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120 Gigabit Pipe To Oz Begins Operation
dustpuppy writes: "The new Southern Cross Cable Network connecting Australia to the US is now operational. Featuring 120 Gigabit capacity and with a latency of 70 msec, the new trans-Pacific cable is 120 times the capacity of the existing Australasia/North America connection. Now us poor Aussies can download our mp3s that much faster! You can read more about it here." Interesting, too, how it's constructed. From the article: "The network consisted of two separate cables configured in three self-healing rings, with all three rings to be completed early next year. The duplicate-ring construction gave the network greater redundancy - if one side of the network was damaged or became inoperable, traffic could be transferred to the other side instantly." Neat.
Interesting timing for this. For some reason, I can get to .au sites no problem, but cannot get to cnn.com or google.com. So Australia goes high-bandwidth, and half of America drops off the net.
Basically, the government is *totally* uninterested in censoring the net - it just likes the legislation so it can point to it and convince the wowsers that it is doing something to protect the Children. While I dislike this kind of thing, I would prefer a situation of bad legislation being ignored to bad legislation wreaking havoc by enforcing it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Have fun!
Link.
I propose diggin a big hole to australlia. We could cut latency to 50ms or so.
Time is Change.
exactly what I was getting at ... this really doesn't make much sense except for the "now"
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Yes, but how big are these mp3s? Are these punk mp3s? Leonard Cohen mp3s? =)
But then it's like most (usually lying) women say: "it doesn't matter how big the mp3 is, only how long you can maintain your connection."
end communication
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..
There's a whole bunch of others owned by different Telcos and stuff. It's a messy picture, and no one provider (or even two providers) has been able to offer a good (read fast + reliable) service out of the country.
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The whole world doesn't revolve around Australia, Slashdot. How about some American articles for a change?
</parody>
-Legion (donning Euro-flame-proof suit)
Okay, now Australia has a broad enough pipe that they might as well be part of the US, from a network-routing point of view. Western Europe has been in that situation for a long time; there's no real difference between getting something from Britain, France, Oklahoma, and now, Australia. When is the rest of the world going to join in? The "ring of fire" around Africa seems to have dropped out of the news. I know of no major plans for eastern europe or asia. Is the rest of the world economically well off enough that soon they will be players, too?
I've had this sig for three days.
If I were in charge I'd just connect a long phone line.
I've been a nerd nearly all my life, but it still floors me to think that it takes longer for information carried by sound to travel between two people yelling to each other from opposite ends of a stadium in Sydney than it does for information carried by the Net to travel between two people chatting from opposite sides of the globe...anybody else feel this way?
Seems like a high latency for that type of connection... Wouldn't 70 usec (microseconds) make more sense? Or maybe 7 msec?
Or are they going to forgo their censorship?
Fight Spammers!
Speed of light is about 300,000 km/sec
Network distance from Australia to USA is about 15,000km, noting that the network is a ring and it's said to be 30,500km long.
15000/300000=0.050 seconds=50 ms.
So 70ms is not too bad, considering that the speed of light in fibre optic cables isn't as fast as in space, and there is probably some network latency at the ends and the repeaters.
That's why I'm an HPB. It's about 150msec(Pacific Ocean) + 120 msec (56K modem signal processing time) + 50-100 msec for various internetwork latencies. So I end up with 370msec on a good day.
Cheerio,
Link.
Routing through the mideast is a little dicey given the political instability. The infrastructure costs make a fat pipe via siberia a real pain.
The point is simply redundancy, as well as opening up the net to other areas of the world. a fat pipe going through that part of the world would help this out tremendously.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
See Map of network for details.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
it's like some beautiful dream. Would someone care to comment on the politics of this? Why in the last year we've gone from modem to cable to dsl and now they're actually working on the backbone? Who the hell is behind this? Maybe we should send them flowers or something.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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DWDM (dense wave-division multiplexing) lets you run many wavelengths simultaneously within a single fibre - probably this pipe is already using this, but DWDM will continue to improve, meaning that you can just upgrade the kit at each end to upgrade your bandwidth. 1 Terabit, here we come...
Good points mostly, but you seem to be saying that ATM is the only way to go for such big pipes - this is far from the case, particularly for IP traffic, due to the problems of scaling SAR on ATM router interfaces (i.e. slicing packets into cells then reassembling them). See http://www.juniper.net/techcenter/techpapers/20000 4-03.html for some background.
Most large providers seem to be going for packet over SONET for IP traffic, and will ultimately go for MPLS alongside this. Eventually, SONET may well disappear or shrink as DWDM-native protection/failover becomes available. The good news is that the ATM cell tax is going away, and the cost of managing networks is going down (every node will be an IP or MPLS router, or an optical switch). See http://www.mplsrc.com for more on MPLS, it provides most of the benefits of ATM with much less complexity and overhead.
