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Internet's Deep Infrastructure Could Double As a Sensor Network For Earthquakes and More
citadrianne writes with an article at Motherboard that exposes an interesting under-use of the worldwide physical network that carries Internet traffic. Even though there are many thousands of miles of undersea cable (containing many times that length if you add up the various lengths of fiber), the physical body of the internet is remarkably un-useful when it comes to detecting things like seismic shifts. From the article:
"Right now the current system of cables on the seafloor is deaf, dumb, and blind," said Rhett Butler, the director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii. "Although they carry trillions of bits of information and basically run the global economy at this point, they don't know anything about the environment they're in. They don't measure anything at all and that seems crazy."
According to Butler, AT&T and other telecom companies have paid lip service to the idea of integrating sensors into the cables, but he has watched proposal after proposal for smarter cables fall through for a variety of reasons.... "[In] a certain sense mankind has given the nod to lay cables across the open sea floor without any restrictions, so it seems to me to be a little reasonable [for the telecom companies to have] a little obligation on their part to help people out."
According to Butler, AT&T and other telecom companies have paid lip service to the idea of integrating sensors into the cables, but he has watched proposal after proposal for smarter cables fall through for a variety of reasons.... "[In] a certain sense mankind has given the nod to lay cables across the open sea floor without any restrictions, so it seems to me to be a little reasonable [for the telecom companies to have] a little obligation on their part to help people out."
"it seems to me to be a little reasonable [for the telecom companies to have] a little obligation on their part to help people out."
The only obligation for companies are to make money in a lawful way... and lobby the law so it allows them to make more money.
On one hand you mock (rightfully) those that see companies as physical persons but on the other request them some kind of moral ethos. WFT!?
Only to people who have been in the Ivory Tower waaaaaay too long.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You let them lay cables, then demand that they "help people out" and "do their part", AFTER the cables are laid?
This is why people fail at capitalism. A deal is a deal. Want a better one, make a different deal. It's not "unfair" that later on you realize that you don't have something you only just thought of.
.
The acceleration is gonna tear those photons apart.
Power cables, ethernet cables, HDMI cables...
None of them measure anything.
You know what's crazy? The idea of cables with sensors.
I'm a great guy. I have good ideas. I even get a +5 funny post from time to time. And yet there are billions of people on this planet who don't seem to realize that I am a positive asset to the earth. With all the things that people do every day, everywhere in the world, they could make MY life perfect if they would just chip in a 1/10 of a cent to me. Not even on an ongoing basis - just once, just 1/10c. Let's say, on Thursday this week. It's almost nothing even compared to the poorest in the world, but this simple recognition of me would mean I could do so may wonderful things, devoting my life to make the world better rather than working every day to make a living.
At his last presentation to AT&T the CEO - after hearing his pitch - was heard to say, "Frankly, dear sir, I don't give a damn."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"Right now the current system of cables on the seafloor is deaf, dumb, and blind," said Rhett Butler, the director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at the University of Hawaii.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
If you want an array of seismic sensors, build one. If you want an inter-continental data network, build that. Don't try to hack the one to do the job of the other.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
the "missing bit" detector is in the architecture. if Area X stops moving traffic, for instance, there is stuff happening there that is overwhelming. might be the power's out. but it might be a flood, hurricane, alien landing, etc. if you can't ping anything in the area, start checking the ham bands and the visible satellites...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You mean we don't have something like this in place already?
who don't give a damn.
oh, wait, we have one. it's called Congress. the CEOs are virtualized.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Surely there's some secondary or tertiary affects that can be used to measure cable movement like microphonics, and thus deduce seismic activity. From the title, I had thought that's what the posting was about. If you can influence the error rate of a disk drive by yelling at it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4), then can't you measure earthquakes with a long optical fiber?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
In terms of rote economics, implementing these sensors into the cable system would be “peanuts” compared to what telecom consortiums are already paying to lay cables across oceans. According to the October ITU report, adding these sensors would add an additional 5-10 percent to the cost of laying a new cable, which generally cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
5-10 percent of hundreds of millions of dollars is not peanuts to me. While this may be an interesting idea, I can imagine that telecom operators are not enthusiastic to implement something this costly, which adds complexity to their installation with limited benefit for themselves.
> No company would want to give north korea or isis a reason to actively target undersea cables.
It might give them MORE reasons but, given my understanding of their agenda, those two (at least) already have reasons
to want a capability of targeting undersea cables.
A bit more in the sensor department might at least give warning that something is about to be damaged
and info about the thing doing the damaging.
So boiled down the argument here is "give it to me for free because I want it"? There are of course a few good reasons why sensors should be embedded in such cables, and a few reasons against it. But in either case it isn't a negligible cost difference to integrate the sensors into the cables, those wanting such capabilities would need to PAY for the additional engineering, materials and systems necessary to make this a reality not simply claim that the communications companies "owe" them so they should eat the costs.
Exactly. I suspect that the companies laying fiber would be willing to split the common costs with him; but they're not interested in paying for his sensor network for him.
Only if they get paid for it.
If someone wants it they have to pay for it. That's largely the way our economic system works at present. It will change as we get smarter AIs involved, hopefully without revolution, but in the meantime that's what we're stuck with.
Person who isn't involved in the infrastructure, and doubtless has nothing to contribute to it, wants his pet project tacked on. Very likely for free.
Hey Mr. Director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, go build your own damn sensor net. It has been done before and additional subsea networks, dedicated scientific ones you understand, not military, are under way. Or are you not Director enough to pull this off?
Isis scuba diving to cut undersea cables? Really?!? What about the US government that oro ably already taps them just not wanting to be detected?
Damn US government trolled my post with random characters. It's a conspiracy I tell you!!!