
Greg's Cable Map - ajr0
http://cablemap.info/
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Elv13
The same map in 1901

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_Eas...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/1901_Eastern_Telegraph_cables.png)

Actually, not much changed. There's probably less active cables now.

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chrishacken
I'm surprised at how many cables crossed the Atlantic in 1901. Anyone know how
they power the amplifiers under the ocean? (Then and now?).

Edit: It appears that there's a separate wire carrying electricity. I'm no
electrician but I was under the impression that power loses it's Voltage (or
Amperage?) over distance.

~~~
teraflop
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable#Bandwidth_problems)
for a brief overview.

Early submarine cables were literally just wires. To overcome the electrical
resistance of a long cable, they simply applied a large voltage on one end,
and used sensitive instruments to pick up the tiny signal on the other end.

Interestingly, the early engineers didn't fully understand how the
electromagnetic properties of a cable (capacitance and inductance) affect
signal propagation over long distances. So they ended up seeing unexpected
amounts of distortion that forced them to transmit much more slowly than
desired. The theoretical breakthrough that enabled reliably sending signals
from one side of an ocean to another was thanks to Oliver Heaviside, who was
pretty much the archetype of a misunderstood crackpot/genius.

But yeah, later cables included in-line repeaters, once the technology was
sufficiently well developed. Here's a description of some early vacuum-tube
amplifiers that were designed for extreme reliability: [http://www.ase-
museoedelpro.org/Museo_Edelpro/Catalogo/tubes...](http://www.ase-
museoedelpro.org/Museo_Edelpro/Catalogo/tubes/records_nw/175HQ/175HQ_rec.pdf)

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ElijahLynn
Google Cache for those in the "connecting" state.
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_BoKori...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_BoKorikQCsJ:www.cablemap.info/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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kilroy123
I was in Hawaii this weekend and explaining this to my girlfriend who is not
at all a "techy". I explained to her, how odd it is, that the internet works
here because there's literally a giant cord from the island back to California
laying on the ground in the ocean.

Seems rather primitive when you stop and think about it.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
what are the options? Satellite transmission certainly is one but it is
bandwidth limited and it imposes delays due to the distance involved.
Microwave radio won't work because it's line-of-sight. HF or VHF radio has
atmospheric effects and noise issues and is even more bandwidth constrained.
So, really, cable is the best option giving the lowest price per bit. Fiber,
these days, is approaching 100 Gbps with the ability to multiplex multiple bit
streams onto different wavelengths to allow transmission of insane amounts of
data. Hardly primitive when you do think about it.

~~~
kilroy123
There hasn't been any other option. However, I think we could launch a low
orbit satellite constellation, now. It will be exciting to see how well it
will actually work.

~~~
sizzzzlerz
You still have limited bandwidth and latency. Just because you break the
distance up into smaller hops, the total distance to travel remains the same.
Maybe scientists should focus on increasing the speed of light. LEOs also have
short orbital lifetimes meaning the constellation needs to constantly be
refreshed which isn't cheap.

~~~
aidenn0
The total distance to travel going via GSO or LEO is not at all the same; in
particular, there's a fairly wide range of positions that an LEO satellite can
be in where it has LOS to both Hawaii and the mainland.

That being said, once you've laid the cable, fiber optic is fast, they
typically over-provide the cables when they lay them, and they can often
increase capacity by improvements at the endpoints. Radio to LEO seems
unlikely to compete with that, but for less-populous and/or poorer islands it
might make sense.

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mcpherrinm
If anyone is interested in making a fancier version of this, it would be very
cool to add infrastructure on land, too. EG, Level 3 has a map at
[http://news.level3.com/network-map](http://news.level3.com/network-map), or
Allstream's at [http://www.allstream.com/about-
us/ipnetwork/](http://www.allstream.com/about-us/ipnetwork/)

I've always thought it would be cool to use large area traceroutes and BGP
dumps to automatically infer some topology data too, automatically creating
such a map.

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isostatic
Trouble with trying to map traceroutes is so many long distance runs are in
mpls that you can get 1 hop from Europe to Japan!

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daenney
This seems very similar to
[https://www.submarinecablemap.com/](https://www.submarinecablemap.com/).

~~~
marzell
I found this to be a fun reference when reading Cryptonomicon by Neal
Stephenson.

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lb1lf
No mention of submarine cables is complete without reference to Neal
Stephenson's excellent feature for Wired [0] - 'Mother Earth, Mother Board' in
which he tags along as an intercontinental cable is laid down.

Also, Discovery Networks did an episode of its 'Mighty Ships' series on a Tyco
Reliance class cable ship - quite interesting if you can find it, although a
bit short on nerdy detail, as one would expect.)

[0]
[https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/)

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freedomben
The site looks down. Probably because womble.ddns.info is down:

dig result:

    
    
        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        cablemap.info.          578     IN      CNAME   womble.ddns.info.
        womble.ddns.info.       29      IN      A       41.180.82.42

~~~
jaytaylor
Archive.org link from 2017-08-30:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20170830051926/http://cablemap.i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170830051926/http://cablemap.info/)

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bleair
Looking at the map I suspect it's still the case a good many of the these
cables end up trunking into the same building / using the same power and can
be described as very much being in a "shared risk group".

You think you're buying a backup link resilience and you're paying lots of
money to a different carrier, but one proverbial backhoe or one block looses
power and oops you end up with a network partition.

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emilyfm
Interesting that there are no current transpacific cables at all landing in
western Canada. Makes the area very dependent on the neighbour to the south
(which is an earthquake risk, as well as a political risk).

~~~
owenversteeg
Ehh, I imagine if things get too bad they can always lay a new one. In the
meantime Western Canada could probably be connected to Eastern Canada somehow.
Given that people were laying tons of cables 120 years ago, it can't be _that_
difficult for a country as big as Canada in crisis.

~~~
Aloha
Canada is well connected internally with Fiber

