Submarine Cable Map
submarinecablemap.com
submarinecablemap.com
And really his whole superb novel Cryptonomicon. But that’s 1,000 pages.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_telegraphy_in_the...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cabl...
Various maps can be seen in Google maps. Nowadays the cables are fiber-optic rather than electric copper cables.
I was able to tour a fiber laying/maintenance ship back in the 1990s. Had it explained that they lay the cable powered and under end-to-end test (shore to ship). This makes the spool of cable into a giant electromagnet, meaning there were signs all over portions of the ship banning steel tools, watches, etc.
Maybe marine charts do, but also could be classified once they reach massive depths.
Looking at the map of the Amitié cable, maybe they try to keep as much of the cable as possible in deep water. https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-atlantic/...
The other possibility is that the direct path passes underwater mountainous region with quite variable depths in mid-Atlantic [1], so going up-down or follow the valleys anyway would increase the cable length. The right answer is likely a combination of all these to minimize cable cost, maintenance and latency.
[1] https://earth.google.com/web/@41.47661069,-40.80459324,-4414...
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_Eas...
Underwater geography is also a major consideration. It's not just the going up and down, it's the risk of landslides, tectonic shifts, volcanoes, currents and icebergs scraping the ocean floor.
On top of that are geopolitics and enviromental concerns.
Of course, it would be possible to have a user in Tokyo connect to Facebook's network somewhere closer to the DC but a) getting onto FB's high quality, low congestion network ASAP will perform yield much better performance than leaving the connection running over the internet where it's subject to congestion and long SSL connection round trips, b) terminating user sessions in POPs allows much finer control over which datacenter users are ultimately sent to. Without this FB would have to rely on DNS changes to steer traffic and they are slow to propagate and crude.
They must deliver some power with the cable to handle the repeaters? I wonder how much power it requires and if it's hard to ensure it doesn't break.
All the components of the subsea cable system are engineered with reliability in mind. None of the components are to require maintenance over the lifetime of the system. This means components are expected to operate 20 to 25 years at a minimum.
While 100% correct statement, the wording here could potentially lead someone to make an invalid assumption.
The core reason why it’s “thousands of volts” isn’t because a lot of power is needed specifically (although that is the case), it’s because of the nature of electrical conductors. Power loss over long distances is much more heavily influenced by current (current is squared in fact in the equation) rather than voltage. To say another way, you’ll have a lot less power loss with 50k volts at 100 amps than you would with 250V at 2,000A, despite both having comparable wattage (this is in part why high voltage power lines exist on land). Another reason is that electrical conductors (especially with copper, but also with aluminum and others) are heavy and the higher the amperage, the larger the conductor needs to be and thus the more weight.
It looks like it's Fortaleza (Brazil) with 17 cables making landfall there.
Interconnection facilities are the best places to be (or rather what you want to be connected to in order to establish as many adjacencies). 111 8th in NYC. 165 Halsey in Newark. 350 easy cermak in chicago. Palo alto for the bay (but also eqx in San Jose). Infomart in dfw. Etc.
Cable landing stations generally service one cable and the actual networks that use it are generally some distance away.
The general NJ-NYC area seems to be pretty dense with cable landings.
[1]: Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag et al.
https://spacenews.com/st-helena-looks-to-unlikely-patron-to-...
The digging that they do on the beach is quite disruptive. It often involves blasting. Beachfront landowners fight these things tooth and nail, which is why the landings tend to be in either highly industrialized port locations (Portland, OR) or middle-of-nowhere rugged rocky beaches that nobody visits or lives near.
In the Pacific Northwest the weather on along the coast can get pretty fierce in the winter (wind, storms). You don't tend to see a lot of industrial infrastructure built there.
