[HN Gopher] Submarine Cable Map 2023
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       Submarine Cable Map 2023
        
       Author : Galacta7
       Score  : 88 points
       Date   : 2023-12-02 07:55 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (submarine-cable-map-2023.telegeography.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (submarine-cable-map-2023.telegeography.com)
        
       | ezequiel-garzon wrote:
       | I love these maps, and I'm glad they provide downloads like [1].
       | I wish the resolution was a bit higher. As it is the names of the
       | towns on the coasts can be read with difficulty.
       | 
       | [1] https://submarine-cable-
       | map-2023.telegeography.com/images/Su...
        
         | dotancohen wrote:
         | Wow, that map is very political. Israel is not mentioned by
         | name, but the Palestinian Territories are.
        
           | josh_frome wrote:
           | Telecom Egypt is the sponsor of the map
        
           | Kye wrote:
           | There is no selection of labels for disputed territory that
           | will make everyone happy. It's inherently political.
        
         | mikae1 wrote:
         | Too bad it's a rather shitty JPEG that's blotchy in the more
         | uniform "white" areas. I've been able to compile a map from the
         | png tiles for the earlier versions of this map.
         | 
         | It uses mapbox.js and tiles have URLs like this one:
         | https://tiles.telegeography.com/maps/submarine-cable-map-202...
         | 
         | https://dezoomify-rs.ophir.dev/ is helpful.
        
       | davedx wrote:
       | If the world could run power along all these submarine telecoms
       | cables then we'd be a lot further towards solving the problem of
       | renewable power generation. I wonder how these kinds of cables
       | compare to HVDC cables in terms of size and cost.
        
         | ccakes wrote:
         | They do, any cable over about 1000km has active repeaters on
         | the seabed which need to be powered.
         | 
         | There is HVDC equipment on both ends and typically each end is
         | sufficient to power the entire cable independently to allow for
         | the cable to continue running through maintenance, shunt faults
         | (basically something earthing out on sea water) or a single
         | failed repeater.
        
       | Kim_Bruning wrote:
       | There's a rotating sphere at the top of the map, but part of it
       | is black, and apparently you're not supposed to use it? It's just
       | decoration?
       | 
       | You scroll down to what you think is the map, but it immediately
       | gets covered by a caption, so you scroll down more ...
       | 
       | It turns out that downloads for the actual map are at the top of
       | the page.
        
         | FL410 wrote:
         | ...but only after you scroll all the way to the bottom. What a
         | horrible design.
        
           | joering2 wrote:
           | Came here to say the same. And clicking on the globe does not
           | stop it. Then trying to zoom and you can't but the globe
           | image is too blurry/low res to read what's on it. Don't get
           | me even started on scrolling...
        
       | cliffordc wrote:
       | Is there somewhere we can see submarine and land cables both?
        
         | ivix wrote:
         | Land cables are usually considered classified/sensitive
         | information, so no not generally.
        
       | ris wrote:
       | Dear map widgets in 2023,
       | 
       | Stop asking me for WebGL, I will not give it to you.
        
       | _whiteCaps_ wrote:
       | If this sort of thing interests you, I highly recommend "Mother
       | Earth Mother Board" by Neal Stephenson. Probably my favourite
       | piece of writing in Wired.
       | 
       | https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
        
       | everybodyknows wrote:
       | Are any of the spatial datasets that may have gone into this
       | available for public download?
        
       | sklargh wrote:
       | Does anyone else find it a little weird that the Great Salt Lake
       | is shown on the map but Lake Champlain and Lake of the Woods are
       | not?
        
         | dotancohen wrote:
         | I just noted in another comment how the map is very political
         | in its choice of things to label.
        
       | huytersd wrote:
       | So is dijibouti some massive switching station hub or do those
       | cables just go by it underwater?
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | My understanding is most of the multipoint cables are not
         | switched at every point, it's more of a bundle of cables where
         | each point gets a strand or two to every other point (or
         | selected points, maybe the anchor points connect to all others,
         | but minor points might only connect to the anchors and not each
         | other).
         | 
         | That said, Djibouti is a major cargo transport hub for
         | Ethiopia, and is probably a network transport hub as well.
         | Ethiopia is the 2nd most populated country in Africa and that
         | would justify a lot of cable landings.
        
       | maxlin wrote:
       | This has to be the worst possible way to present this. Just give
       | us a, you know, MAP. With openable annotations and panning so we
       | aren't locked in some view we didn't navigate to with tons of
       | info about something we didn't actually seek out.
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | Here's one with an imaginative domain name
         | 
         | https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
        
       | tiahura wrote:
       | I'm not seeing my favorite, Honotua. It connects Hawai'i to
       | Tahiti. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honotua
        
       | xkekjrktllss wrote:
       | I have a 5k display and I can't even quite make the page wide
       | enough to view the entire globe. How are people with regular
       | displays supposed to view it? What a disaster of a presentation!
        
