cable Map which has been around since forever: https://cablemap.info/ https://cablemap.info/ and now under new ownership at https://www.infrapedia.com/app https://www.infrapedia.com/app

quakeguy 5y ago
Another one here: https://www.submarinecablemap.com https://www.submarinecablemap.com

lmilcin 5y ago

For me the most fascinating thing about this is vast distances through Pacific covered with the cables. One would assume it would be easier to cover the distance around Pacific and not directly through the middle of it, but it seems those milliseconds are truly precious.

msmith 5y ago

It's interesting that there are so many cables running through the Suez Canal. I wonder if it's because of geopolitical reasons for avoiding going over land through the Middle East.

globular-toast 5y ago
Well, it's also easier to run a cable underwater. As far as I know, the cables are literally just laid down there. You can't just lay a cable on land. You've got to bury it or elevate it on poles. I wonder how they deal with dredging the canal, though.
degenerate 5y ago
Likewise, what's the "benefit" of spreading the cables out by a few kilometers when space allows? If you zoom in you can see all the cables scrunched through the canal, but on more than one occasion they are fanned out to spread evenly across the given space. Likely it is only a visual eyecandy in the way this map was created, and not a true indication of the cable formations... but I tried looking for some answers on https://www.iscpc.org https://www.iscpc.org and gave up. I would assume once a suitable cable path is found, most subsequent cables would be laid right alongside for higher chance of success avoiding coral/trenches/etc. edit: The more I look at the map, the more it becomes clear these lines do not indicate true cable locations. The lines are too perfect... even for fiber optics. The ocean floor is a treacherous beast!
- detaro 5y ago
  that also increases the chance of something hitting a cable taking out multiple cables at the same time.
- finnh 5y ago
  Just guessing, but the benefit could be not cutting a cable by accident as you lay yours?
finnh 5y ago
per another comment[0], it's cheaper to just stay in the water unless you specifically want to attach to a land network. I don't have the knowledge the other commenter seems to have, but that certainly seems believable to me. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642764

neals 5y ago

Very obvious of course, but never thought about it: Europe to Asia (and back) takes a lot of routing.

willvarfar 5y ago

There’s some interesting military history and tech regarding submarine cables. The first act of WW1 was to sever a cable, for example. And during the Cold War the Americans planted bugs on Russian cables and were eventually exposed by a spy. Nowadays the Russians have some interesting capabilities that can be inferred. http://www.hisutton.com/Undersea_Cables.html http://www.hisutton.com/Undersea_Cables.html

cableguy 5y ago
Some years ago I was contacted by the descendants of an English engineer who was working at the Long Island NY cable station of the German Atlantic cable via the Azores at the start of WWI. Back in the 1950s a family member had recorded him on open reel tape reminiscing about his experiences, and this was later converted to audio cassettes. They sent me the tapes, and I cleaned up the audio for them, and they gave me permission to post the transcription and audio on my site. Turned out he was actually watching the signals coming in from a German operator when the cable was cut by the Brits, and he talks about this on one of the tapes. The story and short audio file are on my site: https://atlantic-cable.com/CableStories/Claypoole/index.htm https://atlantic-cable.com/CableStories/Claypoole/index.htm

nonfamous 5y ago

Inspired by https://twitter.com/tylermorganwall/status/1440669533157556227?s=21 https://twitter.com/tylermorganwall/status/14406695331575562... , or vice versa?

hun-nemethpeter 5y ago
This animation was featured at Daily Dose of Internet at 09/23 at 2:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRhnpFzIlx0&t=120s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRhnpFzIlx0&t=120s

hnarn 5y ago

This might be a stupid question, but is it implicit that these "submarine cables" are all fiber cables? If so, are they of similar or very different bandwidths? I would think there are cables of differing ages that are used for different things, or are all non-fiber cables taken out of service long ago, or are they just not included on the map? Also, the "Polar Express" cable on that map is fascinating, but it seems like it's not planned to be completed until 2026.[1] [1]: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-africa/polar-express/russia-builds-polar-express-subsea-cable-along-arctic-coastline https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-afr...

