Undersea Internet Cables - Everything You Need to Know
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2022-05-05
·
919 words · ~4 min read
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We've gotten very used to a world of wireless electronics,
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but did you know that most of the global internet
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still depends on running cables
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over really, really long distances?
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There are so many undersea internet cables
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sitting on the ocean floor
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that the map of them kind of looks like a plate of spaghetti,
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whether you're looking off the Cape of Good Hope
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or off the northern coast of Russia,
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where there's a cable that's aptly called the Polar Express.
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And it turns out that undersea communications cables
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aren't even anything new.
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In fact, the first commercial cable was laid
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all the way back in 1850, connecting England and France.
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Though, of course, that cable was intended for Telegraph,
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as they weren't exactly discussing
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Victorian affairs of state over Twitter.
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Now, unfortunately, some fishers actually cut that cable
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a few short weeks later, but you can't stop progress,
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and more submarine cables started popping up,
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with the first transatlantic cable
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becoming operational in 1858.
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Though, it took around
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two minutes to transmit just one character
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between the continents.
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Of course, it didn't stay that slow for long.
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As our understanding of the way electricity works
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over long distances increased,
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we got to the point where we could carry full-on voice calls
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under the ocean with copper coaxial cables by the 1950s.
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Though, unsurprisingly, those don't provide
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the necessary bandwidth to carry global internet traffic.
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Enter fiber optic technology,
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which powers every undersea cable
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that's still operating.
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Fiber optics work by converting information into light waves,
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but because this light attenuates at distance,
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similarly to how a flashlight becomes impossible to see
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when you get far enough away from it,
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repeaters need to be installed at intervals
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along these cables to amplify the light
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and ensure that it gets all the way down the pipe.
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And although fiber at home is still a luxury for many,
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undersea fiber started appearing in the late 80s.
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Originally, it also mostly carried voice calls,
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but now that fiber forms the backbone of the global internet.
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Improvements in the materials
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that we use to construct these cables
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have resulted in them getting literally
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a million times faster since that time.
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We've gone from the original TAT-8 cable
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carrying 280 megabits per second
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to the new Grace Hopper cable laid in September, 2021,
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carrying 352 terabits per second.
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That is over 350,000 times faster
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than the old home gigabit connection.
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Now, the question is,
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how do we keep undersea cables from failing all the time?
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I mean,
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undersea floor is a far cry
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from the secured climate-controlled data centers
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that we're used to thinking of
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when we hear the words internet infrastructure.
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Well, the cables are wrapped up
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and insulated quite securely against any number of hazards.
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At the very center of the cable are the optical fibers
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that carry the actual data
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and copper tubing that provides power.
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These guts of the cable are wrapped up in plastic
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and aluminum to prevent water ingress.
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But the cable still needs to be toughened up
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to withstand other physical damage,
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physical hazards.
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Nylon and tar can provide additional protection,
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and thick steel wires serve as armor
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against fishing boats, anchors,
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and even the occasional shark bite.
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And yes, sharks have been observed nibbling on these cables
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every now and then.
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But that doesn't make the cables invincible.
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They do still sustain damage
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and even break completely sometimes,
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causing slowdowns like we saw in South Africa in 2020.
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Fortunately, the internet works in such a way
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that data can simply
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take another route to its destination
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while the cable is being fixed,
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which typically involves a repair ship
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dragging the two broken ends of the cable
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up from the sea floor and splicing them back together.
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But hold on a second.
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With all the satellites
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that we have floating around in space
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and services like Starlink being released,
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are these cables in danger of being replaced
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by wireless solutions?
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Not anytime soon.
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Even though wireless data transfer over distances
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is much better than it used to be,
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cables are still much faster, much lower latency,
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and way cheaper.
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It's kind of like Ethernet versus Wi-Fi,
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but on a way larger scale.
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In fact, several of the fastest cables
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aren't even owned by old school telecom companies.
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They were instead laid by newer companies
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like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook
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to improve efficiency in their cloud data centers.
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So the undersea cables look like they're here to stay,
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at least until the fish that we eat
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learn to use garden shears and exact revenge on all of us.
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Thanks for watching, guys.
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