[HN Gopher] Submarine cable map rendered onto a globe
___________________________________________________________________
Submarine cable map rendered onto a globe
Author : Daviey
Score : 558 points
Date : 2021-09-24 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (globe.gl)
(TXT) w3m dump (globe.gl)
| todd3834 wrote:
| It's amazing to see that we are essentially just having one huge
| LAN party. I wonder if the inventors of the phone or internet
| could have ever imagined this. Now with low orbit satellites
| connecting the world too, the innovation is incredible on this
| planet.
| kube-system wrote:
| Alexander Graham Bell was alive to see this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...
| globular-toast wrote:
| They did imagine it. That's why it works. Even though it's
| stretched to its limits, most of the traffic on there is IPv4
| which dates back to the 80s.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Cool visualization! Would be great if a cable's landing points
| and capacity were shown (e.g. by hovering/clicking it).
| bluesmoon wrote:
| Obligatory mention of Greg's Cable Map which has been around
| since forever: https://cablemap.info/ and now under new ownership
| at https://www.infrapedia.com/app
| quakeguy wrote:
| Another one here: https://www.submarinecablemap.com
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Anyone else find it utterly fascinating that we have undersea
| fiber running to Svalbard, the galapagos and keeling island?
| These are not highly populated areas, and yet look at how abysmal
| rural internet penetration is in the usa.
| Groxx wrote:
| A question!
|
| Are the parallel lines of cables actually spread out that far, or
| is that to make it look nicer?
| neilv wrote:
| Cool. We take it for granted, but the intercontinental data (and
| voice) connectivity cables are an impressive achievement for
| humanity -- technical, and for global community. And globe.gl has
| me "seeing" for the first time a particular cable for which I
| have a much smaller personal story.
|
| One of those submarine cables being severed accounts for one of
| only two software/hardware downtimes for a B2B startup's launch
| MVP, which had been deployed in critical production overseas.
|
| Our station appliances at the facility needed to talk with
| servers (at the network-closest AWS AZ) multiple times a minute,
| for cryptographic security reasons. The appliances had a boot-
| time check for network connectivity (which saw extreme latency
| and packet loss as network unavailable). For reasons, the
| facility powered off all equipment at night.
|
| One day, the facility said the appliances wouldn't "turn on", I
| quickly found they were having network problems, but facility
| insisted their LAN and Internet connectivity was fine. I was able
| to carefully SSH in (with terminal responsiveness like a bad
| dialup to an overloaded timesharing system), and relaxed the
| timeout on the check that was in a retry loop, and the stations
| came to life (albeit network requests during operations much
| slower than normal). The facility manager advised later that day
| that it turns out a submarine cable had been severed.
| elihu wrote:
| I assume these are all communications cables, but I'm curious if
| anyone knows what the logistical issues would be to laying high-
| capacity high-voltage DC lines across oceans? The idea being that
| as renewable and specifically solar power becomes a larger
| percentage of electrical generation, it'd be really nice to be
| able to buy and sell power between the Americas, Europe, Asia,
| and Africa. It's either that or use a lot of batteries, and power
| lines seem like they ought to be the more efficient, effective
| solution. HVDC losses can be reasonably low even for thousands of
| miles* [1].
|
| I'm thinking of having undersea links, for instance, between
| Brazil and Western Africa, or Canada to Greenland to Iceland to
| mainland Europe, or Alaska to Russia.
|
| (Wikipedia shows a number of short-distance undersea HVDC links
| in Europe [1].)
|
| * "Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC
| transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50%
| less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage."
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
| enono wrote:
| This is so cool. Thank you for building this. Does anyone have
| insight into how the fuck he built this?
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads. Others?
|
| _Submarine Cable Map 2021_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133 - June 2021 (83
| comments) (<-- fabulous top comment)
|
| _Submarine Cable Map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25020431 - Nov 2020 (134
| comments)
|
| _Greg 's Cable Map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15176011 - Sept 2017 (41
| comments)
|
| _Submarine cable map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13614598 - Feb 2017 (35
| comments)
|
| _Map of Undersea Internet Cables_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163461 - Sept 2015 (13
| comments)
|
| _Submarine Cable Map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9216894 - March 2015 (39
| comments)
|
| _Submarine Cable Map 2014_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242448 - Aug 2014 (110
| comments) (<-- also a great top comment)
|
| _Submarine Cable Map 2013_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5151469 - Feb 2013 (10
| comments)
|
| _2012 Submarine Cable Map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4218909 - July 2012 (68
| comments)
|
| _Submarine Cable Map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3643749 - Feb 2012 (109
| comments)
|
| _Interactive Submarine Cable Map_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481944 - Jan 2012 (1
| comment)
|
| _Map of worldwide undersea cables_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1606366 - Aug 2010 (49
| comments)
|
| _Map of All Undersea Internet Cables_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423730 - Jan 2009 (2
| comments)
| divbzero wrote:
| Along the US west coast, it surprises me that Seattle, Portland,
| Los Angeles, and San Diego each appear to have more submarine
| cable connections than San Francisco.