azernik 5y ago
I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables. Fiber's main strength is range; trying to run signals over electrical conductors over hundred-km-plus distances is not cost-effective and hasn't been for decades. (It's been done historically, but with very heavy cables, very high endpoint power levels, lots of repeaters, and really poor throughput.)
- hnarn 5y ago
  > I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables. I strongly doubt electrical cables are fiber cables for example :-) On a more serious note, I was thinking that there are perhaps copper cables used for telephone communications that are still used simply because they haven't yet failed, but I assume fiber has perhaps been the standard for backbones long before it became something people have in their homes.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    Wouldn't it make sense for some electrical cables to have some fiber in them? When you're already laying them, you could get two services for the price of one.
    - hnarn 5y ago
      I suppose it would, I guess I'm just wondering for how long fiber cables have been the standard, and if there are any operational cables from the time before that. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of cables dedicated for one purpose (e.g. electricity only) that do not contain fiber simply because there wasn't a need or requirement when it was planned. edit: Here's an example: > The world record from 1994, for the longest HVDC cable with the highest capacity, was equalled in 2000 with the successful completion of the Swedish-Polish HVDC transmission link between Sweden and Poland: > 1. Stretching over 250 km, it is one of the two longest submarine HVDC cables ever laid. > 2. At 600 MW, the cable is one of the most powerful HVDC cables in commercial operation. > 3. At 450 kV DC, this cable together with the cable between Sweden and Germany, has the highest voltage rating of all existing submarine HVDC cables. This cable doesn't seem to have any other purpose than transferring electricity, and it was installed "only" 21 years ago.

dgritsko 5y ago

I found a couple that have interesting or creative names - Bifrost, Polar Express, Apollo, Grace Hopper, Amerigo Vespucci. Most of them are pretty dry by comparison, which feels like a missed opportunity.

unknown_apostle 5y ago

No direct cable between US and Russia... e.g. linking up the Bering Strait. Anybody know the reason for this?

sigg3 5y ago
Cold war?
m-app 5y ago
There’s not a lot of content to be exchanged between Siberia and Alaska. And running long stretches of fiber over land is actually more costly and subject to failure than under the sea, so going from Moscow -> Vladivostok (or something) over land, then going subsea, and then Alaska -> West-coast US over land, is not really beneficial.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Few people live there. Coincidentally that's why there's no bridge up there, either.

gus_massa 5y ago

Another visualization, not as nice, but it's easier to spot all the landing sites: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

johncena33 5y ago
Actually I find it way more comprehensible than the posted link. The posted link seems to prioritize form over functionality.
- gnabgib 5y ago
  Given the URL, it looks like this is a demo of the globe software.. there are a few others in the root.. this one's impressive: https://globe.gl/example/countries-population/ https://globe.gl/example/countries-population/
  - fourthark 5y ago
    Wow, not sure how useful that is (standard caveat about choropleths and density vs raw numbers) but very impressive! Even the text overlays work nicely.
savingGrace 5y ago
The two critiques I have of the OP link are solved in this one: - The land/water contrast and the dark/light should be inverted - Zoom speed is terrible in the OP link, but much better in this map
joshspankit 5y ago
Awesome resource. Anyone have one that shows the land cables connecting the undersea ones? I’d like to see how (and which) traffic gets to my particular inland city.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

(2019) ? Though I supposed the latest commit is to use live data from Telegeography

jkonline 5y ago

I've always enjoyed Hurricane Electric's 3D network map [1^], it includes a submarine cable filter view which always [2^] blows my mind. [1]: https://he.net/3d-map/ https://he.net/3d-map/ [2]: of course, today the desktop I'm using doesn't support WebGL and I can't see the submarine filter on my phone. YMMV

xwdv 5y ago

What would it take to lay down a fat pipe to Antarctica and finally connect all the continents?

