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!
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.
I might be totally wrong; It seems likely to me that, due to capillary action, if a hollow undersea fiber gets physically cut then seawater would flow into the hollow center.
The ends of the fiber might be at different depths with a pressure difference that could move water a long way into the fiber. I imagine the length that water got into would be ruined even if the water was pushed out again.
I conjecture that undersea hollow-core might end up being expensive to maintain.
The "50% faster" stat is talking about latency, which is not really what subsea cables are about (massive bandwidth).
The more important figure is the attenuation at frequency bands used in telecommunication (C-band and L-band). According to the article, hollow core fibers are still much worse than solid core fibers (0.28 dB/km vs 0.14 dB/km).
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.
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: https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2017/01/cs-responder-trans...
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: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
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.
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.
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.
Also, will the situation change for “hardware”startups/companies?
> The public sector builds the infrastructure, often following decades of investment and work.
It does? I don't think I follow. In your list of components, every single one of those is, at least in the US, largely or almost entirely handled by private companies.
The big semiconductor companies are private. I actually don't think there are any notable public entities that make their own chips. Hardware companies (I'm assuming you're talking about things like motherboards, routers, switches, etc) are private. Fiber optics/communications/networks are laid almost entirely by private telecom companies (and there's actually a big push to take this away from private companies and make ISPs be government entities). The article that you're commenting on is all about a private entity investing money into laying fiber and improving the protocols that communicate over it.
>I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips.
There are a lot of SMBs working on chip design. I'm less familiar with fiber, but a quick google shows at least a couple, all private.
>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.
Citation desperately needed. How you got "the government pays for our internet infrastructure" out of an article about Google paying for a new Subsea cable, I do not know.
I implore you to do a tracert right now to hackernews, and lookup who operates the ips of every router it hits in between. Chances are incredibly good not a single hop is on a government network. (true for the U.S at least)
I'm a huge supporter of publicly funded research. I think the things that have come out of DARPA, NASA, the NSF and other US funding bodies are incredibly important.
Having said that, what you've said is basically wrong.
> I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips.
Unless you are trying to be pedantic by saying it has to be a startup rather than a private company this is completely wrong.
TSMC, Intel, Samsung and IBM do most of the work improving electronic chips manufacturing processes.
I'm not very familiar with optical fiber work, but I know NTT in Japan does a lot of R&D in the area.
The barrier to entry for a software company is nearly non-existent these days, where it's still really high for hardware. I can learn how to code, write an app, market and sell it all from a computer I can buy from Target or Walmart. Hardware is significantly harder to learn, then I'd have to source components, and scale beyond a prototype takes a significant amount of money. Scaling software is done with a button. You see more software made in the private sector because it's so much easier to do.
It's a little off your point but there was an amusing book published a few years ago which went through twelve, from memory, technologies on which the iPhone was totally dependent and which had all been developed out of the public purse.
Can't remember what it was called so if anyone recognises it I'd be interested to hear.
A lot of the subsea fiber is laid down by and funded by private organizations. I’ve worked with a couple that intentionally avoid any public dollars to avoid the hassle and delays that come attached to that money.
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, very naively, have the potential to bring in $7B/month in revenue.
I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.
You’re thinking about average throughput, while these cables need to be provisioned for max throughput, which can be completely different.
Having said that, cloud bandwidth is indeed overpriced; but at the same time, given that Google Cloud is still burning money, can it perhaps be argued that bandwidth is one of the money makers that allow for other services to be free?
I recall that from the old webhosting days, this was already a common tactic of the providers: lure people in with cheap servers, sometimes even at a loss, and earn money back with bandwidth.
8c is for transit to outside of their network. For inter-region it’s like 1-15c depending on regions. 1-2c for us/europe which is probably overwhelming majority
With the exception of high-storage/bandwidth websites like video hosting platforms, bandwidth scales linear relative to audience/reach so the high cost is a justifiable expense. We haven’t seen a race to the bottom with bandwidth like we have with storage because the usage of bandwidth implies the product is being used.
Furthermore, software (as a product/service) has the lowest marginal cost of nearly any product. Given the cost it takes to have one more customer on your platform is some nominally small amount of bandwidth (which depending on the product, can be sub 1 gigabyte per month) the additional expense is easily justified.
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"?
Generally the throughput for a single mode fibre in the C + L Bands (the wavelength regions used for telecom applications), is about 100 Tbit/s for a one span link (50-100km) for a submarine cable across transatlantic distances IIRC the record is around 50-70 Tbit/s. This is research demonstrations, so the 340 Tbit/s would be for a cable with plenty redundancy. Also note that fibres are used in one direction only (one of the main reasons is that one would otherwise create a very long laser), so for duplex operation you need to double the amount of fibres.
You can read a transcript of the first conversations on the transatlantic telegraph[1]. Basically: the signal was very weak, they needed a lot of time between symbols, and they needed to repeat a lot.
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?
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.
Rocket launches typically develop and support bleeding edge technology. And are relatively infrequent compared to regular travel flights.
The "huge" plastic cables are 7-8cm (~3 inches) diameter. So big, but not gas pipeline big. And because of THEIR existence many people are NOT taking those regular travel flights they otherwise might.
Not saying we can't do better. But people closer to it and smarter than me would know.