         | ponector wrote:
         | Disaster is to read this site from phone. It is horrible.
        
         | mikae1 wrote:
         | It's meant to be printed. https://www.submarinecablemap.com is
         | for screen viewing.
        
       | nemoniac wrote:
       | Some years ago I visited the Transatlantic Cable Station on
       | Valencia Island off the west coast of Ireland, from where the
       | first submarine telegraph cable was laid to Newfoundland in 1857.
       | After several attempts the cable reached Newfoundland in 1866.
       | 
       | Before that moment the fastest way to get a message from Europe
       | to America was aboard a ship; two weeks or so. After that it
       | could be sent over a cable with Morse code.
       | 
       | https://valentiaisland.ie/valentia-transatlantic-cable-stati...
        
       | gist wrote:
       | Well a random check of one cable (Gemini Bermuda) shows it was
       | decommissioned in 2004. I wonder how up to date the rest is
       | (based on this one entirely random check).
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(submarine_communicatio...
        
       | Thaxll wrote:
       | I mean the website is crap, how do I see the map as a whole?
        
       | zrail wrote:
       | How do these cables split in the middle of the ocean? Is there a
       | fiber switch laying on the ocean floor?
        
         | Maakuth wrote:
         | No idea of what precise sort of hardware is there, but the fact
         | is that these cables consist of a bunch of fibers. Dozens of
         | them typically, quick search suggests up to 144, but I doubt
         | that's a physical ceiling. So I suppose they make a branch when
         | needed, with some number of fibers going to another direction.
        
         | rdl wrote:
         | There are repeaters on the cable every ~50-200km (depending on
         | technology), powered by DC power carried on the cable. There
         | are branching units powered the same way -- I believe they
         | handle branching at the fiber level, rather than waves, but not
         | sure of the specifics on modern DWDM cables. (they can run
         | ~80-160 different frequencies of light on the same fiber, and
         | the cables contain multiple fibers...)
        
       | rmah wrote:
       | It's interesting how Europe-Asia interconnects are so small
       | relative to US-Asia and US-Europe.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | This is only undersea cables. Europe and Asia have overland
         | connections too. But mostly it's because both continents do
         | more business over the internet with the US than with each
         | other.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | Given all the compute infrastructure in Ireland, I'm surprised it
       | still has no direct connection to continental Europe (they all go
       | through the UK first).
        
       | Scoundreller wrote:
       | The Katittuq Nunavut Fibre Link, labelled as 2025, had its tender
       | cancelled this year.
       | 
       | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/nunavut-cancels-tender-...
       | 
       | > Nunavut is the only province or territory in the country
       | [Canada] without access to fibre internet. The project would
       | bring fibre to both Iqaluit and nearby Kimmirut.
       | 
       | Right now, everything is over satellite. Too bad the big
       | "internet cache" systems don't have sneakernet approaches to
       | filling their caches. Unsure if their local ISP does any kind of
       | caching. So every stream/download/update, etc. is its own "hit"
       | over the downlink.
       | 
       | Thanks to Canada's terrible mobile telecom pricing and lacklustre
       | competition, a cell phone with a dataplan in this territory is
       | cost-competitive with the rest of the country...
       | 
       | https://www.qiniq.com/mobile/#plans
        
       | ericra wrote:
       | It's amazing how many cables there are routing through the Suez
       | Canal, especially directly connecting Mumbai all the way through
       | to Marseille.
       | 
       | I wonder how well protected they are specifically in the Suez
       | Canal. Presumably the whole area is pretty well surveilled by the
       | Egyptian government, but I have no clue. I just think it's really
       | interesting how many cables are (understandably) routed this way
       | and wonder whether there is full backup redundancy in the few
       | cables running around south of Africa.
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | If fiber cables like these are possible, why not pneumatic tubes
       | maybe 1 meter in diameter. Think of the economic and
       | environmental implications!
        
       | vikmals wrote:
       | Doesn't work
        
       | ThinkBeat wrote:
       | Is it safe to assume that there exists a lot of cables that we
       | are not supposed to know about or at least that are not public
       | and not on such amps?
       | 
       | I have long been thinking that the NSA must have some high
       | capacity "black" cables to help the surveillance of the internet.
       | Primarily to capture data, sending all the captured data back
       | through the public internet would be counterproductive.
       | 
       | A 5eye private subsea network?
       | 
       | I would assume other countries have some for similar reasons
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-02 23:00 UTC)