The Dunant subsea cable • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#31

Post by markphip » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

I know there are many of these cables that have been around for years, but I am curious how are they physically secured? Especially where they transit from ocean to land? Is there some long underground/sea tunnel of conduit that the cable is routed through to the basement of some building? Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some building near the shore?

I also wonder what kind of permissions and licenses you need to seek to run a cable across the ocean floor?

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#32

Post by jesuschroist » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

aynyc wrote: post #3

I know nothing of this type of engineering. How do you even start a project like this? Map the bottom of the ocean, figure out all the danger zones? What is the cost of doing something like this?

While not being super technical, there is an interesting miniature "The First Word Across the Ocean" in the "Decisive Moments in History" book by Stefan Zweig. It tells the story and circumstances of how the first trans-atlantic cable (back then for telegraphs) was laid in the late 19th century.

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#33

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

markphip wrote: post #31

I know there are many of these cables that have been around for years, but I am curious how are they physically secured? Especially where they transit from ocean to land? Is there some long underground/sea tunnel of conduit that the cable is routed through to the basement of some building? Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some buildin…

>> Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some building near the shore?

It is generally buried either under the sand or inside concrete. But yes, there are places where you can get very close to these things if you know what you are looking at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_landing_point

Here is a pic of the landing for the US base in Cuba.

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/186633/uct-1-unit-choice-gtmo-...

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#34

Post by chasd00 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:50 PM UTC

markphip wrote: post #31

I know there are many of these cables that have been around for years, but I am curious how are they physically secured? Especially where they transit from ocean to land? Is there some long underground/sea tunnel of conduit that the cable is routed through to the basement of some building? Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some buildin…

I’ve wondered the same, you can image search and find some pictures. They just sort of come out of the water and go up the beach (I guess what else would happen? Hah)

https://media.wired.com/photos/59546c71be605811a2fdcfd0/191:...

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#35

Post by obiefernandez » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

> will deliver record-breaking capacity of 250 terabits per second (Tbps) across the ocean—enough to transmit the entire digitized Library of Congress three times every second.

Damn. Anyone else just agog at this figure?

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#36

Post by Ironlink » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

My Firefox Developer Edition (86) doesn't load the page completely, one of the resources (https://gweb-cloudblog-publish.appspot.com/api/w_v2/pagesByU...) has an untrusted certificate (SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER). It is issued by "Cisco Umbrella Secondary SubCA".

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#37

Post by lallysingh » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

jagger27 wrote: post #26

_Understated_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say they do tap the cables (I reckon they do too but in case they don't) what can they actually see if the traffic is encrypted?

Source, destination, message length, etc. Lots of interesting meta data to play with.

assuming there isn't a point-to-point encryption layer for the whole cable.

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#38

Post by easton » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

Is Google using this for consumer services (Gmail/Search/YouTube/Stadia) that don't run on GCP or is this only for GCP? If it's only for GCP, they are betting big, which is good.

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#39

Post by tclancy » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

syoc wrote: post #14

aynyc wrote: post #3

I know nothing of this type of engineering. How do you even start a project like this? Map the bottom of the ocean, figure out all the danger zones? What is the cost of doing something like this?

I have no idea about how this stuff, but this wired article from 1996 written by Neal Stephenson about undersea cables is a fantastic read. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Came here to recommend the same. I reread it every 5 years or so for inspiration.

Re: The Dunant subsea cable

#40

Post by ed25519FUUU » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

easton wrote: post #38

Is Google using this for consumer services (Gmail/Search/YouTube/Stadia) that don't run on GCP or is this only for GCP? If it's only for GCP, they are betting big, which is good.

Google uses gcp.