Google Is Backing a New $300 Million High-Speed Internet Trans-Pacific Cable

An anonymous reader writes Google has announced it is backing plans to build and operate a new high-speed internet Trans-Pacific cable system called "FASTER." In addition to Google, the $300 million project will be jointly managed by China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel, with NEC as the system supplier. FASTER will feature the latest high-quality 6-fiber-pair cable and optical transmission technologies. The initial design capacity is expected to be 60Tb/s (100Gb/s x 100 wavelengths x 6 fiber-pairs), connecting the US with two locations in Japan.

Comments

Re:Finally some Asian LPBs

[iggymanz]

they can do worse than making us a nice fat pipe for quality anime and JAV

Slight problem

[Andurian]

60Tb/s is fine for me, but what about the other people who want to use it?

Re:Slight problem

[WillAffleckUW]

My first thought too. We have two 100 GB/s pipes within a block of me, and lots of 40 GB/s pipes spread throughout campus, so (does math) ...

If we do some high def surgical research and genome swaps with collaborators in Japan, S Korea, and China this might fill up fast.

And that's just this campus.

Re:Slight problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I had an opportunity early last year to have a 10Gbps pipe, from my desktop workstation, to the Internet.

Conclusion? MEH. Except for bulk data transfers, nothing outside the university's LAN has a low enough ping to make it meaningful. And even for bulk transfers... anyone whose server has a 10Gbps pipe who's not brain damaged is going to rate-limit it exactly because otherwise it would take one other guy with a 10G pipe to clog the whole thing.

It _was_ really impressive that I could upload a 4GB iso of the latest TAU livedvd in under ten seconds. It'll also be nice when we get the new displaywall set up and I want to talk to ParaView on it. But on anyone's desktop? Pointless. There's maybe 1% of what I or anyone else does on a desktop where a lowly 1Gbps pipe isn't overkill.

Beta?

[RussR42]

The cable will never leave beta and then be discontinued in a year.

Re:Big Challenge

[scuzzlebutt]

Nope.

Only 6 pairs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd think that since the sheathing probably costs more than the fiber, and the labor/paperwork/engineering involved in laying it probably dwarfs the equipment cost, they'd put in a lot more than 6 pair.

Re:Only 6 pairs?

[Rashdot]

The other 660 pairs are for the NSA.

Re:Only 6 pairs?

[Shatrat]

The limitation is in the amplifier equipment in the festoons on the ocean floor. In terrestrial cables we don't have that limitation and you'll frequently see 288 count cables on long-haul routes and 48 count cables going through neighborhoods and subdivisions.

Re:Only 6 pairs?

[hackertourist]

For each fiber, you need an amplifier every 50 (?) km. You may run into a weight limit where the amplifier pack becomes too heavy to be suspended by the cable during cable laying.

Re:Only 6 pairs?

[hackertourist]

They use optical amplifiers. The signal stays in optical form, and is guided through a special section of fiber. A laser pumps energy into that fiber section, some of that energy ends up amplifying the signal. So it still needs power to drive the laser.

Re:Only 6 pairs?

[SuricouRaven]

Delivered through a system as practical as it is insane-sounding: There's one power cable, doubling as an armor layer. The station at one end drives it +lotsofvolts relative to ground, the other drives it -lotsofvolts. All those amplifiers are hooked up in series.

Re:Only 6 pairs?

[Rashdot]

Does a total of 666 make sense?

So which agencies' backdoors are in there?

[ron_ivi]

Google ... China Telecom Global ... KDDI ... SingTel

Does that suggest at least 4 countries with NSA-like taps into the data.

Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there?

[timeOday]

Yeah, I guess. It's like pointing out that overseas freight might be opened by Customs - which is to say, yeah, it might. I practically got a proctological exam just crossing over into Canada this summer. What is more secretive and nefarious is the tapping of a line between 2 nations (or within one nation) by a third party.

Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there?

[TheDarkener]

Does it really matter at this point how information traverses the Internet? It is a PUBLIC network. Do yourself a favor and encrypt all your traffic and you won't have to worry about which route your data takes to get to its destination. Doing it any other way is just not going to cut it these days.

Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there?

[ArcadeMan]

I practically got a proctological exam just crossing over into Canada this summer.

Free medical checkups are one good reason to live in Canada.

Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there?

[ledow]

A fact that even Google, Facebook, etc. are learning, as they start to encrypt ALL traffic between their datacentres and not just rely on the promise of privacy from governments / ISPs.

This is the natural evolution of the Internet, prompted by such spying and interceptions - being used for nothing more than transporting encrypted packets whose payload cannot be determined to any significant degree. The Internet is fast becoming a darknet of its own.

