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Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

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Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#11

Post by toast0 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #2

Would Russia/China not also suffer quite a bit while the US would hardly notice compared to Europe? It seems not as effective as people think as a way to hurt America? Before long everything would be able to run independently/with large breaks anyway.

My impression is there aren't a lot of sites US users go to that are hosted outside the continental US. So in that way, you're right, cable cuts don't hurt that much. (Unless you're in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, or probably Alaska?)

On the other hand, a lot of US based businesses work overseas with connections back to the US. Those businesses would likely be affected if there are major cable cuts, and hurting US businesses hurts the US in general.

I ageee there's ways to make this work, but there would be significant disruption for quite some time as business adapts.

China would likely be fine with fiber cuts. The GFW already limits access to the world at large and encourages local hosting. One of the techniques to discourage use of certain sites is random disruption, which trains the population to look for local sites when foreign sites don't work. Russia is pushing towards a more self-sufficient internet, but I don't think they're as far along, and I haven't heard of as much opaque coerciveness as in China, although I'm sure it's planned.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#12

Post by anttihaapala »

blindriver wrote: post #4

It’s impossible to protect these cables so the only thing you can do is build in massive redundancy. Strategically it is probably cheaper to lay down many dozens of these cables in different locations than expect to protect them

If you consider an underwater cable running from Finland to Germany or Sweden to Lithuania in the Baltic Sea, it is virtually impossible for a ship travelling from St. Petersburg to the Kattegat to avoid passing over it, so redundancy can do only that much there.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#16

Post by ajross »

Worth pointing out that articles like this were the goal of the sabotage. It makes Russia's[1] influence look outsized and threatening and is designed to increase the perceived costs of a strained relationship with Putin.

But... it's shortsighted and wrong. Cables are cheap, as infrastructure goes, and the global internet is extremely robust. Yeah yeah, they cut two cables. How many Finns or Estonians had to go without their Netflix? None, because the network just[2] routed around the damage.

[1] Yes yes, we don't know for sure it was Putin and probably never will. But it's everyone's prior at this point and it will remain so, which is really my point.

[2] Literally! The phrase is a cliche for a reason. It works.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#18

Post by ronsor »

kouru225 wrote: post #14

I remember reading that the early telegram adopters were really surprised that no one destroyed the lines just for fun. They all thought it was a doomed technology cause the masses would sabotage it. TBH we’ve been pretty lucky for the last 2 centuries.

Why was it so surprising? Society as a whole is only functional because most people are uninterested in causing mayhem for no reason.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#19

Post by rkagerer »

Can someone explain this excerpt to me?

NATO is currently investigating future internet backup routes through satellites in the case of undersea cable failures. But that technology is only in a preliminary, proof-of-concept stage and may be many years from real-world relevance.

We already have satellite links and can configure our networks to route through them when a primary route disappears. Why are they saying this is "future tech"?

Are they talking about backups at a bulk backbone level for which we simply don't have enough satellite capacity?

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#20

Post by the_af »

ronsor wrote: post #18
kouru225 wrote: post #14

I remember reading that the early telegram adopters were really surprised that no one destroyed the lines just for fun. They all thought it was a doomed technology cause the masses would sabotage it. TBH we’ve been pretty lucky for the last 2 centuries.

Why was it so surprising? Society as a whole is only functional because most people are uninterested in causing mayhem for no reason.

Vandalism of public phones (when they existed) was pretty common in my city. And garbage bins in public spaces get destroyed all the time for no reason. Everything that isn't nailed down and very robust gets destroyed or stolen.

Infrastructure things related to water pipes (at the buildings level) gets stolen, too (happened in my building recently). Everything that can be resold as raw materials gets stolen.

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