| zweifuss wrote:
| I'm suprised how well connected Guam is. Are there reasons?
| [deleted]
| dagw wrote:
| The US has several large military bases on Guam
| felideon wrote:
| Well, it is a US territory and our most western one, at that.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| It is and so is one of the (uninhabited) Aleutian islands.
|
| ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_points_of_
| the_...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Well, it is a US territory and our most western one, at
| that.
|
| If you move the prime meridian to run through (e.g.) D.C. or
| NYC, sure.
| hipokampa wrote:
| No cables between South America and Africa? Flat Earth!
| edoceo wrote:
| What? There's loads across the Atlantic. Why would anyone take
| the long way? Pacific + Indian oceans are huge!
| unknown_apostle wrote:
| No direct cable between US and Russia... e.g. linking up the
| Bering Strait. Anybody know the reason for this?
| sigg3 wrote:
| Cold war?
| m-app wrote:
| There's not a lot of content to be exchanged between Siberia
| and Alaska. And running long stretches of fiber over land is
| actually more costly and subject to failure than under the sea,
| so going from Moscow -> Vladivostok (or something) over land,
| then going subsea, and then Alaska -> West-coast US over land,
| is not really beneficial.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Few people live there. Coincidentally that's why there's no
| bridge up there, either.
| lmilcin wrote:
| For me the most fascinating thing about this is vast distances
| through Pacific covered with the cables. One would assume it
| would be easier to cover the distance around Pacific and not
| directly through the middle of it, but it seems those
| milliseconds are truly precious.
| tills13 wrote:
| One suggestion would be to use a better globe. I want to see
| where in US the entrypoints are, for example, but it just become
| a blurry mess when zoomed in.
| antattack wrote:
| I wonder if UK can use the fact that most US - EU links go
| through UK as a leverage.
|
| EDIT: answer is yes: "LONDON (Reuters) - High-speed sub-Atlantic
| cables may force banks to keep their armoury of currency trading
| hardware in London for some time, even if the dealers themselves
| go elsewhere when Britain leaves the European Union." [1]
|
| [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-global-forex-
| cables/trans...
| zokier wrote:
| Actually bit weird how there is not a single cable going from
| Ireland to France (or elsewhere in the continent). I guess
| going through UK works, but there are so many cables all around
| the place that you'd think one of them would cross that gap.
| not2b wrote:
| That article is 5 years old, it would be interesting to see an
| updated view on this.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| A good idea in theory, but I believe phase 2 of our flawless
| and perfectly thought out Brexit execution plan is to sever all
| of those cables to prevent unwanted "foreign" bits from coming
| in and taking up British bandwidth.
|
| We're then going to individually renegotiate brand new
| communication transport/protocols with each foreign nation
| separately. On far better terms, over the next 20-25 years.
|
| I think the current plan is to use a different breed of carrier
| pigeon for each country so that we can tell where the data is
| coming from and where to send our responses back to.
| quotemstr wrote:
| I'm surprised the Greenland Connect cable connects Newfoundland
| to Iceland by way of Greenland instead of just terminating at
| Greenland. I wonder how much non-Greenland through traffic the
| cable gets. It'd have been cheaper to skip the
| Greenland<->Iceland leg, right?
|
| It's also interesting how it looks like it's easier to go around
| the west coast of Africa than to run cables overland across the
| Sahara.
| msmith wrote:
| It's interesting that there are so many cables running through
| the Suez Canal. I wonder if it's because of geopolitical reasons
| for avoiding going over land through the Middle East.
| up6w6 wrote:
| Is there any map of land cables ? I know more about the few
| submarine cables between south and north america than how the
| internet actually arrives to inland cities of my state.
| eskathos wrote:
| working at a tier one telco. we have very precise maps of our
| ground fibers. physical location is usually down to +-10cm.
| length of fiber even takes into account any coiled up parts.
| if a contractor wants to dig anywhere, then they have the
| responsibility to query a national database before digging.
| if they break our cable, then we have active monitoring
| (reflecting a laser in a spare fiber, off the break,
| calculating length to break) this interfaces with our map
| software, so we can tell within half a meter where the cable
| is broken. in most cases we end up suing the contractor for
| the cost of repair and any SLA payments.
