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They do know they plow the cables into the sea bed floor. Something like 2m down.

Only where practicable / desirable - usually on the continental shelves & near the coast, where there's a danger of it being snagged by a fishing trawler or anchor.

AFAIK, the record depth for burying cable is still ~1600m. By comparison, the average depth of the Atlantic is apparently 3339m, and the Pacific ~4100m

• Southern Cross have upgraded their US link from 600Gbps to 860Gbps.
• Telstra and Alcatel are landing their new 1.3Tbps cable to Hawaii
• PIPE Networks are on track with their 1.9Tbps cable to Guam.

I'll add a little background here: In NZ, we are burdened by a regressive monopoly structure which has severely hampered our connectivity, both in country and internationally.

Telecom NZ was formerly a subsidiary of NZ Post and thereby wholly owned and controlled by the government. The New Zealand economy went into a tailspin beginning in the 1970s, hit with the oil shock and the diminution of trade with its largest overseas market, the UK, who had just entered the European Common Market. In response, during the 1980s and 90s the governments, first Labour and then National, went on a privatization binge (see Rogernomics) and sold off infrastructure right and left in an effort to encourage capital investment. Power generation and transmission, rail lines and rolling stock, and the telephone network were peeled off and their new corporate structures were remarkably free of constraints or oversight from the former owners.

As a result of this monopoly position, Telecom has had two decades in which to milk the cash cow of assets it was more or less gifted from the public domain, and has been loath to increase capacity any more than absolutely necessary. The latest government, after reviewing the pathetic state of everything from landline and mobile pricing to broadband uptake and service levels, finally reinstituted regulation of Telecom and forced a split of the company into wholesale, retail and services divisions. In addition, it has mandated local loop unbundling for competitive DSL providers. Much of this is too little, too late, however, and the elephant in the room has been unacknowledged.

New Zealand has only one transoceanic fiber link to the rest of the world, and its operator, the Southern Cross Cable Network, is 50 percent owned by Telecom. The rates for international traffic on the SCCN reflect its monopoly status and appear to be governed by the doctrine of artificial scarcity. As a result, NZ ISPs have to be ultra stingy with bandwidth, forcing onerous data caps on business and retail customers and enforcing a two-tier pricing model on local and international traffic. Of course, in a nation with a land mass and population similar to the state of Colorado and an urgent need to be connected to global markets, this is criminally insane. But until competition enters the picture or the government grows some balls, we're stuffed.

Not sure about Australia, since they also have direct links to major Asian hubs, but for New Zealand at least, almost all our international traffic has to go via undersea cables to the USA.

Laying 30,000km of undersea cable isn't cheap :)

http://www.southerncrosscables.com/public/Network/default.cfm

The 2nd major contributor to cost is that fact that NZ just doesn't generate enough traffic to be able to peer in the US, so our ISPs have to pay the tier1s for transit.

So, it sucks that we have low data caps, but realistically it's entirely justified.

(as opposed to Southern Cross Network Cabling - in Golden, Colorado of all places! :)

The Southern Cross Cable Network provides the fastest, most direct, and most secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA.

Southern Cross is currently delivering 295 gigabit/s of fully protected bandwidth and has the potential as demand growth requires to increase to 1.2 Tbps using the existing 10 Gbps technology or 4.8 Gbps using 40 Gbps.

I think you've summed your post up with the title; Huh?

Let's start with a few facts.. There is no real operational cable coming out of brisbane. The two major east coast cables are the SXC (two cables, both land on different sides of the city of sydney, one goes via NZ to Hawaii the other goes via Fiji) and the AJC, again out of sydney this time going to Japan via Guam.

The west coast has an older, but still somewhat utilised setup (SEA-ME-WE3).

As for your (far inflated) figures, where exactly did you pull these from? Australia currently has a population in the order of 20-22million, how the fsck are there ever going to be 90million internet users in the country?

There was an issue, almost similar (albeit, less dramatic) than the FUD you're spreading late last year [infact, i recall two or three] - the SXC was broken over on the US mainland, which affected our connectivity to their west coast. The problem here isn't the cables, it's the fact that most (read: most, not all - there are a few decent ones out there, if you know anything about the industry in this country you'll know who they are) ISP's in this country run their lines far oversubscribed and barely pull it off under normal circumstances. Had they had two or more circuits, either one across each SXC link or 1x SXC + 1x AJC running at 50% capacity or lower, the problems would have been greatly reducted. Likewise, if they had a single _protected_ SXC circuit.

I don't think the cables are the underlying problem. Sure we can talk the economics of undersea lines and how it would be cheaper if there were more, blah blah blah - but when it comes down to it, the _protected_ capacity is available out of this country. It's expensive, but hey, it's not like you enter the industry here not realising that to be a real deal you're going to need undersea capacity, or maybe that's too tricky to figure out?