aaronmdjones 5y ago
Money. Lots and lots of money. Given the population is always under 10k, and it doesn't serve as an interconnection point for any further points along the way (unlike e.g. Hawaii or Guam), it's just not worth it, apparently.
mosburger 5y ago
Another commmenter posted this above: https://www.convergencialatina.com/News-Detail/324197-3-8-Datco_announced_in_NPlay_Southern_Cone_2021_that_it_projects_a_1026_km_submarine_cable_to_Antarctica_through_the_Drake_Pass https://www.convergencialatina.com/News-Detail/324197-3-8-Da...
modeless 5y ago
Starlink will be available there in less than a year and should be quite sufficient. Possibly even better latency than fiber.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Related discussion from earlier in the year about the latest submarine cable map: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133

alexpotato 5y ago

I'm fascinated by that Gulf of Mexico cable. Is that for oil wells?

zweifuss 5y ago
Yes: https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/products-and-services/gom-fiber-optic-network.html https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/products-and-ser...
deleted 5y ago
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zweifuss 5y ago

I'm suprised how well connected Guam is. Are there reasons?

dagw 5y ago
The US has several large military bases on Guam
felideon 5y ago
Well, it is a US territory and our most western one, at that.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Well, it is a US territory and our most western one, at that. If you move the prime meridian to run through (e.g.) D.C. or NYC, sure.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  It is and so is one of the (uninhabited) Aleutian islands. ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_the_United_States#Westernmost_points https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_the_...
deleted 5y ago
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hipokampa 5y ago

No cables between South America and Africa? Flat Earth!

edoceo 5y ago
What? There's loads across the Atlantic. Why would anyone take the long way? Pacific + Indian oceans are huge!

forinti 5y ago

Some interesting places that caught my eye: - Cocos Islands has their own cable and they don't even have 600 people; - Saint Helena has its own cable (googled to find out it is very recent and will start offering 18Gbps in 2022); - French Polynesia seems well served. Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn probably will never get their cables.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
St. Helena has been lobbying for years to get one. I was glad to see that finally working out for them.
myself248 5y ago
I suspect that some of those places host strategically important communications facilities. Perhaps spy satellite downlink facilities, perhaps GNSS ground-segment base stations, perhaps earth stations for other communications satellites. Oddly, those two specific islands don't. Saint Helena is specifically courting such business, but I don't see any indication that they've attracted anyway. But several other small islands are definitely fibered-up on account of their satellite facilities.

antattack 5y ago

I wonder if UK can use the fact that most US - EU links go through UK as a leverage. EDIT: answer is yes: "LONDON (Reuters) - High-speed sub-Atlantic cables may force banks to keep their armoury of currency trading hardware in London for some time, even if the dealers themselves go elsewhere when Britain leaves the European Union." [1] [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex-cables/transatlantic-cables-may-keep-fx-routed-through-london-post-brexit-idUSKBN13P1JA https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex-cables/trans...

tailspin2019 5y ago
A good idea in theory, but I believe phase 2 of our flawless and perfectly thought out Brexit execution plan is to sever all of those cables to prevent unwanted "foreign" bits from coming in and taking up British bandwidth. We're then going to individually renegotiate brand new communication transport/protocols with each foreign nation separately. On far better terms, over the next 20-25 years. I think the current plan is to use a different breed of carrier pigeon for each country so that we can tell where the data is coming from and where to send our responses back to.
not2b 5y ago
That article is 5 years old, it would be interesting to see an updated view on this.
zokier 5y ago
Actually bit weird how there is not a single cable going from Ireland to France (or elsewhere in the continent). I guess going through UK works, but there are so many cables all around the place that you'd think one of them would cross that gap.