|
| to my knowledge no public maps exist, that will give you a
| full picture.
| zokier wrote:
| As far as I can tell, there aren't that many cable running
| through the actual canal, instead they cross over Egypt before
| the canal starts or terminate in Suez: https://ibb.co/NyVXtST
| globular-toast wrote:
| Well, it's also easier to run a cable underwater. As far as I
| know, the cables are literally just laid down there. You can't
| just lay a cable on land. You've got to bury it or elevate it
| on poles. I wonder how they deal with dredging the canal,
| though.
| degenerate wrote:
| Likewise, what's the "benefit" of spreading the cables out by a
| few kilometers when space allows? If you zoom in you can see
| all the cables scrunched through the canal, but on more than
| one occasion they are fanned out to spread evenly across the
| given space. Likely it is only a visual eyecandy in the way
| this map was created, and not a true indication of the cable
| formations... but I tried looking for some answers on
| https://www.iscpc.org and gave up. I would assume once a
| suitable cable path is found, most subsequent cables would be
| laid right alongside for higher chance of success avoiding
| coral/trenches/etc.
|
| edit: The more I look at the map, the more it becomes clear
| these lines do not indicate true cable locations. The lines are
| too perfect... even for fiber optics. The ocean floor is a
| treacherous beast!
| detaro wrote:
| that also increases the chance of something hitting a cable
| taking out multiple cables at the same time.
| finnh wrote:
| Just guessing, but the benefit could be not cutting a cable
| by accident as you lay yours?
| finnh wrote:
| per another comment[0], it's cheaper to just stay in the water
| unless you specifically want to attach to a land network. I
| don't have the knowledge the other commenter seems to have, but
| that certainly seems believable to me.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28642764
| cycomanic wrote:
| I'm not sure about the Suez, but is the reason why there are
| almost 0 cables running on the African continent and instead
| there being several cables laid around the coast.
| Frost1x wrote:
| There's another one that appears to run through the Gulf of
| Mexico to the US as well (looks like AL or LA to TX), so I
| suspect it's surprisingly cheaper and/or easier to get policy
| approval.
|
| It's not entirely uncommon to route cables from and to your own
| country through the water, apparently:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domestic_submarine_c...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Land almost everywhere comes with ownership issues which can be
| problematic for installing cables. The ocean is generally
| unambiguously nationally owned, and so it's much simpler to
| seek permission from a single source (government) than many
| sources (owners).
| walrus01 wrote:
| they don't go _through_ the suez canal, they go across egypt by
| land.
| retrac wrote:
| This is slightly tangential, but it's Atlantic-cable-related, and
| I just learned about it. Let me set the stage. By the 1920s,
| analog fax technology was established and there were a variety of
| experimental and early commercial systems in use. One of the
| first uses of modems was to transmit faxes over the long-distance
| telephone network, turning a voltage into a pitch, and vice
| versa. The electronic marvel of the 1930s in the newsroom, aside
| from the teletypes, was that you could take a photo in San
| Francisco and have it published just hours later in New York.
|
| But how do you get a picture across the Atlantic Ocean? Those
| analog fax systems suffer from noise and in the experimental
| systems of the 1910s and 1920s long-distance was impractical.
| Shortwave to get over the Ocean was right out. There were no
| transoceanic telephone links. But there were submarine telegraph
| cables. Morse code or Baudot telex. Not very fast with no
| amplifiers along the lines yet. But you could send a telex across
| the Atlantic ocean.
|
| Enter the Bartlane transmission system. First, five photographs
| were developed from the original negative, at different exposure
| levels, using a conductive developer. So each point of the image
| is more or less conductive depending on its exposure. Each of
| these photos is scanned, as if it had pixels, and a 1-bit
| intensity value collected for for all five photographs, creating
| a five-level greyscale bitmap image on tape basically. (Five bits
| worked with existing Baudot code equipment.)
|
| This enormous tape was then sent over the wire. On the receiving
| end a printer, with intensity controlled by the level indicated,
| would then selectively expose a spot on a photographic plate to
| light, as it stepped through the tape. Six hours to send a small
| image. But digital was the only way to send a photograph from
| London to New York overnight from its early trials in the 1920s
| until the 1950s.
|
| http://www.hffax.de/history/html/bartlane.html
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Interesting
| bob229 wrote:
| Awful awful map. Terrible colours. Unintelligible
| c54 wrote:
| I would love to be able to plug in two locations and visualize on
| a map the path my packets would take travelling from here to
| there. A sort of visual traceroute.