Add to the fact you've got PIPE commited to building a similar cable to the AJC (quite possibly with a few other landing points - the gold coast has been mentioned, maybe that's where you got brisbane from?) Telstra talking about building their own cable similar to the SXC and a bit of chatter about other cables coming out of Perth through to western asia, etc and it's definately not the lack of cables coming out of the country. It's the cheap, profiteering ISP's (read: GOF) that don't seem to give a fsck about having a real network or providing a quality service.

Btw, you can actually find out what you're talking about: http://www.ajcable.com/ http://www.southerncrosscables.com/public/Network/default.cfm http://www.smw3.com/

In an ironic twist to the shrinking planet, New Zealand and Australian internet users felt Oregon's pain, too. The storm took out a vital piece of fiber interconnect linking one of the two US landing points of the Southern Cross transpacific cable to the NAPs. We limped along on reduced bandwidth and flapping routes for almost two days over here. Luckily, the damaged portion was terrestrial and has already been patched.

Weird part was that there was hardly a mention of it in either NZ or AU media, let alone any official word from SC...but the ISP I use got word out to its customers within hours. Thanks, Inspire Net!

Telstra are building their own 1.2Tbps cable to Hawaii, Pipenetworks are building a 640Mbps cable to Guam, and Southern Cross are upgrading their cables from 240Gbps to 1.2Tbps.

So things are actually looking good.

Tornados are common in mid-USA, earthquakes are common in California, blackouts are common in the tri-state area.

What is not common is knowing exactly when, or where, they will strike. Not everyone has travelled back to 5 November 1955 and knows the exact such details about a lightning strike!

The cost of laying an undersea cable is HUGE. It is impractical to maintain a thick sheath the entire undersea length. It is only on the ends where the cable comes ashore that much thicker and sturdier sheathing is used because friction and anchors are a lot more common in that area.

I think you'll find for all intents and purposes undersea cables are manufactured to withstand expected engineering problems. But planning for an earthquake is best mitigated by a self-healing ring such as the topology used for the Southern Cross cable between the USA and the South Pacific.

Very true. Australian bandwidth stinks. Sure, the Southern Cross Cable linking Oceania with the U.S is pretty phat, but it's costs are too big. ISP's here tend to run transparent proxies (I have a ADSL ISP blacklist of ISP's I won't go with for that reason. At least my dialup ISP, iPrimus isn't stupid enough) in order to keep costs down. Well, instead of trying to cut costs on the ISP side, why don't they try to make Australian->US bandwidth less expensive?

It's probably cheaper to dump a server in a US colo facility overall than dump it in a Australian colo and watch yourself get Slashed/Farked no matter what your primary demographic for your website is :(

This is a company that also limits the bandwidth available to customers through specific ports (think P2P). It doesn't matter that the customer has paid for the connection - they still tell (force?) you to use it as they want.

Prices for data? 128kb/s ADSL with 5GB monthly cap - NZ$65

up to 8Mb/s (usually around 2MB/s) ADSL (home) 500MB per month $49 1GB per month $69

up to 8MB/s (usually around 2MB/s) ADSL (home or business)

600MB - $62

1200MB - $120

1800MB - $176

3000MB - $292

5000MB - $458

10000MB - $888

20000MB - $1800

These are NZ$ (multiply by .6 to get $US equivalent) plus 12.5 % sales tax, and ISP fees, as this is just for the data flowing over Telecom's network.

..k

This is a company that also limits the bandwidth available to customers through specific ports (think P2P). It doesn't matter that the customer has paid for the connection - they still tell (force?) you to use it as they want.

Prices for data? 128kb/s ADSL with 5GB monthly cap - NZ$65

up to 8Mb/s (usually around 2MB/s) ADSL (home) 500MB per month $49 1GB per month $69

up to 8MB/s (usually around 2MB/s) ADSL (home or business)

600MB - $62

1200MB - $120

1800MB - $176

3000MB - $292

5000MB - $458

10000MB - $888

20000MB - $1800

These are NZ$ (multiply by .6 to get $US equivalent) plus 12.5 % sales tax, and ISP fees, as this is just for the data flowing over Telecom's network.

And you thought sensorship was our biggest problem - I don't see why are they would sensor us anyway - it's not like we have the means, financially or technically to access much anyway.

And /.ers thought there wasn't a need for ASCII porn... ..k

"the long-decomissioned cable is still regarded as the longest single run of cable in the world."

-- See southern cross cables .com for the world's longest joining NZ, Australia, Hawaii, and America

See South Cross Cables for a large part of NZ bandwidth.

i'd love to see the price tag on a system that can filter content on a 120Gb/s link

btw just 1 of those little links and its getting upgraded to 240Gb/s
www.southerncrosscables.com (shockwave required)

Thanks.

- a major international subterrainian cable linking Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia.

Dont forget New Zealand!! the cable is 50% owned by a New Zealand company (telecom New Zealand), with New Zealand gaining the same benefits as Australia. Looking at the story submitted by an australian, and the high ranking comments in this story, it appears that this fact has been lost by readers. Australasia means more than just Australia - New Zealand and Australia. Readers might want to check out the facts where it even says the cable will be managed in New Zealand. New Zealand owns you.

