How The Internet Travels Across Oceans?
99% of all internet traffic from this article to your pokemon go account to your family whatsapp group runs on a hidden network of undersea cables why should you care because modern life is increasingly dependent on those slinky subaquatic wires and they get attacked by sharks from time to time how do they work what's the future for them join us today as we plunge the depths and ask how the internet travels across oceans according to the authoritative submarine cable map website there are currently 493 active or actively under construction sub-sea internet cables criss-crossing the globe these range from the relatively modest 300 kilometer azerbaijan to turkmenistan wire running under the black sea to the absolutely gargantuan 6600 kilometer maria cable linking virginia beach in the us with bill bow in northern spain maria weighs the same as 24 blue whales apparently the firm's laying down this serpentine superhighway worldwide there's now 1.5 million kilometers of undersea data wires arcadey about how much it all costs but professional estimates indicate a typical transoceanic cable should set you back between three and four hundred millions of dollars which seems like a lot because they're not especially thick typically around the girth of a garden hose and that includes layers of protective thixotropic jelly around the all-important fiber optic core plus multiple plastic sheaths and copper wiring to power the thing but even so on average they can ferry an awesome 100 gigabytes per second in data with newer and forthcoming cables able to transmit 400 gigabytes per second so how does so much data fit down such slim channels part of the answer is an extremely sophisticated data wrangling technique known as dense wavelength division multiplexing put simply dense wavelength division multiplexing lets data providers use more than one wavelength of light to convey information fibre optically instead several wavelengths are employed simultaneously and stacked creating astonishing data speeds this happens at buzzing data center-like landing sites at either end of the cable are the cables just straight forward long wires not quite every 70 to 100 kilometers or so along the seabed cables are punctuated with so-called repeaters.
These essentially serve as amplifiers keeping the signal strength up to par over long distances that's why the cables incorporate copper conductors by the way carrying up to 10 000 volts of dc to power the repeaters how are the cables late they're first coiled into vast cylindrical drums on specialized cable laying ships as much as a year's planning and charting will go into plotting the perfect trans-oceanic route bad locations for undersea cables include anywhere volcanic or anywhere especially earthquake or mudslide prone or anywhere heavily trolled by fishermen the cable is spooled out the back of the ship at a sedate pace of around 10 kilometers an hour if the ship encounters bad weather the captain can decide whether to break off the cord tie it to a boy and retreat to karma waters when the storm passes the ship returns to the boy and picks up where it left off accidents and outages on the cables can and do occur in 2012 hurricane sandy in the u.s knocked out several key transatlantic cables disrupting networks for hours in 2011 the fukushima earthquake in japan caused similar online the vast majority of such disruptions however are the result of human carelessness typically trawler nets or wayward ships anchors cables situated close to the shore are significantly more at risk from such disruption as such the nearer to lander cable is the more likely it'll be carefully armor-plated many are even dug into the seabed in long dedicated trenches carved out using ship-drawn plows awesomely sharks have been spotted nibbling on one of google's subsea cables get your teeth into this 2014 clip more sinister even than that the us government has consistently warned of interference in the cables from hostile foreign powers like russia or china the us government should know all about that whistleblower edward snowden revealed in 2013 how the nsa had no qualms eavesdropping on fiber optic communications the geopolitical implications of undersea cables are also fascinating last year the australian government intervened to prevent chinese technology giant huawei from installing a cable connecting australia with the solomon islands the fear is that china could use the link to gain access to australia's sensitive internal networks so who actually owns these cables that's an interesting question it's an expensive business so historically nations or quasi national telecom providers have picked up the bill the world's biggest owner of cables remains america's a t with a stake in some 230 000 kilometers of undersea cable the second biggest owner is china telecom frequently cables are owned by groups or consortia of up to 50 separate owners including tech firms local government agencies and other businesses and while this model helps spread the initial cost it's less helpful when something goes wrong and nobody can agree who has to put on a wetsuit and do something about it increasingly big tech is recognizing its scope for growth is limited by the undersea cable network so over the past few years the overwhelming majority of investment in undersea
Cable infrastructure has come from companies like facebook which currently owns nearly 100000 kilometers of cables google owns roughly the same amount amazon has its own massive private network hooking up the online giant's mighty aws data centers through cables traversing the atlantic pacific and indian oceans plus the mediterranean and the red sea and the south china sea the tech giants like to frame these vast environmentally disruptive infrastructure projects a civilization enhancing largesse on their part but they're also shareholder companies remember who know perfectly well that increasing the number of human beings online is the only way they can continue to grow hang on a second you're probably thinking what about starlink isn't our old mate elon about to make the internet wireless any day now for now cable is by far the cheapest and most efficient means of eating vast packets of data over incredibly long distances fast even normally bullish musk says starlink is only aimed at people who don't presently enjoy access to high speed fiber but who knows how that'll pan out in a decade or two for now the future is very much undersea cables only this summer google and facebook announced a joint initiative to build an undersea cable named apricot apricot will link up singapore japan guam the philippines taiwan and indonesia by the year 2024. the longest subaquatic cable ever a 45000 kilometer billion dollar monster called to africa that will link up 33 nations was just bankrolled by a facebook-led consortium what do you think will mankind's ingenious submarine network one day look as obsolete as the telegraph. These cables are part of the infrastructure that transmits almost all internet data around the world. And as everyone and everything becomes increasingly reliant on the internet to function, who owns, builds and ultimately controls this network will be more critical than ever. Internet adaptation has steadily increased over the last couple of decades. Despite its creation in the late 1960s, the internet was only widely adopted in 1989 after the invention of the world wide web, revolutionizing the way we How The Internet Travels Across Oceans communicate. Before the rise of mobile devices, internet access was largely limited to expensive and inconvenient desktop computers. But today, it’s an indispensable part of our lives. So, here’s how it works. When you send an email, tweet or post a photo online, that data is sent through cables or more commonly radio waves to a router or cell phone tower. From there, these signals are sent through a series of fiber optic cables in the form of pulses of light to an internet exchange, which acts like a sorting office. Most data from users in a local area network pass through these hubs in order to connect to other networks. For networks and data centers on the other side of the world, this journey will likely traverse the seabed. These submarine cables crisscross the ocean before arriving at an anonymous looking building like this. It's called a landing station and it’s the end of the line for the submarine cable before the data begins its journey overland again.