cableguy 5y ago

A short timeline: 1850 - first telegraph cable laid across the English Channel between England and France. 1858 - first Atlantic telegraph cable between Ireland and Newfoundland. 1866 - first permanently successful Atlantic telegraph cable. 1891 - first telephone cable laid across the English Channel. 1902 - two telegraph cables laid across the Pacific Ocean. 1956 - first telephone cable across the Atlantic. 1988 - first fiber optic cable across the Atlantic. My cable history website has records of over 2,200 telegraph, telephone and fiber optic cables laid worldwide between 1850 and 2021: https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/CableTimeLine/index.htm https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/CableTimeLine/index.htm The front page of the site links to over a thousand individual pages on cable history: https://atlantic-cable.com https://atlantic-cable.com

jrsdav 5y ago
I'm a bit curious about something that I've never thought about before -- how were telegraph signals routed? Was it just a one way street, or did they have a frequency range to work with?
- cableguy 5y ago
  This was long before there were any electronic devices to amplify or otherwise manipulate the signal. The telegraph signals were just short electrical pulses representing Morse code, with a positive voltage for a dot and a negative voltage for a dash. The lines could only be worked in one direction at a time for many years, but eventually circuits were used at each end to "duplex" the cable, allowing messages to be sent in both directions at the same tim.

a9h74j 5y ago

If you haven't viewed the OP, one surprise: apart from in the Pacific, the relative dominance of coast-hugging routes.

neilv 5y ago

Cool. We take it for granted, but the intercontinental data (and voice) connectivity cables are an impressive achievement for humanity -- technical, and for global community. And globe.gl has me "seeing" for the first time a particular cable for which I have a much smaller personal story. One of those submarine cables being severed accounts for one of only two software/hardware downtimes for a B2B startup's launch MVP, which had been deployed in critical production overseas. Our station appliances at the facility needed to talk with servers (at the network-closest AWS AZ) multiple times a minute, for cryptographic security reasons. The appliances had a boot-time check for network connectivity (which saw extreme latency and packet loss as network unavailable). For reasons, the facility powered off all equipment at night. One day, the facility said the appliances wouldn't "turn on", I quickly found they were having network problems, but facility insisted their LAN and Internet connectivity was fine. I was able to carefully SSH in (with terminal responsiveness like a bad dialup to an overloaded timesharing system), and relaxed the timeout on the check that was in a retry loop, and the stations came to life (albeit network requests during operations much slower than normal). The facility manager advised later that day that it turns out a submarine cable had been severed.

vanattab 5y ago

I was surprised by how many lines seem to just run along the coasts of land. Is it really cheaper to lay and maintain fiber in the ocean then over land along the coast?

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
I would think so given overland is more likely to hit right-of-ways owned by entrenched telcos - who tirelessly work to screw-over any comm progress that doesn't enrich them as much as they want. Past that there's endless interests that have to be negotiated with. And any part of the cable has to travel above ground will be more vulnerable.

samstave 5y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pt7gu3/earths_submarine_fiber_optic_cable_network_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pt7gu3/ear... Way better version, and he includes the code.

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CobrastanJorji 5y ago

These sorts of projects are always fascinating to me. The hard part of these sorts of visualizations always seems to be acquiring the data in the first place. I would have no idea where to begin looking for a record of exactly how all of the underwater fiber optic cables are positioned. I wonder whether people come across this sort of data and think to do something with it, or whether people start by deciding to make this visualization and then go forth and search out the data.

slivanes 5y ago
https://www.infrapedia.com/app https://www.infrapedia.com/app - used to be called greg's cable map.
cableguy 5y ago
This cable industry site regularly publishes an Almanac of all current active cables with maps and details for each one: https://issuu.com/subtelforum/docs/subtel_forum_almanac_issue_36 https://issuu.com/subtelforum/docs/subtel_forum_almanac_issu...

tills13 5y ago

One suggestion would be to use a better globe. I want to see where in US the entrypoints are, for example, but it just become a blurry mess when zoomed in.

lifekaizen 5y ago

Very cool! Quick browser note: get blank screen with Brave on iOS iPad (with shields up; does work with shields down), no problem on iPhone.

