#submarine_cable

We easily forget how brittle are the blood vessels of our civilisation, the #submarine_cables. #Mainone is down, two weeks for the repair ship to go there and fix it:

▻https://www.mainone.net/blog/2017/06/20/mainone-submarine-cable-outage

SACS - the first 6200 km South Atlantic Cable System

The SACS submarine cable that will be built by NEC will connect Luanda, Angola to Fortaleza, Brazil. There it will be connected to the MONET cable that is currently being laid to connect Sao Paulo with Miami.

SACS:

http://www.nec.com/en/press/201604/images/0602_01.jpg

MONET:

http://www.angolacables.co.ao/file/image/false/c501748f-23c6-4300-8135-bdc04a615028/-/-/470x395261.jpg

In Luanda the cable will interconnect with the WACS - West Africa Cable System, which connects South Africa and other african countries to Great Britain since 2012 :

http://www.angolacables.co.ao/file/image/false/00ba9920-a02f-4678-adb1-d2b750e83074/-/-/wacs.jpg

The SACS cable consists of 4 fiber pairs, with an initial design capacity of 40Tb/s (100Gb/s x 100 wavelengths x 4 fiber-pairs). SACS will feature the latest optical technologies to provide the most advanced subsea telecommunications system, coupled with a control plane based on innovative Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology to serve bandwidth-intensive applications.

It is owned by Angola Cables, which is joint venture of five Angolan operators Angola Telecom (51%), Unitel (31%), MSTelcom (9%), Movicel (6%) and Startel (3%).

NEC is currently seeking the best ocean floor route. The cable is supposed to be operational mid-2018. It is the first South transatlantic cable connecting the African continent with Latin America.
Project cost: $160M

NEC announcement:

▻http://www.nec.com/en/press/201604/global_20160406_02.html

Angola Cables

▻http://www.angolacables.co.ao/en

A well-known, comprehensive, overall submarine cable map:

►http://www.submarinecablemap.com

#submarine_cable #câble_sous-marin

MAREA: Microsoft and Facebook to build submarine cable across Atlantic : 160Tbps over 6600km

https://msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net/media/2016/05/MAREA-Cable.jpg

▻https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/05/26/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlanti

The new MAREA [Spanish for “tide”] cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook and their customers. The parties have cleared conditions to go “Contract-In-Force” with their plans, and construction of the cable will commence in August 2016 with completion expected in October 2017.

[...]

MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic – featuring eight finer pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system, to be operated and managed by Telxius [part of Telefónica], will also be the first to connect the United States to southern Europe: from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain and then beyond to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This route is south of existing transatlantic cable systems that primarily land in the New York/New Jersey region. Being physically separate from these other cables helps ensure more resilient and reliable connections for our customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond.

►http://www.wired.com/2016/05/facebook-microsoft-laying-giant-cable-across-atlantic

Microsoft offers Bing, Office365, and its Azure cloud services. Facebook has its social network along with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The data moved by just a few online giants now dwarfs that of most others, so much so that, according to telecommunications research firm Telegeography, more than two thirds of the digital data moving across the Atlantic is traveling on private networks—namely networks operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

#submarine_cable #câble_sous-marin #câbles_sous-marins
#câble #câbles #personnellement_je_préfère_le_singulier_parce_que_plus_facile_pour_les_recherches

Un reportage à bord d’un câblier, « Haut débit en eau profonde : “Ici, nous fabriquons l’Internet qu’on peut toucher” » (Le Monde, 15/12/2015)
▻http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2015/12/15/haut-debit-en-eau-profonde_4832100_4408996.html

Lundi 14 décembre, l’Ile-de-Sein s’apprête à quitter le port de Calais pour le Sri Lanka. Ce navire-câblier de 140 mètres, bourré d’ordinateurs et d’appareils de mesure, l’un des sept de la flotte d’Alcatel Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN), va rejoindre l’océan Indien pour y dérouler 5 300 km de #fibre_optique entre Colombo et Djibouti – la portion centrale d’un système de près de 20 000 km baptisé SeaMeWe 5, appartenant à un consortium de dix-sept opérateurs télécoms européens et asiatiques. Il reliera Toulon à Singapour, avec des boucles vers l’Italie, la Turquie, les Emirats, le Pakistan, l’Inde, le Bangladesh et la Birmanie.

#seenthis-paywall

#Câbles_sous-marins. Stratégiques !
▻http://www.letelegramme.fr/france/cables-sous-marins-strategiques-09-12-2015-10880427.php

Du côté de la Marine nationale, à Brest, on confirme que la surveillance des câbles sous-marins fait partie des missions de sécurisation de tout premier plan en Atlantique. Le Yantar, cet étrange navire russe, a été pisté par la Marine française, les 21 et 22 octobre derniers, au cours de sa remontée du golfe de Gascogne. Les opérateurs du centre d’opérations maritimes ont particulièrement surveillé le navire à l’approche des câbles sous-marins remontant vers l’Europe. « Il ne s’est pas arrêté et a continué sa route jusqu’en Russie » assure-t-on de source sûre.

Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close for U.S. Comfort

Pentagon suspects/fears higher activity of Russian submarines and spy ships in the vicinity of internet submarine cables.

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html?_r=0

The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications

the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe

[...]

Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay.

Obviously, the americans know what they are talking about, cf Operation Ivy Bells (1971)

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells

in October 1971 the United States sent the purpose-modified submarine USS Halibut (SSGN-587) deep into the Sea of Okhotsk. Divers working from the Halibut found the cable in 400 ft (120 m) of water and installed a 20 ft (6.1 m) long device, which wrapped around the cable without piercing its casing and recorded all communications made over it. The large recording device was designed to detach if the cable was raised for repair.

#submarine_cable #câble_sous-marin
#cable #câble

Google consortium “FASTER” 9000km, 60Tbps Pacific submarine cable to Japan has landed end June 2015.

http://www.nec.com/en/press/201408/images/1101-01.jpg http://i.gzn.jp/img/2015/06/15/kddi-faster/pey_8009.jpg

The 9,000-kilometer FASTER cable when operational in 2016 will have a peak capacity of 60 terabits per second (100Gb/s x 100 wavelengths x 6 fibre-pairs) joining Japan on two landing locations (Chikura and Shima) with Oregon on the West Coast of the U.S.
Cost: USD $300 million. Contract awarded to NEC as equipment supplier.

On the picture above in the back is the cable ship KDDI Pacific Link

▻http://www.k-kcs.co.jp/english/images/KPL%20Brochuer.pdf
▻http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/shipid:664203/mmsi:431575000/imo:9017824/vessel:KDDI_PACIFIC_LINK

According to the very good website on the submarine cables of the internet Builtvisible, by 2017 there will be about 238 fibre optic undersea cables.
▻https://builtvisible.com/messages-in-the-deep

▻http://www.computerworld.com/article/2939316/networking-hardware/googles-60tbps-pacific-cable-welcomed-in-japan.html

Roughly 99% of all transoceanic Internet data goes through submarine cables, which are designed to last decades. Several hundred systems link various parts of the world, and the FASTER cable is scheduled to be ready for service in the second quarter of 2016.

A video showing the NEC fibre optic missile-shaped repeaters, which can weigh between 200 and 700 kg. They are placed 40 to 100 km apart from each other:

▻http://www.computerworld.com/video/46469/these-giant-missile-shaped-devices-carry-the-internet-across-oceans.h

▻http://www.nec.com/en/press/201408/global_20140811_01.html

The six-company consortium is comprised of China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and SingTel. The name FASTER was adopted to represent the cable system’s purpose of rapidly serving surging traffic demands.

Pictures of the landing site can be found here:
▻http://gigazine.net/news/20150615-kddi-faster

The landing site:

http://i.gzn.jp/img/2015/06/15/kddi-faster/IMG_7281.jpg

The end of the cable (note, this is not the cable itself you see here, just the pulling structure):

http://i.gzn.jp/img/2015/06/15/kddi-faster/p1040964.jpg

The cable puller:

http://i.gzn.jp/img/2015/06/15/kddi-faster/p1050011.jpg

Entering the building:

http://i.gzn.jp/img/2015/06/15/kddi-faster/p1050041.jpg

#submarine_cable #câble_sous-marin

“[...] a note on #Cuba's international traffic. As you see here, on July 1, nearly all satellite traffic (blue and green) was re-routed to the #ALBA-1 undersea cable [...] median latency has stabilized at around 210 milliseconds”

▻http://laredcubana.blogspot.fr/2015/07/cuban-international-traffic-shifts-from.html

#submarine_cable #Internet

EU-Latin America submarine fibre-optic cable: it’s getting there

The €134 million (US$185 million) cable between Europe (Lisbon, Portugal) and Latin America (Fortaleza, Brazil) will be built by a private consortium led by Brazilian state-owned telecom provider Telebras and Spanish cable operator Islalink.
The EULALINK Joint Venture agreement between them has just been signed.
▻https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/planned-new-submarine-cable-between-europe-and-latin-america-joint-venture

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Map_of_Eulalink_submarine_cable.svg/1024px-Map_of_Eulalink_submarine_cable.svg.png

Even though in an other context than purely R&E, nothing excludes Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff is probably genuinely pleased:

Brazil presses EU for progress on undersea cable to circumvent US spying
▻http://rt.com/news/brazil-eu-cable-spying-504

Brazil has been routing its internet traffic through Miami, Florida’s network access point. However, last month [January 2014], Brazilian state-owned telecom provider Telebras announced that it would be entering a joint venture with Spain’s IslaLink’s Submarine Cables in order to connect the two continents, bypassing the US.

