Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

$1.5 Billion: the Cost of Cutting London-Tokyo Latency By 60ms

Posted by Soulskill on from the aussies-still-jealous dept.

MrSeb writes "Starting this summer, and thanks to the continuing withdrawal of Arctic sea ice, a convoy of ice breakers and specially-adapted polar ice-rated cable laying ships will begin to lay the first ever trans-Arctic Ocean submarine fiber optic cables. Two of these cables, called Artic Fibre and Arctic Link, will cross the Northwest Passage, which runs through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. A third cable, the Russian Optical Trans-Arctic Submarine Cable System (ROTACS), will skirt the north coast of Scandinavia and Russia. All three cables will connect the United Kingdom to Japan, with a smattering of branches that will provide high-speed internet access to a handful of Arctic Circle communities. The completed cables are estimated to cost between $600 million and $1.5 billion each. As it stands, it takes roughly 230 milliseconds for a packet to go from London to Tokyo; the new cables will reduce this by 30% to 170ms. The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders, but other areas like education, telemedicine, and POTS will also enjoy the speed-up. Perhaps more importantly, almost every cable that lands in Asia goes through a choke point in the Middle East or the Luzon Strait between the Philippine and South China seas. If a ship were to drag an anchor across the wrong patch of seabed, billions of people could wake up to find themselves either completely disconnected from the internet or surfing with dial-up-like speeds. The three new cables will all come down from the north of Japan, through the relatively-empty Bering Sea. In addition, the Arctic Ocean, where each of the cables will run for more than 5,000 miles, is one of the least-trafficked parts of the world. That said, the cables will still have to be laid hundreds of meters below the surface to avoid the tails of roving icebergs."

158 comments

  1. Bering Sea? by wolrahnaes · · Score: 4, Funny

    Next, on Discovery's Deadliest Cabling Job...

    --
    I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
  2. The NEW LCD cables! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    * Note: May have abnormally large undocumented input latency.

  3. Quake Servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Oh awesome, now I can play on japanese quake servers!

  4. Also good for gamers by idontusenumbers · · Score: 1

    Quake 3 on a 230ms connection would be awful. 170 might at least be playable.

    1. Re:Also good for gamers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quake 3 on a 230ms connection would be awful. 170 might at least be playable.

      Actually it's immensely fun! :D

    2. Re:Also good for gamers by mercnet · · Score: 2

      I played on a 56k modem that averaged to about 500ms. You quickly learn how to lead railgun shots.

    3. Re:Also good for gamers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You think you're old? I used 16K modems for arpnet and early games. Kid, get off my lawn.

    4. Re:Also good for gamers by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think chess games via postal service may win the latency contest.

    5. Re:Also good for gamers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hc gamers often says 20ms ping is "good" but then again, theres scientific evidence even 10ms latency can be detected by some people...

    6. Re:Also good for gamers by MiniMike · · Score: 1

      Oh you kids and your new-fangled postal service! When I was a kid we would carve our next game move onto a rock and wait for the glacier to deliver it. And we liked it that way.

      Now where did my fiber go....

    7. Re:Also good for gamers by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      FPS via postal mail is possible.

      Get a copy of Steve Jacksons "FRAG" and Play by mail. in fact I bet you can find someone that does.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    8. Re:Also good for gamers by readin · · Score: 2, Funny

      You were lucky to have a glacier.

      We had to wait for continental drift.

      --
      I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
    9. Re:Also good for gamers by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      I'm playing Go with someone who has been dead for a couple of millennia. Does that count?

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  5. anime by SnarfQuest · · Score: 0

    If it means I can watch anime better, then it's worth it. Girls in maid uniforms operating giant robots rule!

    --
    Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
  6. Forget the lasers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...fire up the neutrino cannons!

  7. Millisecond trading by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Investing in shares for time spans of months is of general benefit to the economy, directing investment dollars to those best able to use them. Millisecond trading is of no benefit to anyone except millisecond traders, and any money they make is at the expense of people trying to do something productive. I propose that stock markets shift to a 'clock pulse' trading model: Trade bids for (e.g.) Apple are accumulated for (e.g.) 5 seconds and then all sales are resolved without regard for the order in which the bids arrived. This will cause no problems to real investors, but will rid us of the millisecond leaches.

    However, I am not experienced with the share market, so constructive criticism is welcome.

    --
    Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
    1. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually investing in shares doesn't really help the economy at all. When you buy a share the only person who benefits is the person who sold it to you. It helps the company not at all. The only reason companies care about their share price is because the upper management is appointed by people who currently own those shares and hope to get rich(er) by selling them one day.

    2. Re:Millisecond trading by 0olong · · Score: 1

      What you propose is irrelevant. The stock markets are operated by the same people that benefit from HFT. They have no incentive to change. If you don't like that, make your own market place. Of course, to do so requires a lot of money and power, which you probably don't have unless you're one of said people to begin with.

    3. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Cross-exchange arbitrage strategies are typically performed by servers located as close the the midpoint of the cabling between them as possible. Perhaps it's time to speculate on Alaskan rack space.

    4. Re:Millisecond trading by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 1

      IPOs and share issues help the economy, but nobody would buy these shares if there wasn't a way to recover the investment (hopefully with a profit) later. The only shares I own were purchased directly from the issuing company. (Which reminds me - it is over a year since I looked at their value. Crud - they're both doing horribly.)

      The share market also provides a mechanism for takeovers and mergers.

      --
      Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
    5. Re:Millisecond trading by 0123456 · · Score: 2

      When you buy a share the only person who benefits is the person who sold it to you. It helps the company not at all.

      While I generally agree that the stock market is mostly legalised gambling with trillions of dollars, the last company I worked for was only able to buy up a couple of its ailing competitors by a mix of cash and share swaps; had the price been significantly lower that would not have been possible because it would have required far too much cash.

    6. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > If you don't like that, make your own market place. Of course, to do so requires a lot of money and power[...]

      What about voting laws forbidding continuous quotation, and have just one daily or monthly fix ?

    7. Re:Millisecond trading by umghhh · · Score: 1

      I think GP's post was aimed at the leaches i.e. automatic trade machines and other such things used in so called High Frequency Trading which is a legalized fraud (as they can look in the future of other traders). There was interesting debate recently so you can have a look and see for yourself.

    8. Re:Millisecond trading by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      Outside of the occasional "flash crash", which by the way have been mostly handled by the SEC reversing sales and pushing the reset button pretty effectively, I see HFT as mostly harmless. It might not add any value to the enterprises being traded but it makes the market better for investors not worse over all. The more orders out there at any time means the better shot an actual investor has at having their order filled when the want it.

      Liquidity in the market is a good thing. I don't have to wonder if my shares will sell, I know I can push the button if selling and KNOW there will be buyers, or I can push buy and KNOW there will be sellers for the other side of the transaction.

      Less transactions would mean potentially having to wait for a buyer or seller (okay not really pre-HFT electronic trading was already pretty quick) or worse having my order actually move the market by driving up or down the bid, in order to find buyers or sellers strike prices. By having tons of HFT machines out there ready to pounce on any movement of a few hundredths of cent off the current ask, actual investors get a solid price book.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    9. Re:Millisecond trading by necro81 · · Score: 1

      When you buy a share the only person who benefits is the person who sold it to you. It helps the company not at all

      Is it not also possible that the person buying the share benefits as well? If a trade wasn't mutually beneficial (at least from the respective points of view of the people involved) then it wouldn't happen.

