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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."
Only to people who have been in the Ivory Tower waaaaaay too long.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
There's a good reason not to make them smarter too.
Sensors could be used to detect military movements and possibly find small/stealth unit movements as well. So a sufficiently paranoid nation or group could decide to destroy those sensors.
No company would want to give north korea or isis a reason to actively target undersea cables.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
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.
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?
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?
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.
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
You, also, must be new here (Planet Earth, 21st Century, that is). We're talking corporations in a largely capitalist world, here; if they can fuck everyone, and screw the planet for gigantic profits, and get away with it, they'll do it in a heartbeat. Not spending more than they have to for their infrastructure, regardless of any 'benefit to mankind', is just SOP.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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.
Not to mention the simple technical challenges of operating an actual sensor network at those depths and distances. If it were easy, they wouldn't be waiting on the Telecoms to foot the bill
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...