Obligatory link to "Mother Earth, Motherboard" whenever submarine cables are mentioned:<p><a href="http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html" rel="nofollow">http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html</a><p>Best 50 page article you'll read this year.
I would love to see Google do this for Australia and New Zealand as well. Both countries are at the end of the line (so-to-speak) and would benefit greatly from something like this. Our Internet is pretty rubbish and expensive, and while that might be in part due to limited choice of ISP's, archaic Government policies and equipment, bandwidth is a HUGE problem.
This might be an absurd question, but I can't think of a better place to ask it.<p>In my mind there's a huge mental disconnect between computers (servers/personal computers) and infrastructure like this.<p>Could someone provide insight on when/how these types of high-throughput cables are used? How the process is managed, by who, and how on earth all those bits are lined up at such a high speed.<p>I understand they're core to the structure of the internet, but I couldn't explain how information ends up in them to my grandmother.<p>edit: looks like the linked wired article is a good place to start
The Chinese mainland will not see significant international speed improvements until the government decides people should see significant international speed improvements. Keeping things slow and unreliable, especially in peak times, is a form of subsidy for local internet-related business and therefore for government control. Subtle, but hugely effective when push comes to shove: more so than firewalling.
Following the tip to Stephenson's article, here's also a really good book, 'The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers'.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth/dp/0802716040" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/The-Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nine...</a>
I say this without any knowledge of the profitability of such a venture, and as someone who does not live in Australia but who is familiar with the running joke that they have poor Internet:<p>How about run a new cable, or two, to Australia?
On a slight offtopic note, I wonder why Japanese websites are still stuck in the mid 90s to early year 2000 style. One example of this is the imageboard type of websites, which interestingly enough has caught on here in the US.<p>I wonder if these better connectivity will bring more cross culture web designs or applications to both places.
I wonder if this will improve connection to South Korea as well. Browsing .de websites from here involves a trip around the world, Seoul - San Jose - New York - London - Frankfurt for an average ping of 300ms.
60tbs is such a huge amount of bandwidth. That is the equivalent of 1 million 50mbps wifi connections. Imagine having a single WiFi network with 1 million people all within 25ms latency of one another.
(USA) Just wanted to point out that "BTW" is most commonly expected to be an acronym for "by the way" whereas the shorthand for "between" is typically written "b/w"<p>edit: title has been fixed! :)