|
| One problem I've had with existing tools is that it's hard to
| find a server in a given place, even if you know that place has
| internet. For instance I was facetiming with my partner who is
| abroad in africa right now, but I'm not sure of a server to
| [traceroute] against in the country she's in.
| forinti wrote:
| Some interesting places that caught my eye:
|
| - Cocos Islands has their own cable and they don't even have 600
| people; - Saint Helena has its own cable (googled to find out it
| is very recent and will start offering 18Gbps in 2022); - French
| Polynesia seems well served.
|
| Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn probably will never get their
| cables.
| myself248 wrote:
| I suspect that some of those places host strategically
| important communications facilities. Perhaps spy satellite
| downlink facilities, perhaps GNSS ground-segment base stations,
| perhaps earth stations for other communications satellites.
|
| Oddly, those two specific islands don't. Saint Helena is
| specifically courting such business, but I don't see any
| indication that they've attracted anyway. But several other
| small islands are definitely fibered-up on account of their
| satellite facilities.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| St. Helena has been lobbying for years to get one. I was glad
| to see that finally working out for them.
| voldacar wrote:
| Interesting findings from this map:
|
| - Guam is a significant data/telecoms hub for the western pacific
| region
|
| - There are some short cables installed in areas that don't seem
| to make much sense, Such as the one in the gulf of Mexico, or
| between Italy and Croatia
|
| - Many extremely sparsely populated islands and archipelagos have
| their own undersea fiber, such as Svalbard.
|
| Super cool site.
| [deleted]
| veb wrote:
| yikes, only 5 cables for NZ. still... better than it used to be I
| suppose1 superb visualisations though. really cool to see.
| w-m wrote:
| At ~1 cable per 1M pop they are probably leaving most countries
| behind them in a cable/person ratio, being topped only by the
| transit hubs in the pacific.
| snicker7 wrote:
| I mean, it's far worse for Africa given their geographic size
| and population.
| neals wrote:
| Very obvious of course, but never thought about it: Europe to
| Asia (and back) takes a lot of routing.
| willvarfar wrote:
| There's some interesting military history and tech regarding
| submarine cables. The first act of WW1 was to sever a cable, for
| example. And during the Cold War the Americans planted bugs on
| Russian cables and were eventually exposed by a spy. Nowadays the
| Russians have some interesting capabilities that can be inferred.
|
| http://www.hisutton.com/Undersea_Cables.html
| cableguy wrote:
| Some years ago I was contacted by the descendants of an English
| engineer who was working at the Long Island NY cable station of
| the German Atlantic cable via the Azores at the start of WWI.
|
| Back in the 1950s a family member had recorded him on open reel
| tape reminiscing about his experiences, and this was later
| converted to audio cassettes. They sent me the tapes, and I
| cleaned up the audio for them, and they gave me permission to
| post the transcription and audio on my site.
|
| Turned out he was actually watching the signals coming in from
| a German operator when the cable was cut by the Brits, and he
| talks about this on one of the tapes.
|
| The story and short audio file are on my site:
| https://atlantic-cable.com/CableStories/Claypoole/index.htm
| divbzero wrote:
| What happens when cables need to cross an isthmus like the Suez?
| Looks like they don't literally go through the canal from Suez to
| Port Said but they run pretty close by to minimize distance over
| land. Most connections appear to run from Suez to Alexandria and
| from Zafarana to Abu Talat. [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/google-egypt-suez-
| digital...
| gus_massa wrote:
| Another visualization, not as nice, but it's easier to spot all
| the landing sites: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
| johncena33 wrote:
| Actually I find it way more comprehensible than the posted
| link. The posted link seems to prioritize form over
| functionality.
| gnabgib wrote:
| Given the URL, it looks like this is a demo of the globe
| software.. there are a few others in the root.. this one's
| impressive: https://globe.gl/example/countries-population/
| fourthark wrote:
| Wow, not sure how useful that is (standard caveat about
| choropleths and density vs raw numbers) but very
| impressive! Even the text overlays work nicely.
| savingGrace wrote:
| The two critiques I have of the OP link are solved in this one:
| - The land/water contrast and the dark/light should be inverted
| - Zoom speed is terrible in the OP link, but much better in
| this map
| cableguy wrote:
| A short timeline:
|
| 1850 - first telegraph cable laid across the English Channel
| between England and France.
|
| 1858 - first Atlantic telegraph cable between Ireland and
| Newfoundland.
|
| 1866 - first permanently successful Atlantic telegraph cable.
|
| 1891 - first telephone cable laid across the English Channel.
|
| 1902 - two telegraph cables laid across the Pacific Ocean.
