Also good: http://cablemap.info
Since the position of many cables differ strongly in both maps (their position is obviously sketched rather roughly) I wonder what the real position of those cables is? (or if this information is secret)
Submarine Cable Map 2014
21–30 of 113 posts
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#22Does each cable actually lie at the sea bed? What if the route comes across a really deep part of the ocean?
This long article from Wired in 1996, Mother Earth Mother Board [1], would answer your question. It is long, it took me more than a couple of hours to read, but it's also my all-time favourite article from any magazine, and whenever the topic of submarine cables comes up on Hacker News I often see this link.
[1] http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html
Edit: Also, it's written by Neal Stephenson for whatever that's worth.
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#23I recommend 'A Thread Across the Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable' by John Steele Gordon. [1] From description, "But in 1866, the Old and New Worlds were united by the successful laying of a cable across the Atlantic. John Steele Gordon's book chronicles this extraordinary achievement -- the brainchild of American businessman Cyrus Field and one of the greatest engineering feats of the nineteenth ce…
Also very enjoyable, and somewhat shorter (though still very long): 'Mother Earth Mother Board' [1], Neal Stephenson's essay on the laying of the FLAG cable, and related history.
[1] http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#24I wonder do they just drop the transatlantic cables blindly over the mid-atlantic ridge and hope for the best or check that it's not a hot spot or something. And four cables connect Alaska to the lower 48? I wonder why.
I live in southeast AK. An earthquake near Glacier Bay this month broke one of the undersea cables, which caused an outage for customers of one service provider. I had no idea there were multiple cables to southeast, until I read about the response to this incident.
The Capital City Weekly has a good article about the recent incident, which also includes a short history of communication cables in Alaska [0]. Basically a few companies built seabed cables in southeast during the dot com boom, and then there was too much capacity for a while. One company went bankrupt and another company attempted to buy all the capacity, but concerns about a monopoly prevented that deal from going through. Now when there's an outage, companies can lease access from each other until the broken cable gets repaired.
The currents in our coastal channels are significant, with 8-12 foot tidal swings. Those currents, combined with the silty and rocky nature of the ocean floor in much of southeast, makes for a pretty abrasive environment. Add to that a lot of bottom fishing and anchoring, and cables get broken.
As a resident of southeast, I'm happy for the redundancy!
[0] http://www.capitalcityweekly.com/stories/081314/new_12153949...
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#25Why does Saudi Arabia have so many?
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#26Isn't this incredibly dangerous to have publically available? Please take this down.
This really isn't such a horrible comment. It illustrates nicely that "common sense" is often wrong. There was a similar reaction when radioactive material was stolen in Mexico. People said it should have been escorted with armed guards. But in truth, shipping radioactive material is extremely common. Three million packages of radioactive materials are shipped each year in the U.S. alone. So while it seems like radioactive shipments should have armed guards, it isn't actually practical.
In this case, the truth is that anyone who has the capability to disrupt these cables already knows where they are. But that isn't necessarily intuitively obvious. This is a reminder to all of us that we shouldn't blindly trust intuition, but should try to find numbers or other hard data to back it up.
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#27Does anyone know of a map where I can select two locations and find the shortest path (via submarine cable, obviously) between them? By the way, this is a nice one. Happy to see that I can scroll indefinitely in one direction.
traceroute :)
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#28Isn't this incredibly dangerous to have publically available? Please take this down.
lol, should hacker news remove the link to that page? Yeah, that'll fix it.
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#29Why does Saudi Arabia have so many?
Probably because of their key location.
Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014
#30I wonder do they just drop the transatlantic cables blindly over the mid-atlantic ridge and hope for the best or check that it's not a hot spot or something. And four cables connect Alaska to the lower 48? I wonder why.
I live in southeast AK. An earthquake near Glacier Bay this month broke one of the undersea cables, which caused an outage for customers of one service provider. I had no idea there were multiple cables to southeast, until I read about the response to this incident. The Capital City Weekly has a good article about the recent incident, which also includes a short history of communication cables in Alaska [0]. Basicall…
I wonder why they didn't just lay them along the alcan highway? Surely that would have been a zillion times cheaper.