This is not true. Cable is only buried when the depth is less than a 1,000 meters. At 1,000 meters and above it just sits on the sea floor.[1] There is also no "manhole" where a cable pop's out of the ocean floor. The NSA does not need to be in a cable landing station, there is no benefit. The wavelengths can be peeled off fibre optic cable anywhere along the path. Hence why they were doing this at an AT&T Central Office on Folsom Street in S.F.[2], nowhere near a cable landing station. Cable landing stations are actually pretty uneventful places, generally some nondescript industrial park. The security there is the same as it is at any IX or data center.
https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/motherboard-beach-connect...
https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2018/02/submarine-cable...
Fiber theoretically has unlimited bandwidth. The bandwidth of these cable system is limited by the transmission gear used to light the fiber. This is the same for all optical telecom gear though. The cables themselves have a lifespan though. Newer systems have a lifespan of around 25 years.
The cables themselves have a lifespan, but it's far longer than 25 years. Many cable systems have had their lifespan extended beyond 25 years, but is more of a question whether they are economically viable, rather than technically viable.
A lot of cable systems have been retired, purely because they had become obsolete and a new system was more cost effective.
Fiber optics cables themselves are very longlived, if there is no external trauma. There are cables from the 1980s still in use. It's more likely that the amps in a subsea system fail long before the cable. Once the amps start failing, it usually isn't cost effective to keep using the cable system anymore.
Literally the last sentence of my post is "Newer systems have a lifespan of around 25 years." What is your point?
>"The cables themselves have a lifespan, but it's far longer than 25 years."
No this is incorrect. There are a many factors that limit the lifetime of "wet plant" - chief among them are fiber hydrogen exposure, which causes attenuation. There is also glue and insulation aging as well as corrosion. And "the cable" in submarines systems always includes all of the passive optical components, alignments, joints and passive electronic components. Extending these system is generally on the order of 5 years. That could hardly be classified as "far longer than 25 years."
Cable system lifespan != cable lifespan
> No this is incorrect.
How do you then explain subsea cables that have been in operation since 1989? Facts don't care about your opinions.
Not that I disagree with the listed factors that limit the lifetime of the wet plant. 25 years is a design target, not a hard limit.
Is there any map of this quality of the entire world's underground backbones ? I would love to have the other half of the story.
Not anymore. The last time somebody compiled one they tried to have his thesis classified as a matter of national security.
https://gizmodo.com/for-decades-the-public-was-not-allowed-t...
Anyway, thanks for the read, the article and paper were interesting !
2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598
2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894
2015 (a bit) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461
Perhaps it's all the international cables?
It is far more simpler to lay a subsea cable in international waters, especially when hostile nations are concerned.
As to the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, there really are few or no alternatives, that's why there are so many cables there. It's also why Egypt makes serious bank on permits and other fees. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars.
However in order to put up utility poles you need a ROAD in order to get vehicles to the poles for maintenance. That's why you see offshore cables: when there are no roads through politically-stable territory.
Look at Alaska: the fiber runs overland all the way from the southern coast to the northern coast because the oil companies built a road next to the pipeline. Then it goes offshore along the arctic coast because there are no roads between the coastal communities.
Once you have roads and political stability, utility poles win every time. Underground is more reliable but more expensive. Undersea is insano-expensive.
But I wonder how the line between Texas and Missouri got there.
And the one between California and Washington: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/pacific-... (I get that it's to complete a ring, but if subsea is so expensive, they couldn't put together an in-land route to make it a ring?). Or is it cheaper to make your sea cable 5% longer instead of licensing land-RightOfWays install/access?
And Perth+Sydney: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/indigo-c...
I guess they could end up being lower latency than following a road.
Would not be surprised if there were an offshore oil drilling platform in the middle of it.
> And the one between California and Washington:
Pretty sure that's just how the map is drawn -- the consortium that laid the subsea lines to Japan probably bought six strands of terrestrial fiber between the two US endpoints to make the ring.
Yes.
Subsea cable is often cheaper and easier to install than an overland route. Octoberfranklin is just wrong on the economics.
But if a subsea line is 6 fibres, you’d think they’d license one of the 288 strands on an existing run from some less else for less than that cost.
