Last night I was curious about physical wire connections across oceans for communications. So I started researching and learned about the first ocean line implemented in 1858 for telegraph communication. Seeing this link on the top of HN today was pretty much exactly what I was trying to conclude my research with last night. What a strange coincidence.
Submarine Cable Map
61–70 of 114 posts
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#62Why are there so many cables to Alaska?
I'd imagine military installations play a role. Radars and monitoring stations, plus the military bases.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#63Interesting how you don't see cables going through Cuba or North Korea...
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#64Interesting how you don't see cables going through Cuba or North Korea...
Except Guantanamo of course...
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's amazing to me is that these cables were laid without a lot of fanfare. Seems to me if I were Level1 or whoever else and had just completed a 10,000 km cable across an ocean, I'd make sure the press release saw some circulation. The same thing with satellite launches. I feel like these are fairly major feats of engineering that go basically unheard of unless you're in certain small circles.
People laid undersea cables for telegraphs and back then it was a big deal. However, it's been 154 years and people stopped being impressed a while ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable
It's so weird because I think it's such an impressive feat and one of those things that I feel should be technically really challenging yet it was done so long ago. Sometimes I learn things and am shocked because I either thought accomplishing the thing would be easy and it turns out to be insanely hard or vice versa. This is the latter.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#66For anyone curious as to how they're actually laid, here's a simple diagram of a typical cable layer ship (CS): http://www.murmanchanin.ru/shipnoise/polar_king/polar_king.j... And a simplified diagram of how it operates: http://www.fiberinc.net/images/sea.jpg
What's amazing to me is that these cables were laid without a lot of fanfare. Seems to me if I were Level1 or whoever else and had just completed a 10,000 km cable across an ocean, I'd make sure the press release saw some circulation. The same thing with satellite launches. I feel like these are fairly major feats of engineering that go basically unheard of unless you're in certain small circles.
> I'd make sure the press release saw some circulation.
A bunch of it was laid by ATT, which then got bought by Tyco.
The entry of that NJ HQ building was wild: It had pics of the ships used to maintain the cables. (When the cable needs to be pulled up in the middle of the atlantic, it's a bit of a challenge.)
IIRC, Tyco had 9 ships. If you glanced quickly, they looked like battleships with all the equipment on them. It was quite the operation.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#67Here's a 1901 version of the map:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_East...
And somewhat related, a wonderful book called The Victorian Internet:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0802716040/
If you ever wondered whether the Internet really is a "series of tubes", here are the tubes:
http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/f...
That photo is from an interesting article (by my namesake James Geary) about undersea cables:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-03/who-protects-i...
Enjoy! :-)
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#68Re: Submarine Cable Map
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Submarine cable systems often employ repeaters (hardened EDFAs). I remember one vendor bragging that not one of their units had EVER failed in service. If you want to see what they look like: http://www.nec.com/en/global/prod/nw/submarine/product/ns-se...
How do they power the repeaters? I thought the cable itself was just fiber optic, thus no electricity transmission
They talk about it in the PDF. Apparently they use a 1400nm laser along the same fiber that excites some receptor, which provides the power for the amplification.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's amazing to me is that these cables were laid without a lot of fanfare. Seems to me if I were Level1 or whoever else and had just completed a 10,000 km cable across an ocean, I'd make sure the press release saw some circulation. The same thing with satellite launches. I feel like these are fairly major feats of engineering that go basically unheard of unless you're in certain small circles.
People laid undersea cables for telegraphs and back then it was a big deal. However, it's been 154 years and people stopped being impressed a while ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable
Modern telecoms cable is some amazing stuff. These days there's no metal in the entire cable. Instead, it's all lasers through glass fiber, and when the signal attenuates, it gets boosted by passing through sections of doped fiber that lase using power from another beam, adding power to the signal. And we can do this just as easily as the people back then dropped telegraph cable. For me, at least, there's always something to be impressed by.