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Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

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Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#21

Post by openknot »

upwardbound wrote: post #10
chrisseaton wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People happy to share their work. Is that some kind of problem?

The video doesn't look like that, it looks more like everyone was told "you have to smile more!!"

I was going to write that this was demonstrably untrue, but then I saw the muted-microphone shot of an interviewee laughing without context before cutting to a straight-faced interview segment that appeared more natural (at time = 80 s), which was quite possibly recorded after the straight-faced segment to make the video's happy tone consistent: https://youtu.be/N0ng8R0_Tis?t=80

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#22

Post by imilk »

kuprel wrote: post #17
danellis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the correct amount of production?

candid unrehearsed interviews

Good luck getting anyone at a publicly listed company to sign off on a video promoting a $xxx million project with candid unrehearsed interviews.

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#23

Post by throw0101a »

Richard Steenbergen has regularly given the presentation "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical" at NANOG over the years; October 2019:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeZaNwPKPo

APNIC/NZNOG had a good presentation focusing on sub-sea optical stuff (January 2020)):

* https://blog.apnic.net/2020/02/12/at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-a...

For longer distances (>100km), you want to do a search for "coherent optics".

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#24

Post by theideaofcoffee »

happyopossum wrote: post #15
ortusdux wrote: post #5

I wonder how long it will be before we see the first hollow-core fiber subsea cables. They are 50% faster, and tests from the last year or two have seen record low signal losses. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605... https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...

> They are 50% faster No, pretty sure light still travels through them at C. What they can do is carry more data, largely by having lower error rates.

'c' is dependent on the medium. The value of c as it is commonly known, 300 million meters per second, is in vacuum. Light traveling through other media is affected by its index of refraction, in the case of silica fiber, that is approximately 1.5 so radiation propagates much slower through silica than it does a vacuum. Since gases have low refractive indicies already, within a hundred ppm or so of a vacuum, you could essentially round air to 1.

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#25

Post by maxfan8 »

happyopossum wrote: post #15
ortusdux wrote: post #5

I wonder how long it will be before we see the first hollow-core fiber subsea cables. They are 50% faster, and tests from the last year or two have seen record low signal losses. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605... https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...

> They are 50% faster No, pretty sure light still travels through them at C. What they can do is carry more data, largely by having lower error rates.

Light only travels at C in a vacuum (so it doesn't actually travel at C in a standard fiber optic cable, it's actually much slower).

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#26

Post by throw0101a »

danellis wrote: post #7
wjamesg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an overproduced PR piece

What would be the correct amount of production?

A presentation at a conference like NANOG, APNIC, IETF, etc. See my other comment:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31426614

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#27

Post by scottlamb »

happyopossum wrote: post #15
ortusdux wrote: post #5

I wonder how long it will be before we see the first hollow-core fiber subsea cables. They are 50% faster, and tests from the last year or two have seen record low signal losses. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605... https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...

> They are 50% faster No, pretty sure light still travels through them at C. What they can do is carry more data, largely by having lower error rates.

"c" is the speed of light in a vacuum. Traditional fiber optic cables are very much not a vacuum, with an index of refraction of ~1.5, so light travels through them at ~2/3c. In contrast, light actually travels at nearly c through hollow core cables.

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#28

Post by [deleted] »

happyopossum wrote: post #15
ortusdux wrote: post #5

I wonder how long it will be before we see the first hollow-core fiber subsea cables. They are 50% faster, and tests from the last year or two have seen record low signal losses. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605... https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...

> They are 50% faster No, pretty sure light still travels through them at C. What they can do is carry more data, largely by having lower error rates.

[deleted]

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#29

Post by throw0101a »

dilyevsky wrote: post #11
gnfargbl wrote: post #6

I make 340Tbit/sec about 1.1x10^11 GiByte/month. GCP premium tier networking is priced at $0.08/GB, so at 80% load that cable would, very naively, have the potential to bring in $7B/month in revenue. I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.

Also 80% utilization seems just ridiculously high to me but maybe at goog volume it’s doable

Well, you wouldn't want to hit 80% on Day 1, as you would have no room for growth. Perhaps 50% and after a few years† you'll hit 80% and start planning for a new cable.

† The video said this started five years ago, so there appears to be a lot of lead time that is needed.

Re: Google's Subsea Fiber Optics

#30

Post by samtho »

gnfargbl wrote: post #6

I make 340Tbit/sec about 1.1x10^11 GiByte/month. GCP premium tier networking is priced at $0.08/GB, so at 80% load that cable would, very naively, have the potential to bring in $7B/month in revenue. I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.

With the exception of high-storage/bandwidth websites like video hosting platforms, bandwidth scales linear relative to audience/reach so the high cost is a justifiable expense. We haven’t seen a race to the bottom with bandwidth like we have with storage because the usage of bandwidth implies the product is being used.

Furthermore, software (as a product/service) has the lowest marginal cost of nearly any product. Given the cost it takes to have one more customer on your platform is some nominally small amount of bandwidth (which depending on the product, can be sub 1 gigabyte per month) the additional expense is easily justified.

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