[HN Gopher] Facebook (Meta) international cable expansion: anima... ___________________________________________________________________ Facebook (Meta) international cable expansion: animated map Author : mfiguiere Score : 132 points Date : 2022-11-02 21:02 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (fairinternetreport.com) (TXT) w3m dump (fairinternetreport.com) | AdamJacobMuller wrote: | I don't see any citation here for the 13% figure or how they | arrived at this. It superficially seems like they considered any | cable which FB/Meta were part owner of to be owned by them? | | That FB/Meta is buying into cable systems does not surprise me, | considering how the submarine cable industry is structured and | the massive scale of FB/Meta. Cables have massive massive capex | to build and relatively tiny opex. The cost structure is | completely front-loaded and if you want to be paying the lowest | cost prices and you have a large enough requirement, the best way | to do this is to be part-owner on cable systems (or an IRU | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indefeasible_rights_of_use). | | Edit a bit because I see this line here: partial ownership over | 13% of the world's total length of backhaul infrastructure | | Basically they are adding up the length of all the cables where | FB/Meta have any ownership interest (or perhaps just IRUs) and | dividing by the total number of submarine cable length. This is | wrong for a number of reasons. These cables are shared in a | number of ways. Firstly, each cable contains multiple fiber | pairs, in some of these FB/Meta is using only 1 of 6 pairs. | Secondly, each fiber is further subdivided by extremely precise | DWDM technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength- | division_multiplexi...) which allows multiple signals to travel | along the same fiber. Finally (and less commonly) fibers are | divided into segments. This is more common in SE Asia and Africa | where a single cable is really a system which may land at 10++ | locations, each segment can be a unique route, or sometimes some | fibers in the system bypass some locations, sometimes some fiber | pairs completely bypass some landing points. Sometimes just some | optical channels within a single fiber are diverted to a landing | point! The total system design is incredibly complicated and | reducing it to this 13% figure is poor. It is completely | plausible that on some of these systems that FB/Meta are using | <1% of the design capacity. | alphabetting wrote: | Yeah title framing is a little misleading. They are track to be | a part owner of 13% of subsea cables. The article is clearly | focused on Meta but I don't think they're an outlier among big | tech. Pretty sure Google is the only big tech company to own | their own private cables and they have a bunch. | AdamJacobMuller wrote: | Amazon has them too, anyone with a huge datacenter footprint | and massive traffic to shift is going to want to own (part | of) these systems eventually, it's extremely low risk and | great reward. | reilly3000 wrote: | > low risk | | I'll just leave this here. | | https://www.politico.eu/article/everything-you-need-to- | know-... | alphabetting wrote: | Amazon definitely has a lot of subsea investment but I | don't think they fully own cables unless this WSJ piece is | wrong. https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-meta-and- | microsof... | | _There is an exception to big tech companies collaborating | with rivals on the underwater infrastructure of the | internet. Google, alone among big tech companies, is | already the sole owner of three different undersea cables, | and that total is projected by TeleGeography to reach six | by 2023. | | Google has built and is building these solely owned-and- | operated cables for two reasons, says Vijay Vusirikala, a | senior director at Google responsible for all of the | company's submarine and terrestrial fiber infrastructure. | The first is that the company needs them in order to make | its own services, such as Google search and YouTube | streaming, fast and responsive. The second is to gain an | edge in the battle for customers for its cloud services._ | AdamJacobMuller wrote: | Amazon owns 1/6th of CAP-1 (FB/Meta own the other | 5/6ths). | bombcar wrote: | Being a part owner of a subsea cable is effectively buying a | percentage of bandwidth on said cable. But "Meta is buying | bandwidth" doesn't sound as scary. | MichaelZuo wrote: | It really discredits an organization when they put out a | headline that misleading. | dang wrote: | Yes, the submitted title broke the site guidelines, which ask: | " _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or | linkbait; don 't editorialize._" | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (Submitted | title was "Meta will own 13% of global submarine cables by | 2024". We've reverted it now.) | | Submitters: if you want to say what you think is important | about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to | the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field | with everyone else's: | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... | virtuallynathan wrote: | Yea, this is a terrible way of calculating this. I would like | to see it done based on capacity (which sadly isn't public for | part-ownership). | AdamJacobMuller wrote: | > which sadly isn't public for part-ownership | | It kinda is. Interestingly a lot of these seem to be divided | up by fiber. E.g. for CAP-1 it's a 6-pair system, FB/Meta own | 5, Amazon owns 1. | | This is from | https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans- | pacific/c... | | I'm not sure what their source is though. | | Calculating fiber