      Think of the alternative: a person invests in a company, but can't ever get their capital back unless the company buys them out. So either capital investment becomes slower and riskier than it was in medieval times, or else companies have to keep huge capital in reserve for whenever someone wants to get out (i.e., the company becomes a bank that just so happens to be engaged in some other business). It may seem obvious in retrospect, but corporations and stock markets were major innovations that have contributed to centuries of economic growth.

    10. Re:Millisecond trading by dean.collins · · Score: 1

      actually high frequency trading IS good for the economy it provides liquidity, eg you know you can pretty much always sell your shares as these HF traders have the orders ready for purchase etc.

    11. Re:Millisecond trading by AlecC · · Score: 1

      I agree with you in principle, though I accept faster rates than you seem to for underlying "value adding" transfers. I think corporate treasurers need to be able to do currency exchanges on a timescale of minutes in order to balance debits and credits across multinational groups. Providing liquidity behind such reasonable transactions is a good thing, so an automated system that takes a large lump of money from one corporate action and lays it off in ten different ways, evening out risk and spreading the price signal, is good, But such a system needs to run only perhaps ten or twenty times as fast as the underlying transactions. If real traders have a timescale of minutes, then a timescale of a few seconds, as you suggest, is adequate to provide all the added value that the markets can generate.

      What worries me about HFT is not the number of microtrades, but the fact that they are actively used to trade for profit. As long as it is pure risk sharing, the system is self damping. But when systems start actively trying to spot and anticipate trends, you put a positive feedback term into the system. And with HFT, such a positive feedback can spiral out of control before it can be stopped. Other posters have said that this doesn't matter: when it has started to happen on previous occasions, and automated stop and roll back has fixed the problem. I worry that thing that because it never has gone wrong, it never will go wrong has been the prelude to significant disasters in the past.

      --
      Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
    12. Re:Millisecond trading by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Investing in shares for time spans of months is of general benefit to the economy, directing investment dollars to those best able to use them. Millisecond trading is of no benefit to anyone except millisecond traders, and any money they make is at the expense of people trying to do something productive.

      With the sole exception of IPO's the only difference between holding a stock for a millisecond or for months is how long you hold the stock. In both cases you pay the guy you bought the stock from, and get paid by the guy you sell the stock to. In neither case does the company in question see even a thin dime of your money.
       

      However, I am not experienced with the share market, so constructive criticism is welcome.

      The problem isn't that you're inexperienced. The problem is that, like so many people, you're ignorant of how the market works and you've totally bought into the propaganda about "investing" in the stock market and the "evils" of millisecond traders. All trading (other than IPO's) is for the benefit of the traders - whether it's Goldman, Sachs or your grandpa selling off that Coke stock he's had in his IRA since the 80's.

    13. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Millisecond trading is of no benefit to anyone except millisecond traders."

      True. So then what does it mean that the bulk of derivatives trading is done by means of that high-frequency-trading, and that the amount of money going around in derivatives market is more than ten times that of the global economy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market

    14. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Her name is Bristol Palin.

    15. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ", I see HFT as mostly harmless. It might not add any value to the enterprises being traded but it makes the market better for investors not worse over all. "

      Wrong,if they are making BILLIONS, and they are, these billions are effectively theft from the market itself, and hence the actual investors. What they do is no different than hooking up an illegal 'siphon' line to the local power grid or natural gas works. They take from the system itself, provide no service or benefit, and drive prices up for the non leaches.

      "Liquidity in the market is a good thing. I don't have to wonder if my shares will sell, I know I can push the button if selling and KNOW there will be buyers, or I can push buy and KNOW there will be sellers for the other side of the transaction."

      First, we already have market makers for this. Second... Even if it were true, and it's not, it is not capitalism or free market! You don't have a divine right to sell something no one wants. The fact that you have a dog of a stock, and no wants to buy it is how it is suppose to work. It's a feature, not a bug. You need to lower your selling price until someone bites.

      "Less transactions would mean potentially having to wait for a buyer or seller (okay not really pre-HFT electronic trading was already pretty quick) or worse having my order actually move the market by driving up or down the bid, in order to find buyers or sellers strike prices. By having tons of HFT machines out there ready to pounce on any movement of a few hundredths of cent off the current ask, actual investors get a solid price book."

      Yes, you'd have to wait for a buyer or seller.... THAT IS HOW MARKETS WORK! Oh no.. It might actually move the price? Are you kidding me? That is exactly what should happen.. That is how markets price things for crying out loud. By having tons of HFT machines, things that only privileged and obscenely wealthy people have a chance at doing, 'pounce on any movement of a few hundredths of a cent' , they STEAL billions $$ hundredths of a cent at a time, millions of times a hour, every hour, every day the market is open.

      It is no different than stealing the change out of peoples pocket when after they buy something at a store Only instead of going to jail for theft they live lives of luxury that they did not earn, and spend millions for superpacs and lobbyists with other peoples money that they stole.

      HFT is theft. It does nothing good for the market at all.

    16. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What you said would make sense, if the basis for it were true.
      You talk as though companies do not retain any stock after an IPO. They do. Many continue to have controlling interest. Many give stock to employees as part of their pay package. Any change in stock price changes what they do with their stock.. Buy backs, sells to generate investment $$, recruitment of people, etc.

      Also, 'holding' a stock for a millisecond, because you gamed the system using servers, locations, and algorithms not available to the market as whole, is done for one reason.
      To see the orders the 'real' investors make, buy a millisecond before they can, and then sell it to the original actual investors for a fraction of a cent more than they would have bought it anyway from a true market.
      It does not help with pricing, it does not benefit the market itself.
      It is no different than theft. If you make a huge mental stretch you could maybe compare it to ticket scalping.... Something also almost universally illegal.

      HFT is for scumbags who are too lazy to actually invest to make money and instead steal it.

    17. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you have it backwards. If you can always sell, you wont lower your price. Meaning the market price is by definition incorrect. Also, the problem is not as much 'HF' human traders. It is machines that do thousands of trades every minute, finding the buys, executing a millisecond ahead of the actual buyer, and then selling it for a fraction of a cent more... Doing NOTHING for overall liquidity anyway.

      No actual investment in business, distorting pricing, reducing gains for actual investors, system feed back caused market disruptions (flash crash)....

      How is that a good thing for a market?

    18. Re:Millisecond trading by readin · · Score: 1

      Also, 'holding' a stock for a millisecond, because you gamed the system using servers, locations, and algorithms not available to the market as whole, is done for one reason.
      To see the orders the 'real' investors make, buy a millisecond before they can, and then sell it to the original actual investors for a fraction of a cent more than they would have bought it anyway from a true market.
      It does not help with pricing, it does not benefit the market itself.
      It is no different than theft. If you make a huge mental stretch you could maybe compare it to ticket scalping.... Something also almost universally illegal.