|
| 1956 - first telephone cable across the Atlantic.
|
| 1988 - first fiber optic cable across the Atlantic.
|
| My cable history website has records of over 2,200 telegraph,
| telephone and fiber optic cables laid worldwide between 1850 and
| 2021: https://atlantic-cable.com/Cables/CableTimeLine/index.htm
|
| The front page of the site links to over a thousand individual
| pages on cable history: https://atlantic-cable.com
| jrsdav wrote:
| I'm a bit curious about something that I've never thought about
| before -- how were telegraph signals routed? Was it just a one
| way street, or did they have a frequency range to work with?
| cableguy wrote:
| This was long before there were any electronic devices to
| amplify or otherwise manipulate the signal. The telegraph
| signals were just short electrical pulses representing Morse
| code, with a positive voltage for a dot and a negative
| voltage for a dash. The lines could only be worked in one
| direction at a time for many years, but eventually circuits
| were used at each end to "duplex" the cable, allowing
| messages to be sent in both directions at the same tim.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Interesting fact if you're in latam/caribe... if you're down here
| you have situations like DDoS saturation on MAYA-1 (caribbean
| side) and then you have to make some phonecalls and re-route your
| BGP over the PAC (Pan-American Crosssing on the pacific side).
| Fun shit to do getting woken up by your boss at 1am!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2019) ?
|
| Though I supposed the latest commit is to use live data from
| Telegeography
| jkonline wrote:
| I've always enjoyed Hurricane Electric's 3D network map [1^], it
| includes a submarine cable filter view which always [2^] blows my
| mind.
|
| [1]: https://he.net/3d-map/
|
| [2]: of course, today the desktop I'm using doesn't support WebGL
| and I can't see the submarine filter on my phone. YMMV
| gorjusborg wrote:
| There's no submarine cable to Antarctica? Is this because it
| would be too difficult to terminate given the
| expansion/contraction of the ice shelf?
| MivLives wrote:
| I'm guessing there's also not enough people to be worth it.
| There's only between 1k and 5k people down there depending on
| the time of year.
| jedberg wrote:
| But they're all scientists who have a lot of data to send
| back and because of the isolation are desperate for live
| streaming media and video calls.
| throwbigdata wrote:
| No. It's because no one is there.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Little need, it's essentially all government run bases down
| there and they get their internet through various satellite
| links. You could maybe run one to McMurdo Station since it's on
| solid land and by a bay but there's just not enough data to
| justify the cost.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%E2%80%93Scott_South_P...
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Datco announced in NPlay Southern Cone 2021 that it projects a
| 1,026 km submarine cable to Antarctica, through the Drake Pass
|
| https://www.convergencialatina.com/News-Detail/324197-3-8-Da...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Sweet. Thanks for that.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Only thing more secure than a firewall is an ice wall!
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Sounds like someone gets it...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Unless you have a dead dragon
| Daviey wrote:
| Source is here: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl
| doerig wrote:
| Specifically here: https://github.com/vasturiano/globe.gl/blob/
| master/example/s....
| gus_massa wrote:
| It's interesting that most countries have a single entry point
| (near the capital city), or only a few. One big exception is
| Chile that has a cable that goes along the cost and reach many
| cities. I a similar pattern in the east of Brazil and both sides
| of New Guinea.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Check out cables in the Arctic.
| abruzzi wrote:
| its interesting that there seem to be cables connecting
| locations on the North Alaska caost, but nowhere else. I
| would have thought those locations would be too remote for
| land based connections, unless there is fiber running from
| Prudhoe Bay along the oil pipeline south.
| cableguy wrote:
| All the way back to the early days of the cable industry in the
| 1800s, it was easier and safer to lay a cable along the coast
| of undeveloped countries than to try and run a landline on
| poles across rugged terrain. Both coasts of Central and South
| America had telegraph cables running down them, with spurs for
| inland connections. Same with Africa. Here's a map on my cable
| history website showing the network in 1902: https://atlantic-
| cable.com/Maps/1901-Berne-Map-BPL-Leventhal...
| xwdv wrote:
| What would it take to lay down a fat pipe to Antarctica and
| finally connect all the continents?
| mosburger wrote:
| Another commmenter posted this above:
| https://www.convergencialatina.com/News-Detail/324197-3-8-Da...
| modeless wrote:
| Starlink will be available there in less than a year and should
| be quite sufficient. Possibly even better latency than fiber.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| Money. Lots and lots of money.
