81–90 of 103 posts
A bit old now, from 1996, but the classic book-length Wired article "Mother Earth Mother Board" by none other than Neal Stephenson is a peek into how this actually gets done from the physical cable laying pespective: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
Funny how tech people (like me) care about pollution from emissions and plastic unless it’s related to rocket launches or huge plastic cables on the ocean floors. Then, nobody mentions it.
I make 340Tbit/sec about 1.1x10^11 GiByte/month. GCP premium tier networking is priced at $0.08/GB, so at 80% load that cable would, very naively, have the potential to bring in $7B/month in revenue. I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.
You’re thinking about average throughput, while these cables need to be provisioned for max throughput, which can be completely different. Having said that, cloud bandwidth is indeed overpriced; but at the same time, given that Google Cloud is still burning money, can it perhaps be argued that bandwidth is one of the money makers that allow for other services to be free? I recall that from the old webhosting days, th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC individual fibers are terminated every Nkm at a repeater. Not that it wouldn't be spendy, but I would also conjecture replacing a segment of fixed length instead of just gluing the ends back together might still be a reasonably strong constraint on unplanned repair cost (and also probably providing a pretty strong lower constraint as well--notably higher than solid core).
I don't think they are terminated every Nkm anymore. We have been able for quite some time to re-energize the signal directly in the optical core without needing to convert it to electric then back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pumping
In addition there are feedback, failover and monitoring functions that require more optical components to be included, and it's likely that this type of functionality will increase as demand for improved latency and reliability increases, and new cable networks are built.
* An array of MEMS micro-mirrors which turn to reflect light, or
* Finisar's LCoS based method, which uses a 1" LCD TV display to display a gradient pattern which literally bends light.
It looks like the undersea cables use Finisar's (now II-IV's) WSS. I think the idea of bending light under software control is pretty cool.
Finisar's white paper showing optical path and other possible uses is here: https://www.amstechnologies.com/fileadmin/amsmedia/downloads...
Funny how tech people (like me) care about pollution from emissions and plastic unless it’s related to rocket launches or huge plastic cables on the ocean floors. Then, nobody mentions it.
Rocket launches typically develop and support bleeding edge technology. And are relatively infrequent compared to regular travel flights.
The "huge" plastic cables are 7-8cm (~3 inches) diameter. So big, but not gas pipeline big. And because of THEIR existence many people are NOT taking those regular travel flights they otherwise might.
Not saying we can't do better. But people closer to it and smarter than me would know.
I wonder how long it will be before we see the first hollow-core fiber subsea cables. They are 50% faster, and tests from the last year or two have seen record low signal losses. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605... https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...
I might be totally wrong; It seems likely to me that, due to capillary action, if a hollow undersea fiber gets physically cut then seawater would flow into the hollow center. The ends of the fiber might be at different depths with a pressure difference that could move water a long way into the fiber. I imagine the length that water got into would be ruined even if the water was pushed out again. I conjecture that und…
The internet includes many components: semiconductors/electronics/chips, hardware, fiber optics, communication systems, networking, wireless, software, etc. There is a lot of work that must be done in different parts of this stack for this system to work. Yet, the private sector focuses mostly on the software part, or services. I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips. The public s…
Having said that, what you've said is basically wrong.
> I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips.
Unless you are trying to be pedantic by saying it has to be a startup rather than a private company this is completely wrong.
TSMC, Intel, Samsung and IBM do most of the work improving electronic chips manufacturing processes.
I'm not very familiar with optical fiber work, but I know NTT in Japan does a lot of R&D in the area.
The internet includes many components: semiconductors/electronics/chips, hardware, fiber optics, communication systems, networking, wireless, software, etc. There is a lot of work that must be done in different parts of this stack for this system to work. Yet, the private sector focuses mostly on the software part, or services. I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips. The public s…
Citation desperately needed. How you got "the government pays for our internet infrastructure" out of an article about Google paying for a new Subsea cable, I do not know.
I implore you to do a tracert right now to hackernews, and lookup who operates the ips of every router it hits in between. Chances are incredibly good not a single hop is on a government network. (true for the U.S at least)