Internet Undersea World

The internet’s undersea world

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The vast majority of the world’s communications are not carried by satellites but an altogether older technology: cables under the earth’s oceans. As a ship accidentally wipes out Asia’s net access, this map shows how we rely on collections of wires of less than 10cm diameter to link us all together

Fibre-optic submarine cable systems

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Alexandria, Wednesday

-14 TAT

A ship’s anchor accidentally cuts two cables, SeaMeWe4 and FLAG Europe-Asia, reducing internet capacity in Asia by 75%

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Seattle

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FLAG

Djibouti

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Accra

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Hong Kong

Taipei

Mumbai Chennai

-Asia

Europe

Arabian Sea

Abidjan

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Libreville

SAO TOME & PRINCIPE

FLAG

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Euro

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Singapore

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MIC-1

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APCN

Guam

Colombo

Bharat Lanka Cable System WARF

Mogadishu

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TGN TIC SeaMeWe-4

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FLAG

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FLAG Europe-Asia

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INDIA

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San Juan

Shanghai

CHINA

Kuwait-Iran

SAS-1

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Fibralink

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Kuwait City

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BICS

Cayman-Jamaica

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ARC

Honolulu

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ATLANTIC OCEAN

JAPAN

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PC-1 China-U.S.

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Singapore

Los Angeles

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Hong Kong

Dumai-Melaka Cable System

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CHINA

PACIFIC OCEAN

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FA-1 Apollo 12/1 TAT-

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New York

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China-U.S. Japan-U.S. TPE

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JAPAN

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UNITED STATES

Southern Cross Russia–Japan Cable Network

Site of the previous biggest cable disaster, when under-ocean landslide cut nine cables between Taiwan and the Philippines, disabling net access for weeks

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VSNL TGN-Pacific PC-1

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Taiwan, 2006

Brussels

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Cables with a minimum capacity of 5 giga bytes a second under construction or working year-end 2007

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Damaged

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SeaMeWe-3

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VSNL TGN-Western Europe

Planned

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Dar es Salaam

Jakarta SA

Maputo

At lan tis SA -2 C/ LA N m1

Southern

ss

Cro

Cross

Noumea

AUSTRALIA Perth

Sydney

Cape Town

SA

Sydney

ern

uth

So

Asia has an enormous number of internet users: 501 million of the world’s 1.3 billion users. And it’s growing by 882% per year

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SAT-3/WASC

Rio de Janeiro

A

Port Headland SeaM

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ASIA

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Perth

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At la Glo ntis2 SA beN e C SA /LAN t m1 Glo beN et

US RA

Suva Noumea

AUSTRALIA

SU

US RA

Australia-Japan

SU

Port Headland

INDIAN OCEAN

JA

JA

FE

Luanda

SEA

Matrix Cable System

Jakarta

Auckland

Auckland

NEW ZEALAND

NEW ZEALAND Internet users affected by the Alexandria accident The main countries affected in Wednesday’s event

60m India

12m

Pakistan

6m Egypt

World cable capacity

The longest submarine cables

The world’s cables in bandwidth

Cross-section of a cable

Submarine cable operators light (turn on) capacity on their systems to sell bandwidth to other carriers. Carriers buy extra capacity, mainly to hold in reserve. On the trans-Atlantic route 80% of the bandwidth is purchased, but only 29% is used

The SeaMeWe-3 system from Norden in Germany to Keoje, South Korea connects 32 different countries with 39 landing points

The first intercontinental telephony submarine cable system, TAT-1, connected North America to Europe in 1958 and had an initial capacity of 640,000 bytes per second. Since then, total trans-Atlantic cable capacity has soared to over 7 trillion bps

Cables of this strength are typically 69 mm in diameter and weigh over 10,000 kilograms a kilometer. In deeper waters, lighter and less insulated cables are used

Capacity in terabytes a second

4.7m SaudiArabia

What makes up “used capacity”?

Southern Cross

30,500 km

China-US

30,476 km

FLAG Europe-Asia South America-1

Galvanised armour wires Tar-soaked nylon yarn Optical fibres

28,000 km

Silicon gel

25,000 km

27%

Total capacity

7.1 tbps

1.7m

39,000 km

SeaMeWe-3

Private networks, owned by companies

UAE

0.8m Kuwait

0.3m

Purchased capacity

5.7 tbps

Qatar

0.2m Bahrain

Used capacity

2.1 tbps

72% Internet

%

1%

Telephone calls

Estimated international bandwidth usage by country (gbps) 1,000+

Buffering material (plastic/steel)

Sã

Nylon yarn bedding

200 - 999

Ultra-high strength steel wires

50 - 199 1 - 49 SOURCE: TELEGEOGRAPHY.COM SUBMARINE CABLE MAP 2008. INTERNET STATISTICS FROM INTERNETWORLDSTATS.COM

1

Capacity as of December 2007 (gbps) 500 500 50 10

Copper sheath