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Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

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Re: Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

#3

Submarine cables are a mystery to a lot of people. I had to show my dad a complete map of the cables once to convince him they exist. He just couldn’t fathom we’re actually able to run thousands of km of cables at the bottom of the ocean.

Well I still have trouble with that, and a map wouldn't help very much. Imagine convincing governments to make the huge en-devour of placing thousands of kilometers of cables under the sea, and maintaining them, just for some "nerd stuff". If they did, they probably had a very good reason convincing them.

Re: Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

#4

Submarine cables are a mystery to a lot of people. I had to show my dad a complete map of the cables once to convince him they exist. He just couldn’t fathom we’re actually able to run thousands of km of cables at the bottom of the ocean.

What happens if the cable stops working? What are the troubleshooting steps?

Re: Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

#6
post #4

Submarine cables are a mystery to a lot of people. I had to show my dad a complete map of the cables once to convince him they exist. He just couldn’t fathom we’re actually able to run thousands of km of cables at the bottom of the ocean.

What happens if the cable stops working? What are the troubleshooting steps?

Figure out roughly where the problem is (a number of ways of doing this), then send a boat out with a hook to grab the cable off the bottom of the ocean. Pull it up to the surface, fix it, and lower it back down.

Incredibly expensive operation, so you want to avoid this if at all possible...

Re: Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

#7

Would this only be used for services l/sites that run on Google Cloud? Or does the entire Internet benefit directly

It's funded by Google completely according to TFA, and it's filed under "Infrastructure - Google Cloud Platform" - I'd hazard a guess that it's probably just for Google Cloud.

They might extend it for AMP sites, maybe..

Re: Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

#8
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if the cable stops working? What are the troubleshooting steps?

Figure out roughly where the problem is (a number of ways of doing this), then send a boat out with a hook to grab the cable off the bottom of the ocean. Pull it up to the surface, fix it, and lower it back down. Incredibly expensive operation, so you want to avoid this if at all possible...

What measures are taken to avoid this? I read somewhere that these cable are not actually buried into the ground, but rather lay on top of the ground. That sounds very risky to me?

Re: Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa

#10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Figure out roughly where the problem is (a number of ways of doing this), then send a boat out with a hook to grab the cable off the bottom of the ocean. Pull it up to the surface, fix it, and lower it back down. Incredibly expensive operation, so you want to avoid this if at all possible...

What measures are taken to avoid this? I read somewhere that these cable are not actually buried into the ground, but rather lay on top of the ground. That sounds very risky to me?

They are buried only when close to shores or in other high risk areas. There is no point in burying a cable if the sea bed is 3 miles under the surface. There is still danger, from animals biting into the cable (sharks are known to do this). But the cables are wrapped in steel cables so not even a shark should be able to cut through.
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