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wing-_-nuts 5y ago

Anyone else find it utterly fascinating that we have undersea fiber running to Svalbard, the galapagos and keeling island? These are not highly populated areas, and yet look at how abysmal rural internet penetration is in the usa.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Satellite_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Satellite_Station

dang 5y ago

Past related threads. Others? Submarine Cable Map 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 - June 2021 (83 comments) (<-- fabulous top comment) Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020431 - Nov 2020 (134 comments) Greg's Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176011 - Sept 2017 (41 comments) Submarine cable map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 - Feb 2017 (35 comments) Map of Undersea Internet Cables - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 - Sept 2015 (13 comments) Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 - March 2015 (39 comments) Submarine Cable Map 2014 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242448 - Aug 2014 (110 comments) (<-- also a great top comment) Submarine Cable Map 2013 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5151469 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5151469 - Feb 2013 (10 comments) 2012 Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218909 - July 2012 (68 comments) Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749 - Feb 2012 (109 comments) Interactive Submarine Cable Map - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481944 - Jan 2012 (1 comment) Map of worldwide undersea cables - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606366 - Aug 2010 (49 comments) Map of All Undersea Internet Cables - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423730 - Jan 2009 (2 comments)

killjoywashere 5y ago

Protecting the sea lanes of communication is actually a core US Navy mission (and probably high priorities for several other world Navies as well). Particularly the major choke points: Strait of Gibraltar, Strait of Malacca, Strait of Hormuz, the Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Bab el Mandeb, Turkish Straits, and the Cape of Good Hope.

retrac 5y ago

This is slightly tangential, but it's Atlantic-cable-related, and I just learned about it. Let me set the stage. By the 1920s, analog fax technology was established and there were a variety of experimental and early commercial systems in use. One of the first uses of modems was to transmit faxes over the long-distance telephone network, turning a voltage into a pitch, and vice versa. The electronic marvel of the 1930s in the newsroom, aside from the teletypes, was that you could take a photo in San Francisco and have it published just hours later in New York. But how do you get a picture across the Atlantic Ocean? Those analog fax systems suffer from noise and in the experimental systems of the 1910s and 1920s long-distance was impractical. Shortwave to get over the Ocean was right out. There were no transoceanic telephone links. But there were submarine telegraph cables. Morse code or Baudot telex. Not very fast with no amplifiers along the lines yet. But you could send a telex across the Atlantic ocean. Enter the Bartlane transmission system. First, five photographs were developed from the original negative, at different exposure levels, using a conductive developer. So each point of the image is more or less conductive depending on its exposure. Each of these photos is scanned, as if it had pixels, and a 1-bit intensity value collected for for all five photographs, creating a five-level greyscale bitmap image on tape basically. (Five bits worked with existing Baudot code equipment.) This enormous tape was then sent over the wire. On the receiving end a printer, with intensity controlled by the level indicated, would then selectively expose a spot on a photographic plate to light, as it stepped through the tape. Six hours to send a small image. But digital was the only way to send a photograph from London to New York overnight from its early trials in the 1920s until the 1950s. http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html

axiosgunnar 5y ago
Interesting
andrepd 5y ago
Wow, that's insane.
chiph 5y ago
> Six hours to send a small image. Imagine the price of exclusive use of a transatlantic telex line for that length of time! Teleprinters back then commonly ran at 50 baud, so a 400x300 dot photo would take a little more than 40 minutes (120000 dots / 50 baud / 60 seconds) The linked article mentions that the punched tape could be cut into several pieces then transmitted in parallel over several telex lines at once. At the receiving end the punched tapes would be spliced back together in correct order, and then used to create the photographic negative. That's an interesting piece of historic technology. Thanks.