      Except that scalpers actually do help set a more correct price based on the market. Seeing a game or concert is worth more to some people than to others. Scalpers make sure they people who are willing to pay the most to see the game or concert are the people who actually get to see it. (The morality of the fact that "willing to pay the most" sometimes means "has the most money" rather than "wants to see it the most" is a separate question.)

      I think the scalpers help society far more than the millisecond traders do.

      --
      I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
    19. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True, if the scalpers were not causing artificial shortages. And they do. Usually of the most coveted seats.
      Also since they are merely profiting by using such tactics as paying off ticket office people, kick backs to venue owners, etc they are, just like HFT, making money from the market itself with tactics not available to the average ticket buyer. The original seller does not get any share of the higher price, it distorts the open market for the tickets (though they are priced by the artist/promoter, not a true market).
      Also, just like HFT they discourage average players from buying, further distorting the price and volume sold/bought.
      Who wants to spend a few hours+ in line for tickets when the person payed to stand at the front of the line gives the ticket booth operator a wink and a smile (and a envelop of cash later) and buys up the front 5 rows center in one block, turns around and says "Front row tickets $900 each! Get em' here!"
      "Fuck it. I'm staying home!" Says the fans... reducing seats sold, reducing revenue, increasing ticket prices next time, etc. To the detriment of the fans and the artist.
      The only winners are the scalper, and the slime balls he pays off. Everyone else looses.
      Just like HFT algorithm shops..

    20. Re:Millisecond trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you forgot we're talking about millisecond trade here, i.e. the trader holds the shares for only a few milliseconds. Now think again: what does this add to liquidity? If I can't sell my share now, could I sell it in the next 10ms? I don't think so. HFT doesn't change that because HFT traders only buy when the know they can sell. It doesn't add any liquidity. Zero, zilch, nada.

    21. Re:Millisecond trading by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Investing in shares for time spans of months is of general benefit to the economy,

      Many would argue that investing for periods of less than a [report cycle] is simply going to encourage [Management] to play to the short-term crowd.

      My employers have managed about 8% year-on-year growth for the 20 years that I've been an employee. But if we'd been a publicly-traded company, we'd probably have been shut down and lost the personnel asset several times in that period. 1.08^^20 = 4.7 ; good enough?

      No, probably not for the sharks. I must remember to use power tools to sodomise the next shark I gain control of. Painfully. Without consent. Using my definition of "shark".

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  8. Yay self-destruction by billcopc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders"

    In other words, these cables will help machines ruin the global economy.

    A part of me is kind-of glad they're speeding this up. We all know the system is destined to break, so the sooner that happens, the sooner people will wake the fuck up and demand change.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
    1. Re:Yay self-destruction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Stock market doesn't mean shit about the economy. It's not a "good economy" when stocks go up--it's just inflation.

    2. Re:Yay self-destruction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's funny. But idiot's like the GP don't understand that speculators like me make money up and down in the market. I don't care one way or the other, I can make money in either direction.

    3. Re:Yay self-destruction by isorox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's funny. But idiot's like the GP don't understand that speculators like me make money up and down in the market. I don't care one way or the other, I can make money in either direction.

      For every cent you make, someone else loses it. You're like the sad people in vegas that spend their lives camped on the slots, the only difference is you gamble with other peoples money.

    4. Re:Yay self-destruction by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      using hundreds of millions dollars worth of work time for it means shit for economy though..

      and probably the op was referring to stocks getting prices not based on their worth, but by algorithms which trade with other algorithms which trade based on what other people trade and not based on what the actual company worth is or is going to be.

      who gives a shit though? also automatic traders will have serves in japan if they're trading in japan so this(new cabling) isn't really going to matter at all to them. this will matter if you want to skype to your friend in japan/china though. skype and chinese players digging for wow gold. that's who it matters to.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    5. Re:Yay self-destruction by bgarcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For every cent you make, someone else loses it.

      Yes, because there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world in all of history, and nobody ever increases society's wealth, correct?

      --
      I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
    6. Re:Yay self-destruction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, most assuredly no leeching micro-sec stock trader ever increased anything but his own personal wealth

    7. Re:Yay self-destruction by Wildclaw · · Score: 2

      Yes, because there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world in all of history, and nobody ever increases society's wealth, correct?

      Except that we weren't talking about wealth, we were talking about currency. And excluding stabilizing inflation mechanics, yes the currency is basically fixed.

      To actually increase wealth, you need to have people being able and wanting to spend money on actual wealth refinement, and people able and willing to provide said work.

      And if you want to know why so much of economic theory is bullshit, you just have to look at how much of it ignores if people actually are able/willing/wanting to spend/work.

    8. Re:Yay self-destruction by petermgreen · · Score: 2

      also automatic traders will have serves in japan if they're trading in japan so this(new cabling) isn't really going to matter at all to them

      The traders it matters to are those engaging in arbitrage.

      Many things (stocks, commodities, derivitives whatever) are traded on more than one market. Each market develops a price for the thing. Prices in the different markets are held reasonablly close by people engaging in arbitrage (buying in one market and selling in another). The lower you latency you have to BOTH markets the lower the risk that prices will shift to an unfavorable position while you are in the middle of executing your arbitrage.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    9. Re:Yay self-destruction by Ash+Vince · · Score: 1

      For every cent you make, someone else loses it.

      Yes, because there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world in all of history, and nobody ever increases society's wealth, correct?

      Some people increase societies wealth but that does not come from buying and selling shares, it comes from people at the bottom actually making stuff. Of course some types of selling shares (like IPO's) does help the people at the bottom do this by facilitating investment.

      The utterly parasitic stuff is crap like futures trading where you are effectively just gambling on whether a share will go up or down over a particular period. You basically agree to purchase or sell a quantity of shares at some specified point in the future at a particular price. This is rally nothing more than glorifies gambling but it is popular as it how you can make the most (or lose the most) money. In a recession short selling (betting a stock will go down) is often pretty easy to get right.

      This also allows you to bet the stock will drop over a particular period then spend most of that time trying to spread bad rumours about the companies projected profits or how bad their business model is, if the rumours stick you can make a fortune even if they ultimately turn out to be false as your option date will have passed by the time the company announces its profits or quells the markets fears.

      Going long is betting a stock will go up over a particular period and that is far less parasitic in my opinion, but I still see it as less constructive than actually buying the shares in a company outright and waiting for a dividend or just selling them when they have gone up in value.

      --
      I dont read /. to RTFA, I read /. to offend people in ignorance.
    10. Re:Yay self-destruction by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Associated but not correlated. Those concerned would lose money anyway it's only a question of who buys the stock (or whatever) at the new price first.

      Companies and thus national societies benefit from investment but that being said there should be only real assets at stake not virtual ones resold however many times over.

      With regard to the article:
      1) Who gets the oil found en route?
      2) "...with a smattering of branches that will provide high-speed internet access to a handful of Arctic Circle communities. " - naturally cooled datacenters anyone?
      3) "The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders" - I certainly hope my tax dollars aren't paying for this. Also, fuck the algorithmic stock market traders generally speaking.
      4) "If a ship were to drag an anchor across the wrong patch of seabed, billions of people could wake up to find themselves either completely disconnected from the internet or surfing with dial-up-like speeds." - True only if the Internet routed using static routes with no OAM, no BFD, no physical interface down detection. Real world BGP will reroute to the paths in use today.
      5) Did I mention fuck the algorithmic traders?
      6) Profit! (obligatory)

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  9. Hundreds of meters below the surface? by Compaqt · · Score: 2

    Surface of the water or of the seabed?

