Submarine Cable Map 2014 • Hacker News Board

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#101

Post by iSloth » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 6:56 AM UTC

analyticsjam wrote: post #64

iSloth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also have the privilege of still working on these types of networks; one of the things that fascinated me was the money and effort that telecoms companies are spending these days on tracking boats/ships/fishermen by their transponders. There dedicated people, equipment and networks just to track these offenders, as the telecoms obviously want to work out who to send the bill onto once they've fixed the cable, or whic…

Yeah, the other funny thing is that there are only a few boats in the world that can repair breaks. So if there are too many outages, you just have to wait for them to finish and then sail across the world.

Then you can have them bobbing up and down for days or weeks because of the weather, very frustrating ;)

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#102

Post by AlexMuir » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 9:00 AM UTC

bladedtoys wrote: post #31

justincormack wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially given the first one laid in 1850 failed within hours http://atlantic-cable.com/stamps/Cableships/indexstc.htm

A subsequent attempt was made by the Great Eastern* which, in my humble opinion, is the coolest ship ever conceived. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern

I went to see the SS Great Britain in Bristol recently. It's the best museum I've ever been to. Highly recommended.

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#103

Post by aluhut » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 11:10 AM UTC

I wonder how the location looks like where they land. Especially when there are so many landing in one place. Must be a really good secured place.

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#104

Post by jschulenklopper » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 1:26 PM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #35

_ilv1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

Yeah, I'm the MEMB fairy, sprinkling that link in the comments of any story about submarine cables. But you beat me to it this time! I consider it my small contribution to the world to make sure as many nerds as possible get to read that story.

Any other (long) articles you recommend, for the people that have read the story (now or earlier before) and enjoy more of that?

Kevin Kelly maintains a great list at http://kk.org/cooltools/best-magazine-articles-ever. Apparently he likes David Foster Wallace...

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#105

Post by bdunbar » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 3:03 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #91

cgusto wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is scary when you realize how susceptible some of this infrastructure is. Reminds me of an instance in 2009. I was working in Santa Cruz, CA. I was configuring some of our servers remotely, when suddenly I lost internet connection. The whole office was out. VoIP was down - no signal on my cell phone as well. I went to the front desk and tried the land line. No dial tone. This was weird. I saw a few people fro…

I'm a little surprised Starbucks wouldn't just revert to cash mode? Who cares about exact prices when everyone involved knows that each items costs no more than a few cents. Just round to the nearest dollar, and any competent manager would reward such behaviour given the alternative. At least this is my experience with pharmacy billing. If we couldn't put claims through due to network problems, we'd just estimate bas…

> I'm a little surprised Starbucks wouldn't just revert to cash mode?

The register - I speculate - is also tracking inventory. Ring up two cappuccinos and a pastry, corporate keeps track and knows what and when to re-order.

Getting the inventory out of whack might be worse than loosing trade during the outage.

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#106

Post by hcarvalhoalves » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

It's interesting to see how much politics weight on the connections. E.g.:

1. There more connections between USA and UK than to non-english speaking European countries.

2. Venezuela is the only country connecting Cuba.

3. Brazil connects with Cape Verde island and will connect with Angola, another portuguese-speaking country. Those will be the only connections crossing south Atlantic.

4. Southern Asia connects to Europe circumventing the Middle East by connecting to Egypt and then crossing the mediterranean.

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#107

Post by kalleboo » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 4:28 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #93

RankingMember wrote: post #2

It still amazes me that we laid giant bundles of cabling at the bottom of the ocean and they're as reliable as they are.

Me too but then if you think about it you can lay a cable around the biggest part of the earth the equator that's about 40,000km. If you have a geostationary satellite that's about 35,000km. Pretty close but latency is a tiny bit worse for the satellite T=D/V Equator at 40,075km / 209,855km/s=0.19s (saw a Stack Exchange question about speed of light in optical fibre slows light 30%). And for satellites 35,000km / 299…

Wouldn't you have to double the number for the satellite since you have to first to up to space then back down to earth?

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#108

Post by kevinkimball » Sat, Aug 30, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

_ilv1 wrote: post #22

arc_of_descent wrote: post #5

Does 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 fo…

I assume while he was doing research for Cryptonomicon?

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#109

Post by boyaka » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 2:04 AM UTC

btoptical wrote: post #94

arc_of_descent wrote: post #5

Does each cable actually lie at the sea bed? What if the route comes across a really deep part of the ocean?

In some cases the cable is buried on the sea floor by a special plow. It's incredible that the cable can be buried up to 6m deep in the mud on the bottom. Cable burial is intended to keep fishing equipment from snagging cables laid on the bottom. http://youtu.be/QRwZ1hlj9F8

That's in shallow water, not answering his question.

Re: Submarine Cable Map 2014

#110

Post by boyaka » Sun, Aug 31, 2014, 2:06 AM UTC

_ilv1 wrote: post #22

arc_of_descent wrote: post #5

Does 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 fo…

I read the entire article. It does not go into detail about the deepest parts of the ocean. The closest it gets is when it talked about the calculations required to lay cable from the UK to Africa, but this is still close to shore (I remember seeing a diagram showing how the cable angled down a steep slope into deep ocean, but this archived version doesn't seem to have pictures).

Edit: this is what it actually gives you as an answer in that article:

"The answer has to do with slack control. And most of what is known about slack control is known by Cable & Wireless Marine. AT&T presumably knows about slack control too, but Cable & Wireless Marine has twice as many ships and dominates the deep-sea cable-laying industry. The Japanese can lay cable in shallow water and can repair it anywhere. But the reality is that when you want to slam a few thousand kilometers of state-of-the-art optical fiber across a major ocean, you call Cable & Wireless Marine, based in England. That is pretty much what FLAG did several years ago."