divbzero 5y ago

Along the US west coast, it surprises me that Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Diego each appear to have more submarine cable connections than San Francisco.

divbzero 5y ago

What happens when cables need to cross an isthmus like the Suez? Looks like they don’t literally go through the canal from Suez to Port Said but they run pretty close by to minimize distance over land. Most connections appear to run from Suez to Alexandria and from Zafarana to Abu Talat. [1] [1]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/google-egypt-suez-digital-internet-flow-change-middle-east https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/google-egypt-suez-digital...

quotemstr 5y ago

I'm surprised the Greenland Connect cable connects Newfoundland to Iceland by way of Greenland instead of just terminating at Greenland. I wonder how much non-Greenland through traffic the cable gets. It'd have been cheaper to skip the Greenland<->Iceland leg, right? It's also interesting how it looks like it's easier to go around the west coast of Africa than to run cables overland across the Sahara.

enono 5y ago

This is so cool. Thank you for building this. Does anyone have insight into how the fuck he built this?

voldacar 5y ago

Interesting findings from this map: - Guam is a significant data/telecoms hub for the western pacific region - There are some short cables installed in areas that don't seem to make much sense, Such as the one in the gulf of Mexico, or between Italy and Croatia - Many extremely sparsely populated islands and archipelagos have their own undersea fiber, such as Svalbard. Super cool site.

jamal-kumar 5y ago

Interesting fact if you're in latam/caribe... if you're down here you have situations like DDoS saturation on MAYA-1 (caribbean side) and then you have to make some phonecalls and re-route your BGP over the PAC (Pan-American Crosssing on the pacific side). Fun shit to do getting woken up by your boss at 1am!

bob229 5y ago

Awful awful map. Terrible colours. Unintelligible

Groxx 5y ago

A question! Are the parallel lines of cables actually spread out that far, or is that to make it look nicer?

Etherlord87 5y ago
I also found that interesting, found a comment on Reddit thread linked here: submarinecablemap.com's FAQ *Are the submarine cable paths shown the actual route taken by the cables?* No. The cables routes on our map are stylized and do not reflect the actual path taken by the various systems. This design approach makes it easy to visually follow the different cables and the points at which they land. In real life, cables that cross similar areas of an ocean, take very similar paths. These paths are chosen via comprehensive marine surveys which select routes that avoid hazardous conditions that could potentially damage a cable.

elihu 5y ago

I assume these are all communications cables, but I'm curious if anyone knows what the logistical issues would be to laying high-capacity high-voltage DC lines across oceans? The idea being that as renewable and specifically solar power becomes a larger percentage of electrical generation, it'd be really nice to be able to buy and sell power between the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. It's either that or use a lot of batteries, and power lines seem like they ought to be the more efficient, effective solution. HVDC losses can be reasonably low even for thousands of miles* [1]. I'm thinking of having undersea links, for instance, between Brazil and Western Africa, or Canada to Greenland to Iceland to mainland Europe, or Alaska to Russia. (Wikipedia shows a number of short-distance undersea HVDC links in Europe [1].) * "Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50% less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

c54 5y ago

I would love to be able to plug in two locations and visualize on a map the path my packets would take travelling from here to there. A sort of visual traceroute. One problem I've had with existing tools is that it's hard to find a server in a given place, even if you know that place has internet. For instance I was facetiming with my partner who is abroad in africa right now, but I'm not sure of a server to [traceroute] against in the country she's in.

tempestn 5y ago

Huh, surprised me to see how many run along the coast. I would've thought it would be cheaper to run cables by land if they weren't going to cross the ocean. I can see how that might not be the case though, as you can't just lay a cable down along the ground on land like you can in the ocean.

tertrand 5y ago

It would be good if there's an option in which we can increase its brightness. It's too dark, I can't properly distinguish each continent, and some parts of the world are missing.