[...]

“As far as cyber is concerned, we share a common interest in a right balance between privacy and openness on the Internet,” European Council President Herman Van Rompuy stated [in February 2014]. However, he did not make any direct references to the undersea cable project.

[...]

Telebras would have a 35 percent share, while IslaLink would have a 45 percent stake. Pension funds from both Europe and Brazil would make up the rest. However, Brazil is expected to put up more for the project in total, so Brazil will be contributing more funds, according an official who spoke to Reuters.

▻https://euobserver.com/justice/123260

“We welcomed the plans for the future installation of a fibre-optic submarine cable linking Brazil and Europe, which will improve communications between the two continents,” said the EU Council, representing member states, in a statement.

Another view:
Brazil’s New Underwater Data Cable to Portugal Is Still Likely Not NSA-Proof
▻https://news.vice.com/article/brazils-new-underwater-data-cable-to-portugal-is-still-likely-not-nsa-pro

#BELLA: Building Europe Link to Latin America
#submarine_cable
#cable

Dégradations de câbles Internet transocéaniques, qui en est à l’origine ?
►http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2015/07/01/le-fbi-enquete-sur-une-serie-de-degradations-de-cables-internet_4665918_4408

La coupure la plus récente a eu lieu à Livermore, une ville proche de San Francisco. Elle aurait provoqué des perturbations jusqu’à Seattle, selon le Wall Street Journal, une ville située plus d’un millier de kilomètres au nord de la Silicon Valley. Une action coordonnée, selon le FBI, nécessitant un outillage adapté, pour s’attaquer aux gaines qui protègent les câbles.
La baie de San Francisco est une importante zone de passage pour les câbles sous-marins du Pacifique, qui relient les Etats-Unis à la Chine, le Japon, l’Amérique du Sud ou encore l’Australie.

http://s2.lemde.fr/image/2015/07/01/534x0/4665916_6_5491_plus-de-250-cables-sous-marins-tissent-le_f5bfcbc058b6eb4681ea3130040a46c5.jpg

Hey, mais il y a la même chose sous la plage du Prado à Marseille… idée… (parce que j’y étais quand ils les ont enterré)

Fiber Optics for the Far North
▻http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/arctic-fibre-project-to-link-japan-and-uk

A 24-terabit-per-second undersea cable will connect Japan and the U.K. and also bring broadband to remote Arctic communities

http://img.qz.com/2014/12/arctic-fibre.png

Why would anyone spend $850 million laying a fiber-optic cable between Tokyo and London, passing through some of the coldest, most remote parts of the world, when it would speed up existing data transfers rates only by 24-thousandths of a second?

For financial firms, 24 milliseconds can be a pretty big trading advantage. Today, it takes 154 milliseconds to send data from Tokyo to London. Once the Arctic Fibre cable, a new submarine connection passing through the Northwest Passage, has been laid and lit up in 2016, the 15,600-km (10,000-mile) journey will be 15% faster, according to a fascinating article about the cable in IEEE Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Seafarers have been using the Northwest Passage for centuries. In the summer, when the ice melts, the narrow route through Canada’s northern archipelago reduces travel time for modern ships by an estimated four days compared to going via the Panama Canal (though this varies depending on starting and ending points). The new cable will take advantage of the same short cut.

In the process, however, it will also bring broadband internet to nearly 60,000 Canadians and just over 25,000 Alaskans who previously had to rely on satellite to get online. Indeed, so slow are existing connections, Arctic Fiber‘s CEO “had to use a courier to send his 227-page environmental report on the cable to the review board in Cambridge Bay, a hamlet in Canada’s most northern province,” according to IEEE Spectrum. The fiber link is expected to go live early in 2016.

▻http://qz.com/319566/how-financiers-fighting-for-extra-milliseconds-are-bring-broadband-to-north-amer

#câbles_sous-marins #Arctique

“Yesterday’s historic agreement to begin normalizing relations between Cuba and the United States contains a pledge by the Cuban government to “greatly expand its citizens’ access to the Internet.” What exactly this pledge entails will determine how the Internet evolves in Cuba in the near term.”

►http://qz.com/315359/cubas-sole-underwater-internet-cable-is-going-to-see-a-lot-more-traffic-and-some

#Cuba #submarine_cable #Internet

http://img.qz.com/2014/12/alba-1.png?w=640

►http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=internet-tube

“This schematic map shows a simplification of the world’s network of submarine fibre-optic cables.

The map uses data sourced from cablemap.info. Each node has been assigned to a country, and all nodes located in the same country have been collapsed into a single node. The resulting network has been then abstracted.”

http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/InternetTube.png

#cartography #Internet #submarine_cable