--
What I find weird is the topology. Suppose all the people in the stadium were using a chat room to taunt each other. If they all use AIM, they've created an ad hoc network with its hub on one side of the planet and its nodes all on the other. And if they use various other interoperating chat networks, it gets even more complicated.
Of course to the Freenet folks, all this dispersion is not weird, but useful...
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Actually, the speed of light is _exactly_ 299,792,458 m/s. That number is what defines a meter. :-)
1) wireless is just not that fast. Wireless cannot in any way compete with hardline for speed.
2) high frequency RF, needed for any kind of bandwidth, tavels in straight lines.
3) They run the cable all that way becuase that's where the data is, and that's where the market is.
4) Furthermore, they run the cable all that way because it's a bigger, safer investment.
10 years? we're still using undersea cable that's been down for 25 years+.... don't understimate just how much data that is.
Southern Coss Cable Network.
Their main site is here
and a nice little animation which shows how the network works is here.
Actually, I think Pale Ale is generally considered to be better. I enjoy them both, and Cooper's Dark Ale, too.
The result was that he singlehandedly saturated the cross-Rockies pipe. The rest of us plebes with less-than joined-at-the-hip access to the national net got to deal with massive latencies (well over 300ms on average).
With this new pipe to Australia, it looks like we may be back to the old trick of it being faster to send a packet pan-pacific, than to the next province. (though for happier reasons).
Oh, never mind. I currently get 45ms to a machine in Edmonton... still better than the Southern cross pipe.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The Southern Cross is a well-known constellation in the southern hemisphere - as well known as the Plough/Big Dipper is in the northern hemisphere.
In fact, Australia's flag has the Southern Cross constellation on it, just like Alaska's flag has the Plough/Big Dipper (Ursa major).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
1 core3-vic.melb.vch.com.au
2 Cont1-0.wel3.Perth.telstra.net
3 Fddi0-0.wel-core2.Perth.telstra.net
4 GigabitEthernet4-0.wel-core3.Perth.telstra.net
5 GigabitEthernet4-0.wel-gw1.Perth.telstra.net
6 Pos1-1.paix1.PaloAlto.telstra.
7 paix-f2-5.exodus.net
Mind you, all of the packets from my home machine go through Sydney *sigh*
I'm not sure about the Pacific floor, but I know the Atlantic floor is expanding -- so this applies to trans-Atlantic cables at the veyr least.
As the plates expand at the rate of [inces/feet?] per year, what happens to the cables? Is the growth small enough that the cables won't stretch to a critical frailty until after they've outlived their usefulness?
at least the urine isn't pink like yak-milk is...
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
This is pushing the topic a little bit, but is there a map or other representation of the bandwidth that various countries/continents have coming into/going out of them?
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Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
They don't even bother advertising the stuff here in Australia anymore.
Actually, I was having a drink (Victoria Bitter) in a pub just yesterday, and I asked one of my colleagues: "Have you ever seen an Australian drink Fosters other than under duress?".
He answered in the negative. (Under duress includes no other beer available!)
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http://it.fairfax.com.au/communications/20001114/A 41389-2000Nov10.html
"A 155 megabit circuit between Sydney and California, licensed for 15 years, which cost $US10.3 million, was discounted by 18 per cent if purchased before the November sales deadline."
It cost about 20c/MB retail for bandwidth in aus. This works out to a markup of 1400 times (see 1) between long term and short term prices.
I hope this link does bring down retail prices.
1) $ 10300000 / (15years * 155megabit * 52weeks * 7days * 24hours * 60minutes * 60 seconds) = 0.014 cents / megabit
I think i worked it out correctly
3 ATM5-0-0-1.cha9.Brisbane.telstra.net
4 GigabitEthernet3-0.cha-core3.Brisbane.telstra.
5 Pos0-3.ken-core1.Sydney.telstra.net
6 Pos2-3.wel-core3.Perth.telstra.net
7 GigabitEthernet4-0.wel-gw1.Perth.telstra.net
8 Pos1-0.paix1.PaloAlto.telstra.net
9 * paix-f2-5.exodus.net
Perth? What the hell are you doing in Perth? That's the wrong side of the country?
:wq
that one customer.
"We've already got one customer connected," Mr Stokes-McKeon said.
imagine that you had that whole pipe to yourself.
A fiber can carry most anything you throw at it. Modern fiber optic systems use "Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing", or DWDM, which is a fancy term for "several signals on one fiber, each using its own color, and a prism at each end to split things up".
In order to reach the press release bandwidth, you'd need to toss an OC-192 on every possible wavelength of every fiber in the cable. Riiight. Keep in mind that these beasts are managed by corporations, which are political by their very nature. Efficiency is not their strong point. Also remember that this whole network was designed for circuit-based telecommunications traffic, not the packets most Slashdotters are familiar with. The process of making the twain meet is not a straightforward one.
