81–90 of 114 posts
Interesting how you don't see cables going through Cuba or North Korea...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That means that in a ~7K mile cable run, they have ~110 repeater stacks. Wow, that's a lot. I am still interested in who's optics/equipment are in those repeater stacks and how they power them.
They are "powered" by lasers themselves. No electronics involved; excess energy from a pumping laser boosts the intensity of the data laser, using sections of special doped fiber. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier#Doped_fiber...
I wouldn't be surprised if both methods have been used in different situations or at different times.
Are you saying that there's an extra "pumping fiber" in the bundle, fed by a pumping laser on shore? Or are the pumping lasers in the repeaters, in which case there would still need to be electrical power supplied down the cable to drive the pumping lasers?
This mash-up paid for by... ?
http://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/2...
http://www.quora.com/How-are-major-undersea-cables-laid-in-t...
Here'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…
(Technically speaking, the web server is returning 200 OK, but it's 'Page Not Found')
Wow, there are two cables running from northern Norway to Longyearbyen, on the island of Svalbard! According to Wikipedia, "Longyearbyen has approximately 2,060 inhabitants (at the end of 2007..." The total population of Svalbard is not much more. Edit/Add: The cable length is 2,714 km.
The reason for that is there's a an important satellite ground station on Svalbard - it's in an ideal place to communicate with polar-orbiting satellites: http://www.ksat.no/node/77 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Undersea_Cable_System
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the high price of copper I would guess that they pull the copper cables out after service. I am not so sure about fiber cables.
Given the cost of such an operation, I don't think you can get some profit even if they were made of gold. As time passes, most of the cable is buried deeper and deeper under debris that falls on the ocean floor. This means that you cannot just pull it up, you would have to dig to get it out.
> Because the [TAT-8] cable was the first fiber optic cable and not coaxial cable, the electrical interference shielding for the high voltage supply lines was removed. This removal did not affect the fiber, but it did cause feeding frenzies in sharks that swam nearby. The sharks would then attack the cable until the voltage lines killed them. This caused numerous, prolonged outages. Eventually, a shark shielding was developed for the cable.
I see no cables actually get routed through the Suez canal, even though many cables come up the Red Sea. The same is true for the Panama canal. Is it because they are too shallow? Maybe too concentrated?
As a Canadian, this map worries me from a sovereignty perspective.