4 ms·
It still amazes me that we laid giant bundles of cabling at the bottom of the ocean and they're as reliable as they are.
by RankingMember 12y ago
It still amazes me that we laid giant bundles of cabling at the bottom of the ocean and they're as reliable as they are.
- justincormack 12y agoEspecially given the first one laid in 1850 failed within hours http://atlantic-cable.com/stamps/Cableships/indexstc.htm http://atlantic-cable.com/stamps/Cableships/indexstc.htm
- bladedtoys 12y agoA subsequent attempt was made by the Great Eastern* which, in my humble opinion, is the coolest ship ever conceived. *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern
- easytiger 12y agoIsambard Kingdom Brunel was not a man to faf around was he. He never even got to see her sail her first journey as he died of a stroke. You've done a lot if you've died at 53 and achieved as much as he did.
- AlexMuir 12y agoI went to see the SS Great Britain in Bristol recently. It's the best museum I've ever been to. Highly recommended.
- Havoc 12y agoTrue. Then again my grandfather led the charge on laying one under decidedly difficult conditions and that thing is still live (carries insignificant traffic though...mostly for backup).
- dfox 12y agoThe cables themselves fail surprisingly often (anchors, fauna, earthquakes, material faults...) but most connections have redundant paths (almost every undersea network is bidirectional ring) and can be readily repaired (which is the thing that still surprises me)
- dghughes 12y agoMe too but then if you think about it you can lay a cable around the biggest part of the earth the equator that's about 40,000km. If you have a geostationary satellite that's about 35,000km. Pretty close but latency is a tiny bit worse for the satellite T=D/V Equator at 40,075km / 209,855km/s=0.19s (saw a Stack Exchange question about speed of light in optical fibre slows light 30%). And for satellites 35,000km / 299,792km/s=0.12s but I'm sure air, humidity, big balls of floating water aka clouds, solar radiation just weather in general must make it far worse I've seen mentions of typical latency of 0.25s. But most cables are not 40,000km long I don't know what the longest cable is of the typical length probably 20,000km max that would give 0.09s latency and for 10,000km 0.05s.