
Submarine cable map - altstar
http://www.submarinecablemap.com/
======
hopeless
Personal bugbear: Ireland has a lot of connectivity but only three cables (two
from Cork, 1 from the north-west) go to a destination other than the UK. All
other Irish internet/telephony traffic goes through the UK. Remember that
there are many European data centres and EMEA headquarters in Dublin.

Much of it goes through Bude in Cornwall, which has a GCHQ listening post
perched over the submarine cable
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ_Bude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCHQ_Bude)).
Or through Southport which is also known to be monitored by GCHQ.

I find it surprising, particularly as the UK prepares to leave the EU, that
this issue isn't of more concern

~~~
3pt14159
MITM attacks are something that only a handful of governments worry about.
Everyone is still more concerned about unpatched libraries, SQL injection
attacks, and viruses.

~~~
desdiv
Did you miss the total shitstorm over NSA/GCHQ's bulk collection of internet
traffic?

I'd wager over 90% of HN is not fine with NSA keeping a record of all their
unencrypted traffic in a datacenter in Utah for later exploitation.

------
Keverw
Pretty interesting. I'd be cool to have one that showed the cables on land
too. I wonder if there's a tool like that, be useful to plan where the best
connectively is if you are building your own datacenter for example.

~~~
yellowapple
I was just thinking the same thing. Not just for datacenter planning, mind
you, but even for a neat representation of which cities are more likely to
have high-speed Internet connectivity; there are probably significant
differences in expected speeds and costs between some city way out in the
middle of nowhere and some city sitting right on top of a major data artery.

~~~
wcfields
Some providers guard their city maps as trade secrets, but Zayo (which owns 2
undersea cables) has a nice interactive map of lit and dark fiber.

[http://www.zayo.com/solutions/global-
network/](http://www.zayo.com/solutions/global-network/)

~~~
wcfields
Also should add RedIT has fiber runs across Mexico and the US Southwest and
has a smaller map [1]

[1] [https://redit.com/en/](https://redit.com/en/)

------
pilsetnieks
Here's Neal Stephenson's writeup on how the FLAG cable was laid:
[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

It clearly inspired some parts of Cryptonomicon.

------
jsingleton
This map is interesting too: [https://www.us.ntt.net/about/network-
map.cfm](https://www.us.ntt.net/about/network-map.cfm)

It shows some overland links as well but it doesn't show intermediate hops.
For example, you can see from other maps that most Pacific cables stop off in
Hawaii.

You can match the nodes to entries in a trace root log. I did this for a
chapter (on network latency and performance) in my last book.

~~~
jsingleton
^ trace _route_ (tracert/traceroute)

------
karambahh
I just found this one which has more details for the British Isles & Western
Europe here:

[http://www.kis-orca.eu/map](http://www.kis-orca.eu/map)

It also includes power map & wind turbines zones.

~~~
jsingleton
This one is very nice. It shows the actual positions and routes.

------
lultimouomo
It's interesting how Russia only has two submarine cable connections, of which
only one is international (with Japan).

Is it really so, or is data missing from the map? Anyone know the reason why?

~~~
masklinn
Most of their connections are probably overland.

You also seem to be way off on the number of connections, I count at least 4:

* RJCN and HSCS to Japan (one to the mainland across the sea of japan, the other between Sakhalin and Hokkaido)

* BCS North to Finland

* a Georgia-Russia link (lands south of South Ossetia, outside the occupied territories)

* Kerch to Ukraine, though that's in occupied Crimea so…

~~~
walrus01
Overland links to Europe are most of it. If you look at the number of major
Russian ISPs that are members of the DE-CIX in Frankfurt, that's a good
indicator of traffic flows.

edit: for example, here's the v4/v6 peering locations for a major russian
telecom:
[https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1265](https://www.peeringdb.com/net/1265)

------
ewood
Interesting summary of the process - [http://thednetworks.com/2012/03/21/how-
are-undersea-cables-l...](http://thednetworks.com/2012/03/21/how-are-undersea-
cables-laid-in-the-oceans-advantages-over-satellite)

------
noxin
An alternative to check out is [http://cablemap.info/](http://cablemap.info/)

~~~
diggan
Hm, not sure if it's a good alternative, seems to be missing at least one
cable, the one between Barcelona and Mallorca

------
fauria
I first learned about the existence of this cables reading Arthur C. Clarke's
_How the World Was One_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_World_Was_One](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_World_Was_One))
which I highly recommend.

------
cschmidt
Why are there so many cables going up to terminate in Alaska? It seems a bit
over represented.

~~~
yellowapple
My first guess would've been to support a connection between North America and
Russia, but there doesn't seem to be such a connection on the map.

My second guess is that there might really be a significant data demand there.
Between research stations, defense stations (gotta protect 'Murica from those
damn pinko Soviets), oil drilling, and at least one or two decently-sized
cities, the need for those cables doesn't seem unreasonable.

EDIT: the one covering the northwest Alaskan coastline appears to be the first
phase of a cable connection through the Northwest Passage.

------
nanaujal
Hm, that small cable between Italy and Croatia is funny. I'm sure there's some
kind of story behind that. It doesn't make much sense.

~~~
zoner
It's because of rocks and mountains. It's easier to lay down cables at the
bottom of the sea

------
williamle8300
We have satellites that are pretty fast... what's the point of laying down
physical submarine wires?

~~~
1zael
1\. Satellites aren’t used because they can’t carry terabytes of data for less
than a billion dollars per communication line.

2\. The bandwidth available using a single fiber optic cable and a laser beam
is much much greater than you can get from a single satellite radio channel.
This is due to the higher frequency and shorter wavelength of light compared
to microwaves. The higher the frequency, the greater the bandwidth.

3\. An undersea cable is a bundle many fiber optic cables. Consider each fiber
cable as a channel. You can have more channels, each with a higher capacity,
than you can build radio channels into a satellite.

4\. The uplinks and downlinks cost and putting the satellite in space is a
huge huge ask and far more risky.

5\. The delay for satellite communications would be around 255ms both uplink
and downlink. For continuous traffic this not to a bad price to pay. But for
burst traffic (like voice) you pay for the delay at each pause. The Rule of
Thumb is 10MS per 1000 miles so Rule of Thumb to Europe on say TAT-8 would be
about 75MS vs 510MS for satellite.

6\. Finally, you can fix a broken cable. Once you launch the satellite you
don’t get a chance to fix it if it gets broke.

~~~
walrus01
re: #3, not exatcly, an underseas cable is actually relatively few strands
compared to a terrestrial cable. Many older ones are only two strands. Modern
ones 4 or 6 strands. It's the DWDM terminals on each end of the cable that
enable fun things like 80 channels x 100 Gbps full duplex coherent QPSK per
channel.

------
mxuribe
I've seen this posted here before...but its still always cool to see.

------
wcunning
Much as this comment is like 40% trolling and likely to lose me what little
karma I have, is there an easy way to see this data in a better projection?

