Unrelated, but if interested in ocean cables check out “A Thread Across the Ocean” by Steele. It’s the story of the first transatlantic cable. It’s a riveting read that is hard to put down. Full of interesting technical details intertwined with the stories of the characters involved. Highly recommended!
Richard Steenbergen has regularly given the presentation "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical" at NANOG over the years; October 2019:<p>* <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeZaNwPKPo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeZaNwPKPo</a><p>APNIC/NZNOG had a good presentation focusing on sub-sea optical stuff (January 2020)):<p>* <a href="https://blog.apnic.net/2020/02/12/at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-a-short-history-of-submarine-cables/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.apnic.net/2020/02/12/at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-a...</a><p>For longer distances (>100km), you want to do a search for "coherent optics".
On my desk sits a paperweight. It is a segment of some ancient undersea cable. About 2 inches in diameter, sheathed in lead with eight main wires and numerous smaller ones in a circular arrangement. Weighs a ton. My dad worked for AT&T and received it as a gift...
I wonder how long it will be before we see the first hollow-core fiber subsea cables. They are 50% faster, and tests from the last year or two have seen record low signal losses.<p><a href="https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/14196057/hollowcore-fiber-is-now-clearer-than-glass" rel="nofollow">https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605...</a><p><a href="https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fiber-Cable-FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...</a>
While I was at AWS I managed to catch a couple of internal presentations from James Hamilton where he went deep into their global network infrastructure. It’s something that’s way outside my wheelhouse but that I find fascinating nonetheless.<p>In particular I always found the discussion about dealing with failure of global infrastructure that’s sitting in the ocean floor particularly intriguing. One non-obvious (to me at least) aspect was what do you do if there’s a failure of the power feed equipment that’s driving the cable. In most cases the answer was “double the voltage until you can repair it properly”. He explains it far better than I ever could on his blog: <a href="https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2017/01/cs-responder-trans-oceanic-cable-layer/" rel="nofollow">https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2017/01/cs-responder-trans...</a>
If you're interested in learning more about how a WSS (Wavelength Selective Switch) works under the hood, there are 2 main methods:<p>* An array of MEMS micro-mirrors which turn to reflect light, or<p>* Finisar's LCoS based method, which uses a 1" LCD TV display to display a gradient pattern which literally bends light.<p>It looks like the undersea cables use Finisar's (now II-IV's) WSS. I think the idea of bending light under software control is pretty cool.<p>Finisar's white paper showing optical path and other possible uses is here: <a href="https://www.amstechnologies.com/fileadmin/amsmedia/downloads/4871_whitepaperprogrammablenarrowbandfiltering.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.amstechnologies.com/fileadmin/amsmedia/downloads...</a>
A bit old now, from 1996, but the classic book-length Wired article "Mother Earth Mother Board" by none other than Neal Stephenson is a peek into how this actually gets done from the physical cable laying pespective: <a href="https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/</a>
The internet includes many components: semiconductors/electronics/chips, hardware, fiber optics, communication systems, networking, wireless, software, etc. There is a lot of work that must be done in different parts of this stack for this system to work.<p>Yet, the private sector focuses mostly on the software part, or services. I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips. The public sector builds the infrastructure, often following decades of investment and work. People working on infrastructure either work for the government for pennies or, if they haven’t yet lost their jobs to outsourcing to developing countries, have difficulty finding employment. The profit goes to consumer companies focused on software or services; worse, these companies claim credit for the whole Internet.<p>Obviously CapEx will be large for a company with a product on infrastructure; there are monopolies; customers will be large operators, etc. Still, are there resources to better understand this issue? It always seemed to me a scam.<p>Also, will the situation change for “hardware”startups/companies?
I make 340Tbit/sec about 1.1x10^11 GiByte/month. GCP premium tier networking is priced at $0.08/GB, so at 80% load that cable would, <i>very</i> naively, have the potential to bring in $7B/month in revenue.<p>I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.
When they say a single cable can deliver 340 Tbps capacity, do they mean a single fiber strand, or a bundle of strands in a sheath that we know as "cables"?
Apropos HN and fibre cable laying, I'm told Makailay cable laying software rents out for $20K/Month. Could be more now - this is ~10/yo information.<p>There's lots of niche markets out there.<p><a href="https://www.makai.com/cable-software/makailay/" rel="nofollow">https://www.makai.com/cable-software/makailay/</a>
> A message took over 17 hours to deliver, at 2 minutes and 5 seconds per letter by Morse code<p>A letter in Morse code is made of up to four “dits” or “dahs”. Why would it take more than two minutes to send one letter?
For those more interested in this topic TE Subcom (now just Subcom) has some cool videos about the process of deploying and repairing these submarine cables. Just search for te subcom on YouTube.
So I'm not suggesting we don't lay more undersea cables, but has anyone done any studies on what damage laying these cables does to sealife/coral/habitats on the sea floor?<p>I love scuba diving and I've personally seen many coral reefs wrecked from boat anchors and fishing nets, do undersea cables do similar damage? (I'm guessing yes).
Funny how tech people (like me) care about pollution from emissions and plastic unless it’s related to rocket launches or huge plastic cables on the ocean floors. Then, nobody mentions it.