To lay a cable across any ocean is a significant feat but it’s not a modern innovation — it’s been happening for more than 160 years. As soon as the cable is passed under the bows the crew take charge of it. The invention and widespread use of the electric telegraph – which could carry the dots and dashes of morse code – led to the first transatlantic telegraph cable between the U.S. and Britain in 1858. By the early 20th century, the dominance of the telegraph was replaced by telephone technology that allowed voices to be carried over wires through electrical signals. Soon, submarine cables were carrying telephone traffic, which were laid worldwide, mostly by telecommunication monopolies such as the British Post Office and the American Telephone and Telegraph, or AT&T. Amidst the dotcom bubble in the 1990s, international consortiums began to invest in submarine cables too. 35km of fiber optics connects this one dealing room. These private companies sold or leased the bandwidth to other commercial entities which needed more capacity. The last ten years have seen a rapid expansion of the network to keep up with the demand for internet services. As of early 2020, there were 406 submarine cables that totaled around 750,000 miles in length, enough to go around the world 30 times. Some lines are relatively short, like the 81-mile CeltixConnect cable between Ireland and the United Kingdom, while others, such as the Asia America Gateway cable, which runs across the Pacific Ocean, is 12,427 miles long. Packed within these cables are fibre optic strands that transmit data at speeds of more than 100,000 miles/second, and they carry more than 95% of international data. That’s because undersea cables are still the fastest, most reliable and least costly way to transmit information over vast distances. While the infrastructure on land and underwater is vulnerable to the occasional curious rat or shark, the biggest threat to submarine cables is human activity. In 2011, internet access to the whole of Armenia was severed after an elderly Georgian woman damaged an underground cable while scavenging for copper, while in 2016, a ship dragging its anchor in the English Channel cut three undersea internet cables. In some circumstances, though, satellites are needed to deliver the internet. Very remote areas don’t have the population density to make an economic case for cabling, so satellites are the preferred option. For security reasons, many governments and their military also rely on satellites. Google’s parent company Alphabet has also set their sights on internet balloons to beam the internet to unconnected parts of the world. But even as the web has grown, it has also narrowed in some respects. The rise of the American tech giants in the 21st century meant that Silicon Valley had a reason to invest in these strategic assets. Today, content providers such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft own or lease more than half of the global undersea bandwidth. As of 2020, Google has invested in 16 cables that traverse most of the world, Facebook has stakes in 12 that cross both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, while Microsoft and Amazon have funded five cables each. As the tech giants expand their global network of data centers, these cables will be essential to meet the demand for their services such as cloud computing and streaming, which require minimal delay and lots of bandwidth. But the ownership of these submarine cables is drawing scrutiny from governments due to security concerns. Some analysts believe it’s the latest frontier in the geopolitical battle between China and the U.S. In 2018, Australia prevented Chinese tech company Huawei from laying a cable between the country and the Solomon Islands over concerns that it would give the Chinese government access to its networks. In June, a U.S. national security panel objected to an 8,000-mile cable being built by Facebook and Google connecting Hong Kong and the U.S., arguing that it would offer ‘unprecedented opportunities’ for Chinese government espionage by capturing internet traffic. Many analysts believe that Huawei’s growing involvement in the construction and repair of submarine cables worldwide could even allow China to disrupt internet links between nations, echoing strategies employed during World War I. Then, the United Kingdom’s dominance of the international telegraph infrastructure allowed it to cut off almost all of Germany’s communication with the outside world. Likewise, the U.S. had an espionage program in the 1970s to tap Russian undersea communication cables. Having multiple submarine cables covering the same route acts as a buffer in the event a cable is damaged. However, building more cables won’t necessarily improve connectivity or internet speeds for everyone. For instance, despite having the second largest online market globally, half of the Indian population still don’t have internet access. Africa is also a significantly underserviced region, with 871 million people lacking access to the internet. Reasons include the lack of data centers, last-mile infrastructure and unaffordable costs for end-users that won’t be solved by increased undersea bandwidth. However, as these markets open up and more people come online, demand for faster internet speeds will continue to rise. It’s unlikely, then, that the submarine cable race between the big tech companies is going to slow down.
With billions of dollars of revenue at stake, more money will continue to be invested in these expensive subsea projects. Hi guys, thanks for watching our article. If you're wondering why we're standing on this beach well under the water over there is a submarine cable that runs from the west coast of England to the east coast of America, about 3,500 miles away. We'll see you next time.
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Thanks for reading: How The Internet Travels Across Oceans || The fight over the internet, under the sea , Sorry, my English is bad:)