The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
How one crew risked radiation, storms, and currents to save Japan from digital isolation.
www.theverge.com
(sorry, much harder to post an article from my phone than I thought)
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The Verge: The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat
- Thread starter Dranakin
- Start date
www.theverge.com
(sorry, much harder to post an article from my phone than I thought)
Very cool article! Thanks for sharing!
Can someone explain how a relatively tiny cable can have millions of million of people using it? Isn't there congestion? and how are they so small with all the data?
Can someone explain how a relatively tiny cable can have millions of million of people using it? Isn't there congestion? and how are they so small with all the data?
Damn, it's crazy that something connected to trillions of dollars is having problems in funding. Like, you would think that countries and big companies would fund the operation of these ships out of necessity to protect critical infrastructure alone. In case of emergency via the military if there really was no one who would do it voluntarily.
I know they say the funding is there, most of it just goes towards new projects, but goddamn ...
I know they say the funding is there, most of it just goes towards new projects, but goddamn ...
Correspondingly, it makes sense for nation states like Russia to attack those same cables and undersea infrastructure....
www.theguardian.com
Undersea ‘hybrid warfare’ threatens security of 1bn, Nato commander warns
Underwater infrastructure vulnerable to Russian threats, says V Adm Didier Maleterre, after suspected sabotage of gas pipelines
www.theguardian.com
Geez even for one of the most crucial things linking the whole of humanity together penny pinching is still threatening to risk it all.
Maybe it's in the article and I missed it, but I've always wondered, where do these cables terminate once they cross the ocean? Is there like a central hub that companies like Comcast pull from at that point to connect homes? Obviously they don't go straight to houses, so they just go..somewhere centrally?
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Someone needs to snip the lines going into Russia so the hackers have to call Putin's IT department for help.
Really incredible stuff. I got interested in undersea data cables 15 years ago when my wife and I went to Thailand and couch surfed in Phuket with an older woman whose husband was the captain of a ship that laid undersea fiber optic cables. I read a couple books and was shocked to learn that they started this stuff before the Civil War.
There are a bunch of fiber optic strands inside each cable and each strand broadcasts many wavelengths of light. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing
They carry many Tb of data per second. Here's one for example: https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/trans-pacific/tpu
I feel like there should be some mutually assured destruction type of deterrence here since Russia could just do the same thing back. The cables are so long I don't see how they can be defended from malicious actors. It's quite a scary thing to think about in the event of a serious global conflict.
But is the data in the form of basically turning lights on and off and sending it via the fiber at many different wavelengths? I just don't know how it can juggle so many millions crowding into a cable.
Are their millions/billions of different wavelengths all going at the same time?
A single client isn't using a full wavelength. Data travels in small packets that are being dynamically routed through the internet. The packets have information in them that say where they need to go, which is how they find their way to the server you're making requests to and how the responses find their way back to your computer.
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Russia has been suspected of deliberately cutting undersea cables in the past.
They've also issued threats about it before.
This was a pretty interesting article to read, thanks for sharing it. I had no idea that it was a struggle to get the staffing to do this sort of work, but I suppose it isn't too much of a surprise.
We use much, much MUCH fewer wavelengths. Fewer than a thousand currently I reckon and maybe as few a few dozens. You are actually severely underestimating how quickly we, humans, can turn lights on and off. Humans are the gods of turning lights on and off.
If you were immortal, never slept, ate or did anything but turn a flashlight on and off once every single second, and started the day before the dinosaurs went extinct, here is what would have happened during during your lifetime:
- Dinosaurs Gone: About 65 million years ago, a big asteroid hit Earth, causing a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species
- Mammals Flourish: After the dinosaurs disappeared, mammals started to evolve and become the dominant animals on land.
- Birds Evolve: Birds, the descendants of some dinosaur species, began to diversify and spread.
- Flowers Spread: Flowering plants became widespread, changing landscapes and ecosystems.
- Grasslands Appear: Vast grasslands emerged, leading to the evolution of grazing animals.
- Ice Ages: The Earth went through several ice ages, where large parts of the planet were covered in ice.
- Human Ancestors: The first human-like creatures appeared in Africa.
- Modern Humans: Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved and began to spread across the globe.
- Agriculture Starts: Humans started farming, leading to the development of civilizations.
- Big Cities: People built big cities, and complex societies formed.
- Industrial Age: The invention of machines and factories changed the way people lived and worked.
The current state of the art would transmit that entire amount of information in one second.
One second.
Like I said. Gods of turning shit on and off.
Sorry, but the internet is not the most important infrastructure as the article sugggests; that would be the electricity grid.
The actual title of the article is "The Cloud Under the Sea", which I just want to say is a such a great title.
Well either of them completely shutting down would cripple modern civilization so i'd say they're now pretty close considering how online everything is. Also you can at least make landline calls when the power is out.
One is necessary for the other making it more fundamental by construction.
I would compare these to firefighters, nurses and even the police. There's never enough money to go around, even when most people would agree that these services are the most important to maintain :P