|
| Given the population is always under 10k, and it doesn't serve
| as an interconnection point for any further points along the
| way (unlike e.g. Hawaii or Guam), it's just not worth it,
| apparently.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related discussion from earlier in the year about the latest
| submarine cable map:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410133
| [deleted]
| 404mm wrote:
| I'm surprised that none were damaged in Suez Canal when the ship
| (Ever Given) got stuck.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| It makes little sense to lay cables in the water in the canal,
| since they're always doing construction, digging, and dredging
| in and around it.
| dathinab wrote:
| The ship only hit the grounds on the sides where it's less
| deep, but the cables probably go through the middle area where
| it's the deepest. So there wasn't much of a chance for the ship
| to damage any cables.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| There is no reason to run a submarine cable through a canal,
| because there is land adjacent to the canal.
| kube-system wrote:
| There's land adjacent to many of these cables. It is cheaper
| to bury cables in water -- there's a lot fewer shovels needed
| and fewer property disputes.
| cableguy wrote:
| Also cables laid underwater are better protected from theft
| and vandalism than those on land in possibly hostile
| territories.
| philipov wrote:
| Fascinating, I didn't know Guam was a hub for cable intersections
| in the pacific ocean.
| vanattab wrote:
| I was surprised by how many lines seem to just run along the
| coasts of land. Is it really cheaper to lay and maintain fiber in
| the ocean then over land along the coast?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I would think so given overland is more likely to hit right-of-
| ways owned by entrenched telcos - who tirelessly work to screw-
| over any comm progress that doesn't enrich them as much as they
| want.
|
| Past that there's endless interests that have to be negotiated
| with. And any part of the cable has to travel above ground will
| be more vulnerable.
| tantalor wrote:
| It's kind of hard to distinguish between land and water when they
| are both black. Improving the contrast or adding a border would
| help.
| contravariant wrote:
| Indeed, especially for those few spots seemingly in the middle
| of the ocean where the cables converge it would be interesting
| to know what land masses (if any) are nearby. Right now this is
| very difficult to see.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I actually think there's a real unique and distinctive
| visualization caused by this decision. We're typically very
| geo-politically focused when we look to evaluate this sort
| information, but think about it without differentiating
| between land and ocean, without countries or borders. Think
| of nodes and edges in a graph, with the size/volume of edges
| weighing priority. Totally different way to view "earth".
| intpete wrote:
| It appears to be Guam.
| nonfamous wrote:
| Inspired by
| https://twitter.com/tylermorganwall/status/14406695331575562... ,
| or vice versa?
| hun-nemethpeter wrote:
| This animation was featured at Daily Dose of Internet at 09/23
| at 2:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRhnpFzIlx0&t=120s
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Protecting the sea lanes of communication is actually a core US
| Navy mission (and probably high priorities for several other
| world Navies as well). Particularly the major choke points:
| Strait of Gibraltar, Strait of Malacca, Strait of Hormuz, the
| Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Bab el Mandeb, Turkish Straits, and the
| Cape of Good Hope.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I'm fascinated by that Gulf of Mexico cable.
|
| Is that for oil wells?
| [deleted]
| zweifuss wrote:
| Yes: https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/products-and-
| ser...
| hnarn wrote:
| This might be a stupid question, but is it implicit that these
| "submarine cables" are all fiber cables? If so, are they of
| similar or very different bandwidths? I would think there are
| cables of differing ages that are used for different things, or
| are all non-fiber cables taken out of service long ago, or are
| they just not included on the map?
|
| Also, the "Polar Express" cable on that map is fascinating, but
| it seems like it's not planned to be completed until 2026.[1]
|
| [1]: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-
| afr...
| azernik wrote:
| I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables.
| Fiber's main strength is range; trying to run signals over
| electrical conductors over hundred-km-plus distances is not
| cost-effective and hasn't been for decades.
|
| (It's been done historically, but with very heavy cables, very
| high endpoint power levels, lots of repeaters, and really poor
| throughput.)
| hnarn wrote:
| > I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables.
|
| I strongly doubt electrical cables are fiber cables for
| example :-)
|
| On a more serious note, I was thinking that there are perhaps
| copper cables used for telephone communications that are
| still used simply because they haven't yet failed, but I
| assume fiber has perhaps been the standard for backbones long
| before it became something people have in their homes.
| jhgb wrote:
| Wouldn't it make sense for some electrical cables to have
| some fiber in them? When you're already laying them, you
| could get two services for the price of one.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Optical fibres are also pretty good sensors so it's not
| unlikely that some fibres are added just for sensing
| purposes (they are eput into lots of bridges and other
| things for example). That said it highly depends on the
| length of your electrical cables if putting in fibre for
| communications makes sense. Typically (grossly
| simplified) you need optical amplifiers when you go
| significantly over transmission distances of 100km so
| they need power supplies, take up quite a bit of space
| etc..
| tbihl wrote:
| In almost all conceivable contexts, no. If you've ever
| done any work with electrical code, you are familiar with
| the spacing requirements between electrical conduit and
| data wires to prevent magnetic interference: at least a
| foot apart, and perpendicular crossings if crossings are
| necessary. The voltage on underwater electrical cables
| are quite high, as is the bandwidth on underwater data
| cables, so you definitely can't have them mixing if you
| want anything near optimum results on data transfer.
| fsckboy wrote:
| he was asking about fiber which is not subject to
| electro-magnetic interference
| midasuni wrote:
| Even setting that aside Undersea power is DC
| hnarn wrote:
| I suppose it would, I guess I'm just wondering for how
| long fiber cables have been the standard, and if there
| are any operational cables from the time before that. I'm
| pretty sure there are plenty of cables dedicated for one
| purpose (e.g. electricity only) that do not contain fiber
| simply because there wasn't a need or requirement when it
| was planned.
|
| edit: Here's an example:
|
| > The world record from 1994, for the longest HVDC cable
| with the highest capacity, was equalled in 2000 with the
| successful completion of the Swedish-Polish HVDC
| transmission link between Sweden and Poland:
|
| > 1. Stretching over 250 km, it is one of the two longest
| submarine HVDC cables ever laid.
|
| > 2. At 600 MW, the cable is one of the most powerful
| HVDC cables in commercial operation.
|
| > 3. At 450 kV DC, this cable together with the cable
| between Sweden and Germany, has the highest voltage
| rating of all existing submarine HVDC cables.
|
| This cable doesn't seem to have any other purpose than
| transferring electricity, and it was installed "only" 21
| years ago.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Already a thing, one of the high voltage power cables to
| Tasmania also has singlemode fiber in it. Not uncommon.
| dtech wrote:
| I highly doubt it's cost-effective. These things are
| complicated and have specialized equipment. The endpoints
| also very different for data and electricity.
| cranekam wrote:
| I'm certainly no expert here but I'm guessing it doesn't
| make sense for two reasons:
|
| 1) Modern communications fibers are complicated (https://
| en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable [1])
| and presumably expensive so speculatively adding them to
| power cables would likely be a pricey endeavor.
|
| 2) AFAIK most submarine cables are systems -- e.g. a ring
| the connects various places so that there are two paths
| between points -- so trying to plan one to that co-opts
| existing bits of fiber piggy-backed on power probably
| wouldn't be easy. Also you'd have the issue of dealing
| with different generations of fiber, standards, etc.
|
| [1] On reading this it turns out that modern fibers
| actually carry power as well so that repeaters en route
| can be powered.
| waynecochran wrote:
| Doesn't a lot of these cables pre-date fiber? They had these
| in WWII. I remember the Gilligan's Island episode where the
| cable washes up in the lagoon and the professor was able to
| connect up a phone so they call around the world -- of course
| Gilligan screws it all up at the end.
| gok wrote:
| Until the 1950s, transatlantic communication was done with
| radio. Then it was copper until the 80s
| azernik wrote:
| None of that stuff is still in service. (At least not
| telecom.) They require periodic, expensive maintenance, and
| fiber outclasses copper for long-distance signatures to a
| much greater degree than for the last-mile ground traffic
| for which copper is still used.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > I strongly doubt there are any non-fiber submarine cables.
|
| not for telecom, not anymore, but a number of submarine cable
| laying ships are equipped specifically for laying high
| voltage power cables to offshore wind farms. And for things
| like high voltage cables linking medium sized islands to a
| nearby mainland (eg: Vancouver Island, BC to the continent).
|
| After submarine telecom, the biggest uses for such vessels
| are offshore power and the oil/gas industry.
| isthisnametaken wrote:
| Not just medium-sized islands. The UK has several
| interconnectors to other European countries for importing
| and exporting power
|
| https://www.nationalgrid.com/our-businesses/national-grid-
| ve...
| spzb wrote:
| One less than usual at the moment though
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-58570893
| retrac wrote:
| Some coaxial lines were laid until the 1980s. Seems likely
| that at least one small island somewhere has a copper
| submarine cable supplying their data/phone needs still. But
| it's decidedly obsolete, yes.
| caymanjim wrote:
| When I lived in the Cayman Islands, the primary submarine cable
| (I forget its name) was fiber, and I had better net there than
| I had in the US. It went down for a week or two one time, and
| the entire island's net traffic was relegated to a much older
| copper cable that ran to Jamaica. Cayman is a tiny market, but
| it still crippled our net because the bandwidth was tiny; it
| was like a couple T1s for the whole population.