[+] [-] elteto|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|3 years ago|reply
https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/amp
[+] [-] throw0101a|3 years ago|reply
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Internet
[+] [-] Diederich|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101a|3 years ago|reply
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeZaNwPKPo
APNIC/NZNOG had a good presentation focusing on sub-sea optical stuff (January 2020)):
* https://blog.apnic.net/2020/02/12/at-the-bottom-of-the-sea-a...
For longer distances (>100km), you want to do a search for "coherent optics".
[+] [-] every|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henvic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ortusdux|3 years ago|reply
https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/article/1419605...
https://www.ofsoptics.com/wp-content/uploads/Hollow-Core-Fib...
[+] [-] controversial97|3 years ago|reply
The ends of the fiber might be at different depths with a pressure difference that could move water a long way into the fiber. I imagine the length that water got into would be ruined even if the water was pushed out again.
I conjecture that undersea hollow-core might end up being expensive to maintain.
[+] [-] geph2021|3 years ago|reply
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_Networks
[+] [-] maxwindiff|3 years ago|reply
The more important figure is the attenuation at frequency bands used in telecommunication (C-band and L-band). According to the article, hollow core fibers are still much worse than solid core fibers (0.28 dB/km vs 0.14 dB/km).
[+] [-] happyopossum|3 years ago|reply
No, pretty sure light still travels through them at C. What they can do is carry more data, largely by having lower error rates.
[+] [-] glenngillen|3 years ago|reply
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: https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2017/01/cs-responder-trans...
[+] [-] Cadwhisker|3 years ago|reply
* An array of MEMS micro-mirrors which turn to reflect light, or
* Finisar's LCoS based method, which uses a 1" LCD TV display to display a gradient pattern which literally bends light.
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.
Finisar's white paper showing optical path and other possible uses is here: https://www.amstechnologies.com/fileadmin/amsmedia/downloads...
[+] [-] LargoLasskhyfv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jduckles|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ayyyolo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aborsy|3 years ago|reply
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.
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.
Also, will the situation change for “hardware”startups/companies?
[+] [-] txcwpalpha|3 years ago|reply
It does? I don't think I follow. In your list of components, every single one of those is, at least in the US, largely or almost entirely handled by private companies.
The big semiconductor companies are private. I actually don't think there are any notable public entities that make their own chips. Hardware companies (I'm assuming you're talking about things like motherboards, routers, switches, etc) are private. Fiber optics/communications/networks are laid almost entirely by private telecom companies (and there's actually a big push to take this away from private companies and make ISPs be government entities). The article that you're commenting on is all about a private entity investing money into laying fiber and improving the protocols that communicate over it.
>I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips.
There are a lot of SMBs working on chip design. I'm less familiar with fiber, but a quick google shows at least a couple, all private.
[+] [-] ApolloFortyNine|3 years ago|reply
Citation desperately needed. How you got "the government pays for our internet infrastructure" out of an article about Google paying for a new Subsea cable, I do not know.
I implore you to do a tracert right now to hackernews, and lookup who operates the ips of every router it hits in between. Chances are incredibly good not a single hop is on a government network. (true for the U.S at least)
[+] [-] nl|3 years ago|reply
Having said that, what you've said is basically wrong.
> I have rarely seen a start up on improving optical fiber or electronic chips.
Unless you are trying to be pedantic by saying it has to be a startup rather than a private company this is completely wrong.
TSMC, Intel, Samsung and IBM do most of the work improving electronic chips manufacturing processes.
I'm not very familiar with optical fiber work, but I know NTT in Japan does a lot of R&D in the area.
[+] [-] eddieroger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glaucon|3 years ago|reply
It's a little off your point but there was an amusing book published a few years ago which went through twelve, from memory, technologies on which the iPhone was totally dependent and which had all been developed out of the public purse.
Can't remember what it was called so if anyone recognises it I'd be interested to hear.
[+] [-] aksss|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catmanjan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnfargbl|3 years ago|reply
I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.
[+] [-] stingraycharles|3 years ago|reply
Having said that, cloud bandwidth is indeed overpriced; but at the same time, given that Google Cloud is still burning money, can it perhaps be argued that bandwidth is one of the money makers that allow for other services to be free?
I recall that from the old webhosting days, this was already a common tactic of the providers: lure people in with cheap servers, sometimes even at a loss, and earn money back with bandwidth.
[+] [-] dilyevsky|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samtho|3 years ago|reply
Furthermore, software (as a product/service) has the lowest marginal cost of nearly any product. Given the cost it takes to have one more customer on your platform is some nominally small amount of bandwidth (which depending on the product, can be sub 1 gigabyte per month) the additional expense is easily justified.
[+] [-] klysm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dilyevsky|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vfclists|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wil421|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spitfire|3 years ago|reply
There's lots of niche markets out there.
https://www.makai.com/cable-software/makailay/
[+] [-] schubart|3 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] joshuahaglund|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pranjalv123|3 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Report_of_the_Joint_Com...
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperation|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Melatonic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exdsq|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saberience|3 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] TedShiller|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _carbyau_|3 years ago|reply
Rocket launches typically develop and support bleeding edge technology. And are relatively infrequent compared to regular travel flights.
The "huge" plastic cables are 7-8cm (~3 inches) diameter. So big, but not gas pipeline big. And because of THEIR existence many people are NOT taking those regular travel flights they otherwise might.
Not saying we can't do better. But people closer to it and smarter than me would know.
[+] [-] cypress66|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yewenjie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wjamesg|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisseaton|3 years ago|reply