Most telco networks don't run at anywhere near 100% utilization. Admittedly, wet cable is expensive stuff, so it's not often wasted. But if anyone believes that the ring could carry that amount of traffic NOW, all I can say is, stick to your software and avoid telco networks, for everyone's benefit.
Furthermore, fiber of this sort doesn't directly affect the internet. You don't simply jam a transcontinental fiber into your Ethernet card, folks. Packet and circuit networks don't get along with each other. First, you cram your packets into an ATM stream, then you wrap the ATM data in a SONET transport layer. If you're using a really big ATM switch, you might be dealing with as much as an OC-48's worth of bandwith in one chunk here. But we're not done yet...
See, you don't want to plug that OC-48 straight into the fiber, because then what would happen when you want to add more? So you're going to use the signals coming from your routers as tributaries to feed a big honkin' optical terminal like an OC-192. All the SONET payloads from the various tributary interfaces will be concatenated and shot out the high speed side. The lasers in said terminal will be tuned to a particular wavelength, and used to feed a DWDM coupler. Finally, the multicolored signal will head to the beach and go for a swim. Several Erbium-doped amplifiers later, (search for EDFA and do some reading!) the signal emerges in another continent and the whole process reverses itself.
Keep in mind that any one company probably doesn't buy bandwidth in chunks larger than OC-12. Your packets will move more freely, yes, but nobody's gonna be seeing 120 Gigabits any time soon. The amount of paperwork, and the sheer number of companies that're involved in simply setting up one circuit, is phenomenal.
Oh, and as far as survivability goes, that's old news. SONET was designed from the ground up to incorporate a redundant ring architecture. The data's always transmitted over two fibers at once, and the receiving device picks the cleaner of the two incoming streams. Network planners are careful to route the two paths diversely, so no one failure can bring down the ring. Ideally, someone can backhoe an entire fiber conduit and not knock down any traffic because every ring served by that conduit was ALSO served by another one on the other side of town. Ditto goes for undersea cables.
I'm this close to setting up a little site to introduce computer geeks to telco concepts, so y'all don't keep swallowing these press releases whole. Anyone wanna help?
Actually, it's not that much bandwidth. Assuming a normal 16QAM signal (and that's being rather conservative), you get roughly 4 bits/Hz. Therefor, 1 Gbps is roughly 250 MHz. One TV channel is roughly 6 MHz, so this is only about 40 TV channels. One satellite (C band) is 26 transponders, or half the needed bandwidth.
Looked at another way: 250 MHz bandwidth at 26 GHz is a Q of 100.
www.eFax.com are spammers
No more crappy coffee pot cams for me!
:-)
Now I can see koalas and kangoroos go about their daily lives eating the euycaliptis trees and bouncing around carelessly. A whole new avenue of NET entertainment has come my way!!!!
happy happy joy joy
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
Correction make that post 74.
Ok now I remember I am insane.
Good: Everything is normal.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
A bigger step forward would be for the US Backbone providers to come up with an equitable cost arrangement.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Given the phenomenal amount of money Japan spends on this sort of thing, surely Japan (and for that matter South Korea) would ensure that they've got more than adequate bandwidth?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I would prefer a situation of bad legislation being ignored to bad legislation wreaking havoc by enforcing it.
There is the possibility of selective enforcement. Nobody is getting punished so everybody does it. But if the State, the judge or the local boss dislikes you, they can use the law against you.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Why don't we just use this measurement on /. from now on?
So you could pretty much transfer everything on Napster over there in about 43 seconds.
1 128Kbps MP3 ~= 5MB
I Moderated this as Informative and it got marked as Funny.
Moderation Totals:Interesting=1, Funny=1, Total=2.
I don't get the joke.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Just remember that: 70 ms is a latency, not a speed.
"Speeds up to 70mph" makes sense; "Speeds up to 70ms" does not.
Maybe I should have been more clear on this one; I had thought the quote would be enough.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
It can't get any slower...
This is good now, but what about when this becomes yet "another slow line" ... now you have a nice cable running to america .. that's about it.
Good idea ... works for about 10 years ... then what?
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
...will someone set up http://www.koalase.cx as a new link for the slashdot trolls?
That's largely because my provider is crap, but also because the only usefull way out of the country is by a fat link on the other side of the country. Theres lots of landline to carry traffic, and it seems to get broken a lot. The second route ex-Sydney is oversubscribed, and is useless as a contingency when the main one dies.
I'll be the first to admit scepticism that this thing would ever be completed, but now that it is, the whole world changes for US. A whole bunch of new world-class providers will move down here now, instead of the second rate crap we've had to date.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
A map of Australia's links to the US and the rest of the word is here.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Australian for "More Porn"
54% Slashdot Pure
They finally replaced the Tin-Can-And-String(tm)(c) link to GEO with something better.
"If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi