Speaker: Richard Campbell

See live blog table of contents for more posts

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History

• 1800s – submarine cable to transfer electricity between France and England
• Then telegraph which is electricity pulses.
• 1866 – reliable cable
• :From two months to two minutes” increase in data transfer
• British empire spread cables around the world to connect to their empire
• World war 2 – transport fuel under English Channel (operation PLUTO). Reclaimed a lot at end since steal is expensive
• Oil exploration in water and pipe oil/natural gas to land. Stable so rare to need to build more. Piples 3-5 feet across; covered in concrete
• 1950s – TAT – transatlantic telephone line – handle 35 phone calls in parallel. Brought back up because wire expensive.
• 2020 – most recent copy wire laid.

Repeaters

• Need repeaters to boost signal for coper wires
• Repeater 9 feet long
• Need every 60-70 km.

Fiber optic

• 90% of data transfers under the sea
• Starlink is about 1% of internet traffic. Equivalent to 2 undersa cables. Last mile technology.
• Fiber is useful/complex glass
• Layers of an indoor cable – Fiber core, cladding (rptection), coasting, tight buffere, stright memebers, cable jacket. Less than one milimeter across
• Underseas cable – package denser. More cables inside buffer. Water protected. Also need to use repeaters
• Fibers don’t vary that much. Way they are shelled does
• Need armor in some places like near short and volcano
• Weight – 500 pounds per km without armor.
• Multimode fiber – uses lasers
• Single mode fiber – usually used in a building (inside/short range)
• Phone company used to own. Now big tech. Cables are mostly pooled. Allow using each others. Meta has own vs using pool

Wind turbines

• For power
• These are rare.
• Usually ancored to shallow floor
• Floating turbines experimental

Example: Google Durant cable from Reston VA to France

• 1 cable form google can carry terrabytes of data
• Have to get permission at both ends
• Estimated to last 20 years
• Map ocean floor to ensure stable
• Need to lay cable precisely (with in meeter of mapped location)
• If hurricaine, cut cable, put buoy on it and continue. Similarly if longer than the Atlantic. 10K is limit without connecting
• Now bury 4 meters deep at ends
• Can take 3 months to run the cable. Slow and precise
• Transmission station at end to connect to internet
• Challenge to try to make sure cables don’t overlap

Restrictions/Repairs

• Cables on sea maps
• Not allowed to go near them; dangerous
• Can cut with anchor of ship
• Specifically designed ships to cut out/replace part of cable
• Insurance pays for timely repair
• 100-200 calble fixes a year
• Small number of repair ships in the world. Only work i safe. Can’t risk ship

Baltic Sea

• Shallow. Can’t mkae deep enough to make safe
• Gas explosion in sea – from keeping pressurized
• Continuous monotring so can detect attempts real time

Hunga Tonga erruption

• Tonga went offline at same time
• Large steam exposion affecting most of country
• 100km of cabe gone
• Cell phones stopped working because have to authenticate to tower which was in Japan
• Did banking by USB key. Did reconciliation a year later. Long time to identify problem and orger new cable.
• Borrowed some StarLink

Drones

• Easier to monitor
• Autonomous ships

Technology advances

• Increased density
• Smaller repeaters
• New routes ex: Tokyo to London

My take

I like the otter and sea lion video in the pre-show. While I don’t expect to ever use this, it was really interesting and I’m glad I came. It was really interesting seeing what’s in a fiber optic cable. Also great pictures on the topic of cables. Interesting stories of issues in wartime.