This is easier said than done.
There may not be spare strands on the route in question, or if there is, it may not be available at a reasonable cost. Remember dark fiber is an unregulated asset, nobody can force network owners to play ball.
The available terrestrial routes between the landing stations may be suboptimal.
The route between landing stations may be required to be diverse from terrestrial route.
There's a whole another level of control between owning a full route and leasing some strands in somebody else's cable.
...
And the list goes on.
The fiber isn't, but the poles are. You can force the pole owners to play ball.
For your edification, look up "malicious compliance".
In fjords you can just use a barge to lay the cable or, this being Norway, you can just roll out the cable on the ice and let it sink in the spring.
Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer. This is about the same cost as aerial construction, excluding the poles. You pay for the poles separately with yearly fees.
You also don't need roads to put up and service utility poles. It's just more convenient to put them by roads.
As an aside, you can and do have subsea cables with 216 or other high count strand numbers. The reason you use 12 strands or less in long haul systems is that it is cheaper to use fewer strands and higher bandwidth rates per strand than to build high count subsea cable systems.
You could build any terrestrial fiber system with just one strand, but it's cheaper and more convenient to use more strands since you are constantly bifurcating the network.
Source: I have built both subsea cables and terrestrial fiber networks.
Not even close. 12-count ADSS cable costs $3,000 per km, one tenth of your low-end. And for three times that price you can get 144-count which isn't even remotely an option for subsea cables.
I used to buy from FS.com, but they've stopped shipping large spools due to the COVID shipping disaster situation, and took the pricing down off their website. Here's another company (never dealt with them) charging $1,400 per km:
https://multicomstore.com/ofs-f12smadss350f-fiber-optic-cabl...
Source: I lease aerial dark fiber, included some that was constructed at my request.
> Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer.
Including repeaters/amplifiers and power delivery? Yeah right. Link?
> you can and do have subsea cables with 216 or other high count strand numbers
Show me a 216-count subsea cable long enough to need repeaters/amplifiers.
It's a typical rookie mistake to confuse the cable costs with construction costs.
> And for three times that price you can get 144-count which isn't even remotely an option for subsea cables.
I know for a fact you can get 192 count subsea cable.
>> Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer.
> Including repeaters/amplifiers and power delivery?
Yes.
> Link?
http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=subsea+cable+system+cost+per+km
I know reading is hard, but repeat after me: "The reason you use 12 strands or less in long haul systems is that it is cheaper to use fewer strands and higher bandwidth rates per strand than to build high count subsea cable systems."
If you want high count subsea cable segments with amps, but which does not use in-line amps, take a look at https://crosslakefibre.ca/
To spell it out for you, subsea cables which are only a few hundred kilometers long do not require in-line amps, only head end amps.
> http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=subsea+cable+system+cost+per+k...
Nice source there.
Google even pops up a box with the relevant information immediately. Here, let me help you if that’s too hard:
“The cost of completing the nascent fiber-optic network connecting the capital cities of Sub-Saharan Africa and the main submarine cables is modest at $316 million, based on a cost of around $27,000 per kilometer.”
And that’s just the top result. You can look up the per km cost of almost any cable system trivially.
The last major gap seems to be South America <-> New Zealand; the Pacific Ocean is pretty big.
I bet that people in NZ actually get slower load times than people in the U.S.
> httping mangawhaitavern.co.nz
PING mangawhaitavern.co.nz:80 (/):
connected to 76.223.27.102:80 (201 bytes), seq=0 time=300.61 ms
connected to 13.248.155.104:80 (201 bytes), seq=1 time=288.97 ms
connected to 76.223.27.102:80 (201 bytes), seq=2 time=293.50 ms
Probably over-time the 'way-out' got rung around so any cut isn't a total outage, but just a guess on that.
Starlink just can't carry the bandwidth needed to connect the planet. The theoretical throughput of the whole Starlink constellation is equal to just a single subsea cable system.