    I'd say you wouldn't need more than a few meters below the seabed.

    On the other hand, since the depth of the ocean may vary considerably, what sense does it even make to say they're burying it hundreds of meters below the surface of the water?

    That's like specifying underground land line depth in feet below the mesosphere.

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    1. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      Given that north american cellphone rates are based on the stratosphere that's not a bad idea.

    2. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by bryan1945 · · Score: 1

      I was kind of wondering the same thing-
      "That said, the cables will still have to be laid hundreds of meters below the surface to avoid the tails of roving icebergs."
      I thought all ocean cables were put on the seabed floor, which generally are fairly deep.

      --
      Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
    3. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Because the surface is where the hazards float: Shipping and iceburgs. The most dangerous thing you'll find on the bottom are sharks, that are rather fond of cables. It's the magnetic field from the repeater power current - screws with the shark's field sense, makes them confused.

    4. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by BeaverCleaver · · Score: 1

      Um, what TV show told you that?

      --
      sustainable living
    5. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Informative

      A few seconds of googling confirms that sharks do indeed bite cables. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DUJ/is_9_105/ai_n27568414/

    6. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by BeaverCleaver · · Score: 1

      Ah, thanks. Do undersea fibre-optic cables use repeaters? And is the power for the repeaters run down the same cable?

      --
      sustainable living
    7. Re:Hundreds of meters below the surface? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      They do. All-optical repeaters using erbium-doped fiber, or something of that nature. The power is supplied via a single conductor, which doubles as one of the (many) protective layers. One end holds the conductor above earth potential, the other holds it below, and the repeaters run off the resulting current.

  10. Not much ship traffic but if something does happen by erice · · Score: 1

    Making repairs is a going to be major undertaking.

    Looking at the map, latency could be reduced further by routing via the North Pole. Of course that makes the troubles with laying and repairing the cables even worse.

  11. Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by unixisc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why not just leave the latencies alone? It's not like one gets cumulative latencies - the 230ms is constant in time.

    I guess the Bering Sea will be the crosspoint b/w the Siberia-Alaska railline that the Russkies want to build, and this cable that runs from the Arctic to the South. Probably run it along the Kamchatka peninsula coastline, then across to Sakhalin, Japan, then on to Taiwan, Philippines and along the S China Sea to Singapore on one end, and on the other, from Philippines, run it along to Papua New Guinea and then Australia and New Zealand. From Singapore, they could run a line to India, and get enhanced bandwith in that country.

    1. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      You get the added benefit of not routing your economy through the NSA.

    2. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by EdIII · · Score: 2

      As if the UK is going to be any better? If it is a race to fascist totalitarianism than the UK is currently leading with the US and Australia trailing behind....

    3. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by Custard+Horse · · Score: 1

      Maybe, maybe not - but one fewer snooping parties cannot be a bad thing can it?

    4. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by blackicye · · Score: 1

      Posting to remove misclicked mod, oops.

    5. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by necro81 · · Score: 1

      The length of the cable is significantly shorter (by thousands of km), therefore the latency is pretty much guaranteed to be shorter. I don't think latency is as big a motivation as some would believe, but reduced latency is always a plus.

    6. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      The NSA does not own canada yet.

      At least the republicans in Congress have not voted on annexing Canada, I think they are arguing over earmarks right now.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    7. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Hiberinia Atlantic is curently Surveying a Cable being between Halifax NS and London. It will Save 7ms over the existing route from New York - the high frequency traders will pay a premium to be 7ms faster.

      Saving 60ms - thats Huge.

    8. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by readin · · Score: 1

      The last thing the Republican would want to do is bring in a few million more socialist voters who have difficulty with the concept of freedomhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Canada#Human_Rights_Commissions.

      --
      I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
    9. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Why not just leave the latencies alone?"/i>

      Because

      "The latency drop will mainly benefit algorithmic stock market traders" - which trade literally at intervals of milliseconds.

    10. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You really couldn't come up with an even slightly relevant comment?

    11. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      It's not like one gets cumulative latencies - the 230ms is constant in time.

      Actually, you do. Consider HTTP:

      • Client requests the page text.
      • (latency x)
      • Client gets the response and requests the JavaScript code.
      • (latency x)
      • Client gets the JavaScript code and runs it. The code requests several images.
      • (latency x)
      • The images are displayed.

      Total effective latency for the images is 3x. Latency is very much cumulative when one request depends on another. It is only non-cumulative when you are solely using the link for batched downloads. This is why satellite and cellular Internet service can border on unusable for some tasks.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    12. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      And can one route through Norway? Or Russia?

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    13. Re:Expanding bandwidth, ignoring latencies. by JBaustian · · Score: 1

      Perhaps if the fascist totalitarian party in control of the regime in the US, is defeated in the November election, things might change?

  12. Neutrinos by mbone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you want to cut latency, communicate through the Earth with neutrinos. If we could just get the bit rate up some (from the current 0.1 bps), you could communicate to anywhere on Earth with a one way time of 40 milliseconds.

    1. Re:Neutrinos by bryan1945 · · Score: 1

      If the 0.1bps is faster than light, what is the practical real-time bandwidth?

      --
      Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
    2. Re:Neutrinos by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That would be from anywhere on Earth with a high intensity particle accelerator to anywhere on Earth with a huge particle detector buried hundreds of metres underground.

      --
      Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
    3. Re:Neutrinos by erice · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's true as long as it doesn't take any time to detect and decode a signal sent with neutrinos. Neutrinos are not electrons and trying to extract a signal from them is challenging enough that, in the near term, the computational latency would likely dwarf the transit time.

    4. Re:Neutrinos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Slashdot definitely needs new moderation options. I suggest these from Mythbusters: Confirmed, Plausible and Busted. Your post is +5 Busted! ;-)

    5. Re:Neutrinos by InterGuru · · Score: 1

      It's already been done.

      The first ever transmission of information using a beam of neutrinos has be achieved by physicists in the US. The demonstration is highly preliminary – it operates at less than 1 bit/s – and will require a lot of development before it can have any useful application. Nevertheless, the work proves a concept that physicists have been contemplating for years and that could ultimately be used in situations where other means of communications are not feasible.

      .

    6. Re:Neutrinos by timeOday · · Score: 2

      Wow, I wonder if anybody is exploring this for communicating with or detecting submarines.

  13. $600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by hoggoth · · Score: 4, Funny

    The higher estimate of $1.5 billion is contingent on using Monster Cables.

    --
    - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
    1. Re:$600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Such a ridiculous figure to spend on infrastructure!!

      That amount could support a middle eastern war for almost a week!

    2. Re:$600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by 0123456 · · Score: 3, Funny

      The higher estimate of $1.5 billion is contingent on using Monster Cables.

      Wall Street can afford to buy the best.

    3. Re:$600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...Monster Cables...

      As long as it's the Godzilla one.

    4. Re:$600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by alienzed · · Score: 1, Funny

      Purchased at Best Buy no doubt.