Much of this was done for the benift of New Zealand (Australasia is not just Australia), who as a country with a huge percentage of net users and a huge uptake of dsl and cable, suck most of what we look at (pron, /.) from the US.

Over half of this new pipe was paid for by the NZ telco Telecom. and from their press releases they plan there will be no spare bandwith by 2002

But the coolest thing about the cable has to be the cable healing robot robot
; ; ;Fitted to the cable maintenance vessel, CS Pacific Guardian, the Southern Cross ROV has bulldozer-like tracks that enable it to move along the sea floor at depths of up to 2,500 metres. It is also equipped with six horizontal and four vertical thrusters to enable it to "free swim" where the seabed is too soft to support the weight of the ROV.

bats = bugs

Southern Coss Cable Network.
Their main site is here
and a nice little animation which shows how the network works is here.

Southern Coss Cable Network.
Their main site is here
and a nice little animation which shows how the network works is here.

See Map of network for details.

While I'm here, someone mentioned that 70ms is pretty slow for this type of connection - which amazes me, because it blew me away that they could get it that low. (remember, we're talking 1 direction latency here - not ping times, which would atleast be double)

A quick calculation:

A quick check of the net tells me that the distance from Sydney (where the cable is landed in .au) to Los Angeles is 7487 miles (according to a travel agent flight distance site - who knows?), or about 11979km. (pretty similar to the diameter of the earth, which is 12742km)

The speed of light is roughly 299,792,458 m/s so, the best (according to current physics :/) time we can do is about:

39.957 milliseconds

Just at the speed of light we lose almost 40ms, then they've gotta switch it at several points along the way, and while optical switches EXIST, it seems unlikely they're doing optical switching yet.

All in all I reckon the 70ms figure is AMAZING..

Southern Cross Cables, or, if you prefer to bypass the Macromedia slash crap: Southern Cross Cables Front Page

Southern Cross Cables, or, if you prefer to bypass the Macromedia slash crap: Southern Cross Cables Front Page

Who's next? As someone else has mentioned, it will be the UKUSA countries (US,UK,Canada,Australia,NZ). And it won't stop with a change of government. These alliances and treaties have been going for 50+ years now, I hardly think a change of govt in one of the member countries will affect a change in the SIGINT treaties. For example here in NZ, this change is coming in under the Labour govt, the least likely to implement it. National are far more likely to keep the alliance running smoothly, as they are the more conservative country when it comes to international politics.

As to the SIS being thugs? Yeah well thats true. But remember that everyone makes mistakes and that we only hear about their mistakes. We often don't hear when they are successful, for that would advertise sources etc that they have. And odds are it won't be the SIS going through the offending computer, but the GCSB. And they will be pretty smart. They trade places with other UKUSA orgs to learn tips and tricks and this includes rotational trips to the NSA. Odds are you won't notice them.

Do we need this legislation? Probably, as long as we have trusted people to supervise the proper use of the granted powers. Currently there is little protection against cracking into computers - I think you'd only get caught on wire fraud - so the law does need to be updated. Pedophiles and terrorists don't deserve the right to hide behind technology. OTOH individuals are entitled to protect their information and communication. We know this arguement, and I'm not going to bring it up here. We do need good oversight and clear reporting and control by elected officals though to ensure proper use of this tool should it be implemented.

Re ISP/Telcos role. Remember that NZ is a fantastic testbed for new technology. We currently have one of the largest VoIP installations in the world completed by Cisco (outside of CSCO itself). With the potential for VoIP, don't you think we would also make a great testbed for signal analysis testing of this new tech? Also, everyone knows that the Internet is an untrusted medium and should be treated as such, you should already assume that your ISP/Telco is logging and analysing your traffic. You'd be foolish not too, which means that the ISP/Telco role potentially changes little. Your traffic is travelling over a commercial service, and they have control. Don't like it? Get off our pipes, they'll say. Oh, and the Southern Cross Cable? Half owned by New Zealand Telecom, and a quarter owned each by Optus Cable and MCI Worldcom, it is going to carry a large amount of data between Australasia and North America. Odds are it will carry much of the South Pacific data. Of course they want to legalise access to this bandwidth.

It comes down to this. Use a firewall. Use special machines to access the net. Dumb them down. Remove the services that aren't required. Companies should completely segregate their trade secrets and critical info anyway, so the excuse of crackers using the proposed systems to perform industrial espionage just doesn't cut it. The corporate secrets shouldn't be on Internet connected machines anyway. This mirrors to individuals also. Keyboard loggers are an easy way to get around encryption, and we've got a product of our own which apparently has been very popular with the US TLA's - KeyGhost.

But most of all, ensure accountability and responsibility of the organisations involved. They better not criminalise the tools though - that would be going way too far.

Cheers
rediguana

Warni ng, page is flashed