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The Men Who Fix the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Remember all those undersea cables breaking? PopSci.com introduces John Rennie, who '... has braved the towering waves of the North Atlantic Ocean to keep your e-mail coming to you. As chief submersible engineer aboard the Wave Sentinel, part of the fleet operated by UK-based undersea installation and maintenance firm Global Marine Systems, Rennie — a congenial, 6'4", 57-year-old Scotsman — patrols the seas, dispatching a remotely operated submarine deep below the surface to repair undersea cables.' The article goes on to outline the physical infrastructure of the Internet, including some of its points of vulnerability."
WTF are people dragging anchors around for? I would presume (and could be entirely wrong, as usual) that shallow water cable runs wouldn't be located next to anchorages. Do these sea going vessels have to stop for lunch or something?
And why to we even allow fisherman to drag crap along the sea bottom? I thought industrial level trawling went out years ago?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
On the internets?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I might be walking into a woosh here; but radio waves are (or rather carry) data that travels at the speed of light(plus, the speed of light is higher in a vacuum than in fiber). What really kills you with satellites is the distance.
Oh those kids! Never had to work with a megabit satellite link connected somewhere in Africa and try to send VoIP to America, haven't you?
The latency is not the only problem, there are magnetic storms, other satellites crossing into the sight of yours, bad weather, and so much other crap that I can't even remember.
That is why we need thick undersea cables or all your beautiful iPhones and other gadgets will be rendered totally useless...
Satellites are cost effective if you are either:
1. Reaching a broad audience with the same transmission.
2. A large government with cryptic and voluminous bookkeeping designed to hide that you are at a loss.
Just ask the satellite phone companies what happens when you have to listen to that broad audience too.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
...is a cool article up on Wired (look for the printable link option so it's all on one page) detailing an interesting adventure around the world and some of the history of undersea cables. Definitely worth a read.
"The article goes on to outline the physical infrastructure of the Internet, including some of its points of vulnerability"
Sean Gorman mapped out the US fiber-optic telco fiefdoms.
Parts of his dissertation where "removed".
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70040?currentPage=2
Getting back to the popsci 'news'
The part I find interesting is the use of 'hubs'
Are hubs (fiber locations?) for cost savings, lazy design, best design for a shareholder when burning tax payers re nation building, collusion between telcos, easy NSA access ?
What do other parts of the world do ?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
From TFA:
"If terrorists managed to gain remote access to a facility's command-and-control system, they could, for example, cause the generators to overheat and explode."
If you can make a generator explode on command, you really are doing it wrong. Backup generators may be able to be remotely started, stopped, switched in/out and checked but you should not be able to do the equivalent of burnouts with them.
Additionally, the article states that catastrophic failures would start to creep in after ~2 days of no human maintenance. WTF? Most exchanges and data centres I've been in are ghost ships 350 days a year aside from upgrades and config changes, how is it that such critical hardware can't tick over by itself for a month or so without going nipples skyward?
Hell, the average telephone exchange, if you nuked everything around it, would be giving dialtone and DSL to the skeletons for at least a week, probably more depending on how much diesel is in the tanks.
There is no music - home taping killed it.
I have a shortwave radio, I use it.. sometimes.
Trouble is, BBC, radio netherlands, etc.. have pretty much stopped broadcasting to the the US, which means there are fewer english programs. (still a few) but I do get HAM operators, who, I trust, will relay anthing important.
If something critical should happen, I'll still be informed, shortwave works when cables AND satelites are down. (albeit, I won't be able to watch "youtube")
Indeed, 8 years ago, I had no tv or internet (hard times..) shortwave saved me from a lot of boring nights.. at least WBCQ, CBC (Canada) and the VOA are still on.
I guess this is why spies still use it, it's reliable. (and yes, I've heard a few spy transmissions.)
We depend too much on frail technology.