4 ms·
Subsea cables usually have 4 or so fibers, since they need repeaters every so many km, which drives the cost-per-fiber (the actual strand of glass is approximat
by taldo 4y ago
Subsea cables usually have 4 or so fibers, since they need repeaters every so many km, which drives the cost-per-fiber (the actual strand of glass is approximately free for all practical purposes).
- krisroadruck 4y agoThis may have been true in the past but new subsea cables are not this limited. As an example the Dunant transatlantic long haul Google put in place in 2018 (went live in 2020) has 12 pairs (24 fibers). Grace Hopper, due online this year has 32 fibers. But your point stands - I should have said "up to" instead of "frequently".
- waltbosz 4y agoThe cable is named for computer science pioneer Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (1906–1992), best known for her work on one of the first linkers (compilers), which was critical in the development of the COBOL programming language. She’s also credited with famously finding an actual “bug” in a program; her team tracked down the source of a short circuit on the early Harvard Mark II computer to a moth trapped in a panel. It is to honor Grace Hopper’s legacy of innovation by investing in the future of transatlantic communications with a state-of-the-art fiber optic cable. https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-atlantic/grace-hopper https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-atlantic/... It's like having a highway named after you, only cooler, because it's data traffic, not automobile traffic.
- taldo 4y agoTIL, thanks. I was at Google around the time Curie was being built and coming online (ca. 2018-2019, I think), and it has 4 pairs. I misremembered it being 4 fibers.