5 ms·

anyone have any idea what happens to user experience when one of these guys breaks? is it a big deal? what about islands who are surviving off of one cable conn

anyone have any idea what happens to user experience when one of these guys breaks? is it a big deal? what about islands who are surviving off of one cable connection?

coreymgilmore 12y ago
The map notes a "resiliency" factor for each country. A country with a single link has very low resiliency. Most likely a lot of people lose their connection while higher paying customers/more important data gets routed to satellite communication systems.
runeks 12y ago
You will notice that almost all the cables are laid out in a ring shape. For example, check out the TAT-14 cable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TAT-14.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA... If only a single cable break occurs, every point is still reachable from every other point -- the worst thing that happens is that ping times might increase because the packets will have to travel a longer route. This layout is called a self-healing ring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring
- dfox 12y ago
  As typical L2 technology for such cables is SDH/SONET, the difference in latency after single ring failure tends to not be noticeable for normal IP traffic.
  - runeks 12y ago
    Interesting. Can you expand on this? How is that possible? If we take the TAT-14 example again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TAT-14.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA... How will the ping times not increase dramatically from Bude (UK) to Saint-Valery-en-Caux (FR) if the connection between them breaks?
    - mikeyouse 12y ago
      The total length of the cable is 'only' 15,428km. So the maximum one-way latency between any two points is only ~70ms assuming 0.7C. You'd definitely notice if you were gaming, but probably not if you were watching YouTube.

anyone have any idea what happens to user experience when one of these guys breaks? is it a big deal? what about islands who are surviving off of one cable connection?

coreymgilmore 12y ago

The map notes a "resiliency" factor for each country. A country with a single link has very low resiliency. Most likely a lot of people lose their connection while higher paying customers/more important data gets routed to satellite communication systems.

runeks 12y ago

You will notice that almost all the cables are laid out in a ring shape. For example, check out the TAT-14 cable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TAT-14.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA... If only a single cable break occurs, every point is still reachable from every other point -- the worst thing that happens is that ping times might increase because the packets will have to travel a longer route. This layout is called a self-healing ring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring

dfox 12y ago
As typical L2 technology for such cables is SDH/SONET, the difference in latency after single ring failure tends to not be noticeable for normal IP traffic.
- runeks 12y ago
  Interesting. Can you expand on this? How is that possible? If we take the TAT-14 example again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TAT-14.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA... How will the ping times not increase dramatically from Bude (UK) to Saint-Valery-en-Caux (FR) if the connection between them breaks?
  - mikeyouse 12y ago
    The total length of the cable is 'only' 15,428km. So the maximum one-way latency between any two points is only ~70ms assuming 0.7C. You'd definitely notice if you were gaming, but probably not if you were watching YouTube.