I know that, for years, I haven't accepted unencrypted communication for FTP, telnet etc. and now it's progressed to the point where Google are pushing people towards using TLS, etc.

Even my SMTP server lets you talk TLS to it if you try. Not everyone who emails me tries, of course, but it will let you do it so my "end" is secure.

I find it ironic that all the wiretapping etc. controversy has achieved is to make it even HARDER to spy on people.

But I have to say, I'm still wary of EC at the moment - being pushed as "the" alternative for a variety of problems such as PFS, etc. - I can't help wondering that while we're looking for the next "trick", it's already been done to us.

Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there?

[timeOday]

I will admit what triggered suspicion - I forgot to bring a birth certificate for my 15-year-old son, and my wife wasn't with us. I don't see what a photocopied birth certificate proves (with regard to either kidnapping or smuggling contraband on my motorcycle) - but either way it was made abundantly clear to me that "privacy" is not a relevant concept at an international checkpoint. In fact the Canadian agent even claimed I shouldn't be taking him between US states without documentation, since I had no way to prove I had "permission", which really made my head spin.

Re: Isn't this pointless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those were 1Gb/s, these are 100Gbs with 100 WDM. Suitable for linking data centers, not just offices

Re:Hmmm

[DoofusOfDeath]

I'd rather Google come in and bust the telecom monopoly in my home town where I have a choice between Verizon FiOS and Comcast Xfinity ... if you want to call that a choice. The lesser of the evils is Verizon FiOS. At least the FiOS is truly fiber optic!

That sounds great, but what happens when Google obtains monopoly status in your area?

Re:Send your data to the CCP faster?

[SuricouRaven]

Why are you so confident they don't already have it?

Between spies infiltrating endpoints and fiber-tapping subs (If the US has one, which they do, China almost certainly does too), it's best to assume all data is or can be captured in transit and focus on end-to-end encryption.

Re:Big Challenge

[93 Escort Wagon]

I'm not sure if I'd rather have the NSA spying on my or China trying to steal my intellectual property.

I don't believe this is an either/or situation.

Re: Isn't this pointless?

[wiredlogic]

Transoceanic cables have repeaters positioned along their length. They can't be upgraded to newer tech without help from the US Navy.

Re: Isn't this pointless?

[Shatrat]

No, because those submarine cables also include the amplifiers/regenerators spaced out across the ocean floor which aren't compatible with the slick new coherent optics. Most of the old ones are hardwired to regenerate Sonet framed signals.

Everything you wanted to know about undersea cable

[hackertourist]

Neal Stephenson's utterly fantastic essay on the subject (all 42,000 words of it) for Wired

Re:Finally some Asian LPBs

[ArcadeMan]

I can't argue against faster-loading pregnant furry futanari tentacle porn.

Did I miss any fetishes?

Re:Hmmm

[alen]

WTF do you expect google to do? even on google fiber netflix tops out at 10mbps

you can splooge your shorts watching your speedtests all day long, but in reality it won't be that much faster since all the services you access won't be buying enough bandwidth on their end for you to take advantage of it

i have 2 LTE phones and Team Stream takes forever to update even though i can do a 20mbps speed test at the time. welcome to the internet

It's not Google

[zedaroca]

From the announcement in the quoted article:
"A consortium of six global companies announced that they have signed commercial agreements to build and operate a new Trans-Pacific cable system to be called “FASTER” (...) The six-company consortium is comprised of China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and SingTel."
The OP gives the wrong idea that Google backs up the project and the others are involved only in management, which seems incorrect from the original announcement in NEC's page.

Re:Send your data to the CCP faster?

[AK Marc]

Yeah, break into an optical network timed to the nanosecond without triggering any alarms? They (THE "they") can't even snoop a line without the operators finding out. A 2dB loss in power for a tap would be obvious. Well, unless they set up a machine that bent the fiber at 2 degrees per day, for 90 days. Most of the non-destructive ("hidden" or "secret" taps) pick up light leakage. But a 2-3 dB drop from a sudden bend for the tap, and the monitoring systems will set off alarms. Some can even locate the bend from dispersion and reflections (designed to find breaks, but sensitive enough to find the bends of a non-destructive tap). But bend it slowly over many days, and the "damage" will look like a problem with the line, perhaps a water incursion. Likely, before you start setting off power loss alarms, they'll re-set the alarm thresholds. Best if you had someone on the inside to report the actions in relation to the slow power loss. But blindly bending it over a 90 day period would likely get you a tap with nobody realizing it was a tap. But tap it in 10 seconds, and they'll have a "non-destructive tap alarm" go off. No really, some equipment has that built in.

But a destructive tap, like the parent suggests, will never go unnoticed.