The Neon Rush

Taking a dive into the undersea Web

Jul 1, 2009 00:39

The other day I was reading Lim Sheng Ming's interesting post on Brunei's big, fat bandwidth cable.  Being an amateur Internet infrastructure fan, this reminded me of some bookmarks I archived last month. When we upload photos to Facebook everything happens so fast that we don't realize those digital packets are zipping around the world at blazing speeds. It doesn't happen magically; there are millions of miles of submarine communication cables laid across the oceans that connect the continents together. Oh, how I miss Pangea.  

So who built these cables? How are they laid? Can sharks and jellyfish affect my late night Internet surfing?  

For Taiwan, I found a list of all the undersea cables that connect the beautiful island to the rest of the world. It also lists the popular name vendors such as Siemens, Fujitsu, AT&T, Alcatel, NEC, Tyco, etc., that install and manage the vast undersea Web.

For Juniper and the gang in Singapore, here's a list of the cables that touch down there.  

Names and locations are fine and dandy, but I wanted some more... some visual candy. 

Deep inside Alcatel's Web site, I learned more about its repeatered systems

Repeatered system ranges that span the world through the oceans, with both 2.5Gbit/s or a 8.4Tbit/s capacity systems.

The grandaddy of them all is SEA-ME-WE that connects Europe, the Middle East, and Asia via the undersea Web. About 27,000km.


SEA-ME-WE
  



Japan-US
 



US-Australia (Southern Cross)
   



South America-Africa (Atlantis 2)
    



Around South America (SAC)
 
US-S. Europe/N. Africa (Columbus III)
 

I'm used to looking at fairly simple networks that connect rooms in the home or office, so finding these intercontinental diagrams was an interesting change of pace. The next time your Internet connection is slow, it may not be your computer or router. It could be a faulty fiber-optic repeater, an undersea earthquake or perhaps a disgruntled pod of wayward whales.

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