TIL: The vast majority of the world's communications are not carried by satellites but by an older technology: cables under the sea

Lunares · 9 months

Most of those "cables" are the pinnacle of 30 years of fiber optic research. These are 4000km of glass all spun to be exactly 10um in diameter, all exactly the same. Every 100km or so there is an amplifier, under the ocean, that takes this light signal and makes it exactly as it was before. We are able to send this light pulse across 4000km, with all sorts of spreading and other issues and still be able to determine "0 or 1". All at the rate of 10Gbit/s. Current research is moving towards 100Gbit/s by putting hundreds of wavelengths on a single cable!

So no, these are not just cables under the sea. They are much more impressive, and unlikely to ever be taken over by satellites for bandwidth purposes.

oskuskaktus · 9 months

[deleted]

sjclark · 9 months

Well duh.

Rusted_Satellites · 9 months

Geosynchronous satellites are far enough away that you start getting significant speed of light delays.

Something I learned from engineering is that light is actually really slow. Another example: if you have a 3 GHz processor, light travels about 4 inches during one clock cycle.

UsuRpergoat · 9 months

Can we get some more fucking bandwidth please? Sincerely, Australia.

Spoggerific · 9 months

I'm sorry, but could you please post this at a smaller resolution with more compression? I still seem to be able to read it, and that just won't do.

Hamspankin · 9 months

Here's a really good lecture about them

LBORBAH · 9 months

I have actually worked on setting up the head end of several cables terminating in NYC.

fulltimegeek · 9 months

One good reason: Latency.

takes22tango · 9 months

My great-grandfather... this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Ellsworth_Buckley yeah....

palindromic_prime · 9 months

I thought they were delivered on the world railroad tracks... THIS-A-WAY

arebe2 · 9 months

Read Cryptonomicon. It will change your worldview.

tankjr · 9 months

I was thinking about this earlier today. That would certainly throw a monkey wrench in the plans of corporations to outsource helpdesk work abroad if these lines were to be cut.

Kenjiee · 9 months

this graf shows status of 2007

umibozu · 9 months

You should read "how the world was one"

walrus0 · 9 months

a single pair of singlemode fibers can carry vastly more data than an entire $300 million telecom satellite.

40 Gbps * 80 DWDM wavelengths = 3200Gbps per fiber pair.

of course the terminal equipment on both ends to route and mux/demux 80 wavelengths @ 40Gbps (Infinera, for example) is rather expensive as well. but less costly than putting 6000 kilogram things in orbit 32,768km away.

Matt872000 · 9 months

Down where it's wetter, down where it's better...

tweakingforjesus · 9 months

A little old but still interesting article about the undersea network.

LiveLikeLuis · 9 months

Like some kind of... some kind of... series of tubes!!!!

devilrays · 9 months

North Korea- "fuck it, we don't need any"

jaze321 · 9 months

Working in telecommunications for the last 10yrs for one of the companies that has the largest backbone networks in the world I can tell you that every single call you make whether it be cell or landline will travel over fiberoptic cable through a wire-line backbone network.

pizzasnail · 9 months

The internet really is a series of tubes.

BCMM · 9 months

This is not just because of bandwidth. The round-trip time for a signal that's bounced off a geostationary satellite on both legs is about half a second at best (standing "right under the satellite", and with no other sources of latency, such as codec runtime).

That's enough to noticably interfere with a phone conversation.

Lossothi · 9 months

WTF? Everyone knows that the internet etc. go through the optic cables, as the satellite transmission is very expensive.

Ahmon · 9 months

Modern undersea cables are revolutionary shit -- far more modern than satellites.

nanowerx · 9 months

One thing that I question....what happens as the Earth plates shift? Aren't certain bodies of land moving toward or away others? Wouldn't these cables stretch or do they already have something in place to prepare for such things. I know continental shift is slow, but some of these cable have apparently been under water as early as the late-20's(they may have been replaced over time, not sure).

obsmike92 · 9 months

My dad's company is the one that builds a majority of those cables. most are at least half a foot in diameter

JD_SLICK · 9 months

the next major war, if we ever have one, will feature a ton of cable snipping.

abagofdicks · 9 months

Under the sea Under the sea Darling it's better Down where it's wetter Take it from me

Zsamot · 9 months

So, the world is really this connected to each other and we still are ignorant of other cultures.

kevsequeira · 9 months

I've seen the cables that come ashore in India. They provide communication services to South Asia, Middle East and Western Europe. Its pretty cool to think that if I just cut a few wires, half the world would not have any internet.

fournuts · 9 months

Why are undersea cables being strewn along coastlines? Are the water cables cheaper than land-based cables?

DaydreamKid · 9 months

They were put there by Aquaman.

Ragnalypse · 9 months

I think the majority of the word's communications are intra-national, or at least intra-continental.

zaphodxlii · 9 months

"The SeaMeWe-3 system. . ." made me chuckle. (In the mid-bottom area of the picture).

dinolex · 9 months

Remember when a bunch of them got "mysteriously" cut within a short span of time? Whatever happened with that? Seemed awful coincidental to be accidental

Kaarkelo · 9 months

TIL: they have 1 cable going to Canada, and its to Newfoundland of all places, where as the state of Alaska has about 10 alone? LOLWHUT?!

Timmetie · 9 months

Satellites can only use, and fill up, the available wavelengths. Cables can be added forever.

dbcooperlives · 9 months

Tubes.

dmr83457 · 9 months

The reason is that satellites may be thousands of miles above the earth. It essentially boils down to whether your signal travels a portion around the earth's circumference to reach its destination, or goes up tens of thousands of miles above the earth and then back down again. The latter being many times farther in distance than the former leading to huge differences in transmission speed.

If you think about it, there is no distance shorter around a sphere than its circumference.

Sniperchild · 9 months

One of the cards we make at work could handle the entire throughput of the trans_Atlantic cable :P

AlwaysGettingHopOns · 9 months

I'd be very impressed if someone found the picture of the connection with one of these with just one cable? I can't find it :(

Pontiflakes · 9 months

This picture is inaccurate... It doesn't have anything going through Area 51.

Starslip · 9 months

How do they do maintenance on these things when they get damaged? Do they haul them to the surface to repair them or do it underwater? How big are they around?

DonFix · 9 months

There are a shit-ton of cables going between Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Latvia so this picture is far from complete, just covering the major ones.

EONS · 9 months

When I was in China in 2005/2006 there was an underwater earthquake off the coast of Taiwan that severed one of the cables connecting China/East Asia to North America.

I was unable to open a single webpage for about a week.

-abcd · 9 months

downvoted for stupidity

dissonance07 · 9 months

This is a terrifically interesting article about the cowboys who run those cables, written by Wired in 1996.

unjustifiably_angry · 9 months

Duh.

Prince_Smarming · 9 months

Unda da sea, darling it's better down where it's wetter take it from me

MrVictorianNovel · 9 months

oooooo who lives in a cable under the sea?

roboticinsides · 9 months

Unda da sea! Unda da sea! Down where it's wetter, take it from me.

Velitatio · 9 months

You actually thought the internet was supported by satellites? ಠ_ಠ

Andalycia · 9 months

wtf? how old are you, ten?

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