      --
      Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
    5. Re:$600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dwight: With the energy needed to keep Meredith alive, we could power a small fan for 2 days.

      You made me lol.

    6. Re:$600 million or $1.5 billion? Depends by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      Actually I had assumed Denon...

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  14. Posting doesn't match up with the speed of light by NumberField · · Score: 1

    The entire circumference of the globe is about 24000 miles, which takes light 128ms (in a vacuum). The article's claim that the current time to send a packet from London to Tokyo is 230ms therefore seems doubtful. In this time, light can go 42840 miles in a vacuum -- or nearly twice around the the entire distance around the world (24091 miles). Light in a fiber is about 35% slower, but this still leaves time for 37177 miles.

  15. 76.58 ms claimed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if you actually go to ROTAKS site at http://www.polarnetproject.ru/project.html , you'll see that in addition to Arctic cable they are also building a ground network with 77ms from London to Tokyo. Oh wait, the traffic will go through the evil Soviet Russia...

  16. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Because internet traffic isn't converted or delayed while it goes around the world.

  17. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by ModernGeek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, but the packets have to be routed, and that takes time, too.

    --
    Sig: I stole this sig.
  18. Parasitic trading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Parasitic trading is tolerated not desired. It diverts profit from investors into traders, reducing the number of investors in a market by reducing the profits they can make and thus reducing the capital available to companies. Fewer companies go to the stock market to obtain capital as a result.

    So yeh, you basically understood it correctly, however it has little to do with 'share' trading, rather derivatives.

    The derivatives market far outweighs the shares market these days. These are pure bets stuff like: "derivative X pays out k(Z-W) for each cent asset Z rises above (K+U+Y)/3.... ladies and gentlemen place your bets I will spin the wheel". It's a bookies pure bet.

    Unlike a proper bookies, Wallstreet pays out more money that it receives, so banks around the world place bets on these derivatives in order to make money. The banks and Wallstreet can afford to buy cables, it's pocket change since the underlying asset may only be a shopping mall worth $50 million, but the derivatives derived from that can be worth billions since it's a virtual asset with no real value beyond the fact it pays out a profit.

    In a good year (when they take more money than they pay out) Wallstreet awards themselves big fat bonus's, in a bad year, the Fed extends them more credit against smaller assets. So overall, because they pay out more than they take in, their borrowing leverage increases. Today it's something like 30:1 or more.

    The Fed says 'the loans were good we got all the money back', but that's a lie. They print money against 'Linden dollars', Wallstreet buys assets that pay out enough to cover the interest with that cash, Wallstreet borrows against those new assets, and pays back the money borrowed against the 'Linden dollars'. The Fed says 'hey look we got all our 'Linden loans' back', Wallstreet gets to own a real asset, everyone holding dollars has been silently robbed by inflation.

    But hey - faster internet! /rant

    1. Re:Parasitic trading by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      Parasitic trading is tolerated not desired. It diverts profit from investors into traders, reducing the number of investors in a market by reducing the profits they can make and thus reducing the capital available to companies. Fewer companies go to the stock market to obtain capital as a result.

      Once a company IPOs, that's pretty much all the capital they get. And the bank handling the IPO pays the company to do so at a fixed price. Now, a company may choose to only sell say, 10% of itself, holding onto 90% of itself for times it may need extra money.

      At which point, it becomes tricky because to sell a share, you need a buyer - if the bid-ask spread is too high, the shares are thinly traded and being able to sell a share for what you want gets a LOT harder.

      E.g., XYZ company owns 1,000 shares in itself. Its last trade price was $5. But the bid-ask is huge, say, bid $4, ask $6. If XYX needed $1000 now, it would have to sell 250 shares at $4 and lose a quarter of its holdings in itself. They could offer 200 shares at $5/share (lowering bid-ask since it's bid $4, ask $5), but there's no guarantees they would sell (i.e., low liquidity - it's hard to convert shares into cash and vice-versa). Heck, the person bidding $4/share may not even want 250 shares. They may want say, 10. At which point 10 shares are sold, and XYX still needs to raise $960 and hope the next guy in line is bidding close to $4.

      HFT does lower the margin - purely because they're trying to put in bids higher than the current bid, and asks lower than current ask because they're trying to make money on the fractions. But it also means that the next bidders in line are more likely closer to the last trade price (so XYZ may have to sell shares at say, $4.95, $4.90, $4.85, ... until it reaches $1000).

      Sure the person who asks $6/share gets screwed because they're forced to sell at say, $5.05 rather than $6. Except they're also more likely to move stock at $5.05 - they could very well be asking $6 and fail to sell a single share while everyone else is buying and selling XYZ simply because of the lower ask.

      Thinly traded stocks are especially annoying to hold because of this - there's not enough liquidity in the market to be able to liquidate those stocks except at substantially discounted rates.

    2. Re:Parasitic trading by jpmorgan · · Score: 2

      Sigh, you have a very incorrect understanding of derivatives. First off,

      These are pure bets stuff like: "derivative X pays out k(Z-W) for each cent asset Z rises above (K+U+Y)/3

      No derivative works that way. Derivatives are, for the most part, options that allow you to make a trade in the future at a predetermined price today. For example, I can buy a put option which gives me the option of selling some shares 6 months from now at a preset price. Of course, it's not just shares. Futures are most heavily traded on commodities (wheat, oil) and currency (the US dollar, the euro, the yen).

      You're right that they can be used for gambling. A speculator can buy and sell options, for example, and take the risk of market movements. But the reason why derivatives are profitable for traders is because they're buying risk for a premium. That means somebody else is selling risk.

      Let's say I live in the US, and I want to sell my product in Europe. The revenue I gain in Europe will be in Euros, but it's not fiscally sensible to repatriate those funds constantly: it's cheaper to keep my european revenue in Euros, and repatriate it once a year, or once a quarter. But if the Euro suddenly tanks, I could stand to lose an enormous amount of money. If I'm a small business and my European business is big enough, that could be a big enough disruption to my cashflow to bankrupt my company. So I buy Euro put options... they'll allow me to reconvert my Euros into Dollars at today's exchange rate, regardless of what happens on the currency markets. I'll let a bank, with billions in assets, take the risk. That's a service, no different from insurance.

      Hell, even if I'm not a small company, it's still worthwhile. Even if my Euro exposure is small, accounting for the long-term risk is complicated and requires an in-depth understanding of the European and international economy. If I'm just welling widgets, I probably don't have that expertise in house, but large currency speculators do. The currency speculator that I'll buy the options from will certainly be making a decent profit margin on the trade, but they can hedge their cashflow more efficiently than me, since they have a better understanding of the risk.

      It's not just currency either. The futures market has long been exploited by agriculture to insulate farmers from price variations. It takes months to grow wheat. If the wheat price collapses between now and harvest time, I could be out a lot of money. The futures market lets me push that risk onto speculators, and let me - the farmer - worry about what I'm good at: farming.

      Or let's say I'm interested in Apple's new dividend, but I'm not so confident in their stock price. A stock price captures both current revenues, and expectations of growth... if I think Apple's not likely to continue their revenue growth, I can buy their stock to get the current income stream, and use call and put options to insulate my investment from the fluctuations in the stock price. I won't make any money if Apple's stock continues to go up, but I also wont lose any money if the stock goes down.

      Derivatives aren't gambling. They're insurance. Saying we should ban derivatives because they're gambling is as stupid as religious types who say insurance is a sin.

    3. Re:Parasitic trading by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      You don't need HFT to have market markers.

      If you think a stock is undervalued you buy some of it. If you think it is overvalued you sell some of it.

      In your example there are people selling at $6, and buying at $4. If I think the intrinsic value is $5 then I can put out buys at 4.50 and sells at 5.50 and be the first person anybody goes to to make a trade, and make a profit on every one (assuming the real value really is $5).

    4. Re:Parasitic trading by dj245 · · Score: 1

      Unlike a proper bookies, Wallstreet pays out more money that it receives, so banks around the world place bets on these derivatives in order to make money.

      Maybe I don't follow this completely, but I take issue with this. Wall street is basically revenue neutral. For every winner there is a loser, and for every dollar in, that money has to come from somewhere because no wealth is created.

      You can argue that value is created, because you can buy something which you value but which somebody else doesn't value so much. The net result of that is an increase in value. For example, suppose I have a Kitkat bar and you have a Hersey bar. I hate Kitkats (in this example anyway) and you don't like Hersey bars. If we had to assign a value to the bars we had, it might be $0.10 each bar, because that might be the price we would pay for candy bars we don't like. But, I happen to love Hersey bars, and you like Kitkat bars. So we trade and the value is increased. I might happily pay $1.00 for a Hersey bar, and similarly you might value Kitkats at $1.20. However, the assets are the same. If they were worth $0.75 before each before, that is still what they are worth.

      I don't agree that all this derivatives shenanigans increases either value or wealth. For anybody betting on a derivative, someone must be betting against it. And it doesn't increase value because often the person betting for something doesn't realize that someone else has silly derivatives and/or is actually influencing the company to make sure their derivative pays out. There is no value-increasing trade. That, I think is why we are in the mess we are in.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
  19. Why focus on Trading when we talk about latency? by grelmar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are so many internet applications where low latency is a win. VOIP, remote systems management, two-way graphical applications that for various reasons are location sensitive (there's more of these types of apps then you realize - think proprietary software that would be either illegal or economically dangerous to physically locate outside of NA or the Eurozone, including geophysical analysis software for mining/oil exploration, among other things)...

    There are lots of scientific applications where latency is critical.

    But oh, that would be difficult to discuss. Much easier to relate everything to a vilify-able application.

    Come on, for once, talk about the benefits of a mega infrastructure project.

    Oh, right... Slashdot. My bad. That's just not what we do here.

  20. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by doshell · · Score: 2

    You also have to account for the queueing delay at the routers, which are store-and-forward devices. That said, I really have no clue whether 230ms is a realistic number.

    --
    Score: i, Imaginary
  21. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by currently_awake · · Score: 1

    You forgot amplifier latency and modem latency. Also packet acknowledgment.

  22. Still can't win call-in shows by acidradio · · Score: 1

    No matter what they do to fix this, no matter what they do to reduce the latency I NEVER win any radio call-in shows. You would think this would help me be caller #25 but it never works. It's always busy or I just don't make that number :(

    1. Re:Still can't win call-in shows by Sneeka2 · · Score: 1

      Well, soon you'll be able to try your luck on Arctic call-in shows. I'd say the chances should be pretty decent there.

      --
      Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
    2. Re:Still can't win call-in shows by Muad'Dave · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the prize would be 100 lbs of whale blubber or some such.

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
  23. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Uk, many severs (US base), water, loops around natural and unnatural problems, Japan (US base), many severs.
    Even if the UK and Japan side offer real dedicated vs best effort, you still have to move around both regions before you hit pure new optical.
    Peering, telco deals can all send your packets for small or long loops before they get to fancy new projects.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  24. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If it travels through USA, it seems reasonable:

    $ ping visitfinland.ru
    PING visitfinland.ru (109.70.163.2): 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=199.910 ms
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=198.688 ms
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=203.657 ms
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=202.524 ms
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=202.258 ms
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=201.571 ms
    64 bytes from 109.70.163.2: icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=200.485 ms
    ^C
    --- visitfinland.ru ping statistics ---
    7 packets transmitted, 7 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
    round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 198.688/201.299/203.657/1.579 ms

    Those pings were sent from California.

  25. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Sneeka2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I really have no clue whether 230ms is a realistic number.

    I currently get a 431ms Japan <> UK ping on a pretty mediocre Japanese ADSL line in the country side.
    So, yes, that's realistic.

    --
    Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
  26. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Light doesn't flow cleanly through fiber, it bounces around *a lot*. There is also the delay of routing, and as you mentioned, the lower speed of light in glass.

  27. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Latency is to-and-from. Also, the path isn't direct. The sea floor is first mapped, and the route is planned to avoid natural obstacles. An example would be New York to L.A. is 2443 miles, but driving distance (according to Google Maps) is 2790 miles, a 13% difference. Ocean floors have mountain ranges, cliffs, tectonic features etc... that all need to be avoided.

    The cable being layed is generally a one-size-fits-all design once it's in deep water, what with it being hundreds of miles long. It's cheaper to map and avoid obstacles, then design a cable that can cope.

  28. Couldn't we ban them from using it? by Casandro · · Score: 0

    I mean I'm all for cutting network latency, but do we have to give it to banks so they will destroy our lives?

    1. Re:Couldn't we ban them from using it? by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

      A 1ms reduction in communication time can be worth millions of dollars for stock traders in Britain. If you know about a change in stock prices on a foreign market faster than your competitors then you can react quicker. You might be thinking that 1ms isn't enough time to matter but because most trading is computer based these days 1ms can make a HUGE difference because computers are doing the trading.

      Almost the entire cost of this cable is already paid for and it's stock brokers that are paying for it precisely because that reduction in latency can make them more effective than their competitors. Be happy that they are paying for infrastructure that everyone else will be using.

    2. Re:Couldn't we ban them from using it? by Casandro · · Score: 1

      It's not like stock brokers somehow do something productive. All they _can_ do is to suck out money from somewhere or sometime else, sometimes even causing a _lot_ of damage doing so. So if we close the stock markets, or at least heavily regulate them, we'd all live better. Trim down the financial sector to the parts which actually benefit the population.

    3. Re:Couldn't we ban them from using it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "this cable"? The article refers to 3 different cables, and all three are being laid by different companies. I'd like to see a citation for your claim that "Almost the entire cost of this cable is already paid for and it's stock brokers that are paying for it".

      It looks like you are talking out of your ass, good sir.

  29. out of context excerpt by alienzed · · Score: 1

    "billions of people could wake up" well that's certainly a reason NOT to do this.

    --
    Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
  30. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by mr_walrus · · Score: 1

    fibre optic repeaters (amplifiers) had huge latencies (relatively speaking.)

  31. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by MiG82au · · Score: 1

    You must live in a vacuum if you've never pinged overseas and gotten a result longer than 2*distance/c. Also amazing is that you're not able to imagine why going through *at least* a half a dozen routers and many repeaters would slow the signal down.

  32. In case you ever wondered how a sea cable is fixed by bedouin · · Score: 3, Informative

    See this.