| cableguy wrote:
| Copper communications cable were in use from 1850 until the
| 1980s, when they were replaced one by one with fiber. Almost
| all the copper cables ever laid are still in the depths of the
| ocean, as it's not worth salvaging them except near shore. A
| few of the more recent copper cables are still operational, but
| they are used only for scientific research.
| hnarn wrote:
| That's true for communication cables though, so what about
| cables for electricity? That's mostly what my original
| comment was about, that the title seems to imply any
| submarine cable is automatically a data cable.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Why would you send electricity across the ocean? You can
| generate it locally on both sides.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| Not all of these lines go across the ocean. If you're
| trying to move power between Sao Paolo and Beunos Aries,
| it might be cheaper to lay a sea cable than to deal with
| all the terrain, land rights and borders involved in an
| overland route.
| hnarn wrote:
| Not all submarine cables cross oceans.
| mannykannot wrote:
| There is (if it has not been scuppered by brexit)
| Icelink, a project to connect Iceland to the UK. The
| rationale, as usual, is mismatched supply and demand,
| where the supply is green geothermal power.
|
| https://askjaenergy.com/2018/04/17/icelink-in-operation-
| by-2...
|
| The idea of connecting solar farms in the Sahara to
| Europe under the Mediterranean is also perennially in the
| air, with the same rationale as Icelink.
| lifekaizen wrote:
| Some seem to be for redundancy, some bring power to
| municipalities (i.e. island cities) with limited power
| production capacity. There's a list here
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable
| [deleted]
| cableguy wrote:
| There are high voltage submarine cables for electrical
| power - these are used to cross rivers and lakes, for
| example. International cables, like the ones between the UK
| and the European mainland, are used for load balancing. As
| it's difficult technically to transmit electrical power
| over a subsea cable (and exponentially more difficult at
| the length increases), these cables have limited
| application. There's over a million kilometers (~600,000
| miles) of fiber optic communications cable around the world
| right now, and perhaps a thousand or so miles of power
| cable, so "submarine cable" without any qualifier almost
| always refers to communications cables.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable#Operati
| o...
| [deleted]
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes operating a non fibre cable is too expensive and does not
| make sense. Fibre cables on the other hand have remained
| operational over a long time. AFAIK there are no fibre cables
| using electro optic repeaters operational anymore. But the
| earliest fibres which used optical amplification are still
| operational. This is the beauty about fibre communication. You
| largely only need to upgrade the endpoints to increase your
| throughput.
| samstave wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pt7gu3/ear...
|
| Way better version, and he includes the code.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| These sorts of projects are always fascinating to me. The hard
| part of these sorts of visualizations always seems to be
| acquiring the data in the first place. I would have no idea where
| to begin looking for a record of exactly how all of the
| underwater fiber optic cables are positioned. I wonder whether
| people come across this sort of data and think to do something
| with it, or whether people start by deciding to make this
| visualization and then go forth and search out the data.
| cableguy wrote:
| This cable industry site regularly publishes an Almanac of all
| current active cables with maps and details for each one:
| https://issuu.com/subtelforum/docs/subtel_forum_almanac_issu...
| slivanes wrote:
| https://www.infrapedia.com/app - used to be called greg's cable
| map.
| dgritsko wrote:
| I found a couple that have interesting or creative names -
| Bifrost, Polar Express, Apollo, Grace Hopper, Amerigo Vespucci.
| Most of them are pretty dry by comparison, which feels like a
| missed opportunity.
| lifekaizen wrote:
| Very cool! Quick browser note: get blank screen with Brave on iOS
| iPad (with shields up; does work with shields down), no problem
| on iPhone.
| a9h74j wrote:
| If you haven't viewed the OP, one surprise: apart from in the
| Pacific, the relative dominance of coast-hugging routes.
| [deleted]
| genghisjahn wrote:
| Gotta mention this article from Neal Stephenson...
|
| _Mother Earth Mother Board_
|
| >The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous
| meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the
| longest wire on Earth.
|
| https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
| wrycoder wrote:
| That detailed research by Stephenson also served as the
| foundation for the fiber optic cable laying and data haven
| subplot in Cryptonomicon.
| blamazon wrote:
| The Philippines was the first place I looked on this map
| because of this book.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| You can find the FLAG cable referenced in the article on this
| map. The easiest landmark for finding it is the narrow section
| of the Malay peninsula. Stephenson spends some time in the
| article covering the overland construction there.
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