pairs -> bandwidth is much much harder | though and is an implementation detail which will absolutely | change over time. I have no doubt that part of why | FB/Google/Amazon want to own fiber this way (owning dedicated | pairs) is so they can experiment with different WDM | technologies. | | Their capacity for failure in the overall system is far | higher than the traditional companies who are selling | circuits and must design things for many nines of | reliability. | mensetmanusman wrote: | If they go vertical like Amazon they will soon be building the | ships that put the cables down... | Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: | Somebody said Samsung? | afandian wrote: | They've already shown they're willing to go vertical with the | recent announcement about legs. | Phrenzy wrote: | Now that is a proclamation you can stand on. | jedberg wrote: | If I'm reading this right they aren't really buying the cables, | they're just buying reserved capacity on existing cables. This | makes sense. Amazon, Google, and others do the same. It's a good | way to make sure your data gets across the ocean even when | everyone else is trying to do the same thing. | [deleted] | ssnistfajen wrote: | Yet every cable listed is co-owned with telecom firms or other | tech giants. So why is Meta being singled out on this? | wmf wrote: | Telcos are "supposed" to own networks since that's their job. | It's more surprising for Meta. | fairramone wrote: | Perhaps Meta will one day pivot to global telecommunications | provider. | outside1234 wrote: | By going bankrupt and fire selling the dark fiber? :) | virtuallynathan wrote: | They are already selling "middle-mile" fiber in the US... | | https://www.networkworld.com/article/3359239/facebook-gets-i... | richardwhiuk wrote: | They already effectively are with WhatsApp. | ta988 wrote: | The question is who are they going to sell that to when they go | under if they continue burning money in their metacrap. | sitzkrieg wrote: | im sure the NSA would be happy to take em over. this is the | part where we pretend they haven't already wholesale co-oped | them | baby wrote: | They're printing money you mean | [deleted] | virtuallynathan wrote: | And Google will own... more than that. Google will have 19+ | owned/part-owned cables, Meta has 14. | ThinkingGuy wrote: | The article seems to be counting percentage in terms of total | kilometers of cables owned. Wouldn't total bandwidth/capacity be | a better measure? | [deleted] | sebastien_bois wrote: | I heard a meme of how "Meta" is short for "Metastasize" - seems | like each new FB story makes it more and more of a reality. | shaburn wrote: | Is there any kind of natural monopoly here? Who cares? | uptown wrote: | There's a war out there, old friend, a world war. And it's not | about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the | information: ...what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. | It's all about the information. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk0Mzci2Sks | benatkin wrote: | Indeed that would be very prescient this time last year. Now | there is a specific war with ammunition though. | AdamJacobMuller wrote: | I literally started in this industry because of that movie (I | was 8 in 1992) and similar like Hackers / War Games. Amazing | movie in so many ways. | aierou wrote: | Newspaper-- | | wait, radio-- | | wait, tv-- | | wait, social media is going to control the world. | loxias wrote: | newspaper: media | | radio: media | | tv: media | | facebook: media | | All prior guesses have always been right, but information | control changes name and shape every few decades. :) | | Reminds me of the transformation of the character Media to | New Media in the TV show American Gods. | lost_tourist wrote: | Sneakers (1992) if you don't want to click on links | VonGuard wrote: | Uptown Oakland is where the Sneakers' headquarters was located. | Second floor of the Fox Theater. | loxias wrote: | You beat me to it. :D | | Simply one of the greatest films of all time. | | "Listen, when I was in prison I learned that everything in this | world, including money, operates not on reality, but the | perception of reality." | | "Stock market? Currency market? Commodities market? Small | countries?" | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LJJB7dVTU | | I know he's the "bad guy" but I suspect I (many of us?) have | been subconsciously channeling Cosmo since I saw the movie as | an impressionable kid. | cube00 wrote: | Cosmo: I cannot kill my friend. | | _[to his henchmen]_ Cosmo: Kill my friend. | jedberg wrote: | I wouldn't say Cosmo is the bad guy. The Government is the | bad guy. Cosmo is just a naive guy who went to prison and | turned hard. | jasmer wrote: | I feel this seems reasonable in an economically liberal context, | but I would hope there's enough regulatory apparatus to ensure | they can't do shenanigans as a result of their holdings. | | Also, I feel these kinds of things would ideally be managed by | the state - in the same way that highways are? I mean, data is | 'the commons' as a public sidewalk. I loathe to think some of our | governing bodies are not up to the task, but, by gosh, they | should be. | Analemma_ wrote: | I'm no fan of Facebook but this seems like a case of "damned if | you do, damned if you don't" and/or looking for something to | complain about. If they didn't fund/build their own cables, these | same people would be griping that they're using more than their | fair share of available bandwidth. Facebook has a bunch of bits | that need to be sent, so they're paying for the infrastructure to | send them. What's the problem? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-02 23:00 UTC)