  33. Re:Why focus on Trading when we talk about latency by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 2

    The only ones willing to pay a premium for the low latency are the HFT folks. I dont think, the masses who use VOIP, choose their ISP based on the ping time to UK (most go for the obvious bandwidth). I agree, it is a win for a lot of people, but it is paid for (atleast the initial costs) by High Frequency Traders.

  34. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by isorox · · Score: 1

    I really have no clue whether 230ms is a realistic number.

    I currently get a 431ms Japan <> UK ping on a pretty mediocre Japanese ADSL line in the country side.
    So, yes, that's realistic.

    I imagine the route goes via the highly-congested south-east asia area, or possibly even via the U.S.

    London to Tokyo is about 6,000 miles via Sibera. Via undersea cables through the red sea it's nearer 12,000 miles. Via the states it's also about 12,000 miles.

    I haven't got any private lines to Tokyo, but my line to Singapore runs about 220ms IIRC.

  35. Re:Not much ship traffic but if something does hap by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

    One could repair them with a modified old sovjet era submarine.

    --
    Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
  36. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These pings were sent from the east coast of Canada...

    cloud@cloud00:~$ ping visitfinland.ru
    PING visitfinland.ru (109.70.163.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from ip2-163.seclan.com (109.70.163.2): icmp_req=1 ttl=56 time=133 ms
    64 bytes from ip2-163.seclan.com (109.70.163.2): icmp_req=2 ttl=56 time=135 ms
    64 bytes from ip2-163.seclan.com (109.70.163.2): icmp_req=3 ttl=56 time=135 ms
    64 bytes from ip2-163.seclan.com (109.70.163.2): icmp_req=4 ttl=56 time=133 ms
    64 bytes from ip2-163.seclan.com (109.70.163.2): icmp_req=5 ttl=56 time=134 ms
    64 bytes from ip2-163.seclan.com (109.70.163.2): icmp_req=6 ttl=56 time=133 ms

  37. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

    Not much in the way of amplifier latency. They are all-optical.

  38. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by gl4ss · · Score: 1

    and distance between tokyo and london (short) is just 5900 miles.

    (but of course the cable doesn't go direct.. just saying that circumference of the globe isn't that useful to use in that)

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  39. Hosting @ Tokyo? by coder111 · · Score: 1

    I am slightly confused. Unless you want to do arbitrage between London Stock Exchange & Tokyo Stock Exchange, why not host your algorithmic trading servers at Tokyo? I think these days stock exchanges themselves offer hosting for lower ping times...

    Anyway, lower latency is always good, I don't really care if it's going to be used for HFT or not.

    --Coder

    1. Re:Hosting @ Tokyo? by bjourne · · Score: 1

      Because you want to do arbitrages between London and Tokyo? :) That's basically all HFT is about - finding which two exchanges values a stock differently and cashing in on the difference.

      --
      Football Odds
    2. Re:Hosting @ Tokyo? by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      There's a small hitch with that plan:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_market_opening_times

    3. Re:Hosting @ Tokyo? by Forbman · · Score: 1

      LSE & TSE are both 24-hr electronic trading exchanges, right?

  40. As someone working in Australia... by dackroyd · · Score: 2

    with a head office in the UK, I think this is awesome.

    Currently the packets between Oz and the UK either go through central Asia, where there is massive packet loss, or they go the long way round - across the Pacific, across the USA and then across the Atlantic.

    The new route will probably shave 40ms off the ping time from Oz to the UK as well as be pretty reliable - and also not subject to US data monitoring.

    --
    "Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
    1. Re:As someone working in Australia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      curious... i'm in new zealand.. and the route usually goes via the US... 265 to 280 msec. but the route to osaka japan is around 140 msec.. this new route is going to be 170 from somewhere in japan.. not sure where.. but down to 170 msec. which means it should be higher latency

      that said our routes go via australia.. which is 25 msec to sydney.. maybe northern parts of australia to uk could be lower?

      asian latency from here can be pretty random.. some can go through the US... and sometimes the US is faster.. although japan/singapore/hong kong seem to go more direct usually.. pakistan etc often has terrible routing.

    2. Re:As someone working in Australia... by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

      "...and also not subject to US data monitoring."

      Do you really imagine that the US and UK don't work together on this?

      --
      blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  41. More coffee by docilespelunker · · Score: 1

    Any latency gain from a shorter cable will be dwarfed by the random caffeine deficiency induced latencies of the traders.

    Surely swapping in a stronger brand of coffee would be vastly cheaper!

  42. Re:In case you ever wondered how a sea cable is fi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Good video here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qTk5WNq9E

  43. Re:Why focus on Trading when we talk about latency by MMC+Monster · · Score: 2

    Tele-medicine.

    Or, more to the point: Tele-surgery.

    --
    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  44. Besides helping a few traders.. by Koos · · Score: 1

    There is also the good side that this will bring serious bandwidth to places where dialup over satellite is currently the way to get a bit of Internet. Scarcely populated places in northern Canada and Alaska will appreciate the chances of a bit more bandwidth!

    --
    The Virtual Bookcase: book reviews
    1. Re:Besides helping a few traders.. by Megane · · Score: 1

      Scarcely populated places in northern Canada and Alaska will appreciate the chances of a bit more bandwidth!

      ...whilst crushing the hopes of all the people talking about how this new link will not be intercepted by US agencies. Not that it helps that the "Northwest Passage" areas tend to be the barely- to un-populated areas.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  45. Re:In case you ever wondered how a sea cable is fi by vinlud · · Score: 1

    But how do you pull up a cable from the ocean floor when it has all kinds of other cables crossing it?

    --
    Repeat after me: We are all individuals
  46. Everything you wanted to know about undersea cable by hackertourist · · Score: 1

    Neal Stephenson's essay Mother Earth Mother Board

  47. Deja vu! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Isn't this the plot to Cryptonomicon? Epiphyte(2) Corp., anyone?

  48. Latency? We don't need no stinkin' latency by hemo_jr · · Score: 1

    Using neutrinos is positively slow compared to quantum entanglement communication. This would eliminate latency completely and allow the masters of the universe to do their trades even faster than OPERA thought their neutrinos were going..

  49. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What does the speed of light in a vacuum have to do with the speed of light in fiber optic media? How about the latency added by routers (and buffering)? Think McFly!

  50. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately fibers don't run in straight lines from place to place and there are processing/routing overheads too. Even so based on my own test it seems the authors of TFA are making the newbie mistake of confusing one way latency with round trip time (round trip time ~= 2x one way latency).

    Tracing route to www.jp [210.157.1.134]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

        1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gw-umain.ee.umist.ac.uk [130.88.118.250]
        2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gw-rh.its.manchester.ac.uk [130.88.250.14]
        3 12 ms 1 ms 1 ms gw-uom-rh.its.manchester.ac.uk [130.88.250.78]
        4 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gw-man-rh.netnw.net.uk [194.66.26.105]
        5 10 ms 1 ms 1 ms so-1-2-0.leed-sbr1.ja.net [146.97.42.169]
        6 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms ae12.manc-sbr1.ja.net [146.97.33.157]
        7 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms ae1.man11.ip4.tinet.net [77.67.94.169]
        8 168 ms 168 ms 175 ms xe-4-1-0.sjc12.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.186.205]
        9 159 ms 159 ms 159 ms pacnet-gw.ip4.tinet.net [77.67.68.234]
      10 277 ms 277 ms 277 ms gi1-0-0.cr2.nrt1.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.58]
      11 270 ms 270 ms 270 ms ge-2-1-0-0.gw3.nrt5.asianetcom.net [202.147.0.182]
      12 279 ms 279 ms 279 ms GMO-0003.gw3.nrt5.asianetcom.net [203.192.150.246]
      13 274 ms 271 ms 271 ms c7-e-1-1.interq.or.jp [210.172.191.122]
      14 272 ms 273 ms 271 ms g-svc3-po-1.interq.or.jp [210.172.191.134]
      15 269 ms 269 ms 271 ms dfltweb1.onamae.com [210.157.1.134]

    Trace complete.

    So were are talking 270 milliseconds to get from my desktop at uni to a machine somewhere in japan AND BACK. Based on that the articles 230ms "current best case" figure is belivable as a round trip time but not as a one way latency.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  51. Re:In case you ever wondered how a sea cable is fi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I find that this article is even better
    http://books.google.com/books?id=ICoDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false

  52. Re:Latency? We don't need no stinkin' latency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "eliminate latency completely"

    "allow the masters of the universe to do their trades even faster"

    Now I'm not sure if it's a bad thing or a good thing that quantum entanglement can't be used for communication...

  53. A good thing too by DrXym · · Score: 1

    The latencies while downloading hentai and tentacle porn are crippling.

  54. Fascinating engineering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every time I read a story like this I always pause for thought: imagine how difficult it must be to lay a cable under water, what industries produce the cables and the ships... hire & train the workers. The vast sums of money involved and the fact that doing these minor engineering miracles is both necessary and profitable...

    We are living in the future already. Flying cars are so 1950.

  55. One thing that everyone missed .... Japan +9 GMT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The main Tokyo Stock exchange has closed at 1500 - in the UK, it's 6AM and the London Stock Exchange hasn't even opened yet.

    The reason that millisecond traders are so interested in low-latency cables is because they can buy shares/bonds/whatever that are simultaneously traded on two or more exchanges. If they have the fastest connection to a foreign trading floor they can take advantage of the times when the prices go slightly out of sync, taking a position in the market that benefits them.

    If there is no overlap between market opening hours in different countries, the high-speed traders really don't care about the cable. Of course, the cable will be enormously useful for normal people - but it's incorrect to assume that brokerages will pay big bucks to use it.

  56. Re:Why focus on Trading when we talk about latency by necro81 · · Score: 1

    People talk about this as a potential killer app, but the simple fact remains that doing telesurgery with round trip communication times of a few hundred milliseconds is simply a non-starter. Surgeons work on hand-eye coordination and, to a lesser extent, tactile feedback. Introduce a quarter-second delay into that control loop and you either 1) royally screw up your position/velocity/force control or 2) maintain control, but at glacial speeds. In either case, it is doubtful that you would have surgical outcomes that are so much better that they justify the enormous infrastructure cost.

    Although demonstrations are done here and there of transnational or trans-Atlantic telesurgery, there are a host of good reasons why it hasn't been anything other than a novelty. Reducing latency from hundreds of milliseconds to... still hundreds of milliseconds isn't going to be the breakthrough that makes telesurgery a win.

  57. Re:In case you ever wondered how a sea cable is fi by necro81 · · Score: 1

    very carefully.

  58. Need more cables! by phik · · Score: 2

    I was in South Africa in 2010 when one of their main cables got cut by a ship. It sucked. Internet got SLOOOOOWWWW

  59. Savings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The savings would be awesome. 60ms on billions of billions of packets - well worth the 1.5B

  60. Re:Posting doesn't match up with the speed of ligh by dean.collins · · Score: 1

    it is...this guy doesnt know what he is talking about.

  61. Re:Not much ship traffic but if something does hap by Megane · · Score: 1

    I think the idea is that (evilvoice) GLOBALLLL WARRRRMING (/evilvoice) will make it easier to get in there to fix things. But if the melting up there was really caused by the PDO, then they're going to be unpleasantly surprised.

    On the other hand, it also means a lot less ship traffic that can drag anchors into the cable.

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  62. Re:Latency? We don't need no stinkin' latency by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    Using neutrinos is positively slow compared to quantum entanglement communication. This would eliminate latency completely and allow the masters of the universe to do their trades even faster than OPERA thought their neutrinos were going..

    Yeah, but it has the advantage of actually being possible.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  63. Re:Latency? We don't need no stinkin' latency by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

    Using neutrinos is positively slow compared to quantum entanglement communication. This would eliminate latency completely and allow the masters of the universe to do their trades even faster than OPERA thought their neutrinos were going..

    Yeah, but it has the advantage of actually being possible.

    Also I didn't know He-Man was a stock trader.

    --
    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  64. No they don't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They exist between the buyer and the seller, if the real investors aren't there, the HF guys aren't there to snatch the profit from the spread. By reducing the investors in the market they are also reducing the liquidity in the long term.

    Hence they outgrew the equities market and moved onto derivatives and CDS's and Linden Dollars style Casino operations.

    The problem here, is that they can borrow money above the rate that real businesses can borrow money. When I buy a house, I get to lend 80% of its value, the bank holds the asset, I can only borrow less than the actual value.

    Suppose I could buy a house, and the mortgage would be 30x the value of the house secured against the house, and at a deeply discounted interest rate? I could then buy some nice, dividend paying equities to cover the interest, a government bond or two and with the money left over, buy a few houses and rent them out, perhaps a yacht, a nice sports car. Hell if the Fed will lend against garbage, I can create some garbage and borrow against that as an asset.

    Those fake assets would quickly disappear without the Fed there to print money to back them up.

  65. More THAN... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Wallstreet pays out more money THAT it receives"

    More THAN
    More THAN
    More THAN
    More THAN
    More THAN
    More THAN

  66. It all seems so low-tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Laying cables across an ocean reminds me of the days when battlefield communications meant pulling wires to a battlefield. It's hard to fathom in this day and age that it would still be more efficient to use undersea cables stretching across an ocean than to use e.g. satellite relays. So much for our high-tech society.

  67. $1.5 Billion for 60ms less time? by martinQblank · · Score: 1

    That lends credence to the time is money theory.

  68. High Speed Internet - Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I happen to live in one of those 'Isolated' communities which has to suffer from expensive, slow, and restrictive Internet. If this actually comes to pass, we will finally be joining the Real Internet. Paying $200-400 a month for 2 Mbps, 20 GB cap, $2/GB above cap, and blocked traffic for 18 hrs per day, this new service will seem like a miracle. I can't wait, plus we will not be vulnerable to satellite outages, like we have several months ago, which killed not only Internet, but all long distance, all cell phones, entire North Warning system, all PALS. No aircraft could fly during this outage. A fiber optic line would provide the backup that the satellite providers will never do.

  69. Stock Exchange should switch from RTS to turn-base by faquino · · Score: 1

    Something must be wrong if forces driving global economy depend on a 60ms ping difference.