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Microsoft and Facebook Building Underwater Transatlantic 'MAREA' Data Cable (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, Microsoft and Facebook announced a partnership to build a transatlantic subsea data cable. Called 'MAREA' (Editor's note: it is Spanish for "tide"), it will connect the United States to Europe. More specifically, it will connect the State of Virginia to the country of Spain. The project will begin this August, with a targeted completion date of October 2017.Microsoft says: "MAREA will be the highest-capacity subsea cable to ever cross the Atlantic -- featuring eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system, to be operated and managed by Telxius, will also be the first to connect the United States to southern Europe: from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain and then beyond to network hubs in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This route is south of existing transatlantic cable systems that primarily land in the New York/New Jersey region. Being physically separate from these other cables helps ensure more resilient and reliable connections for our customers in the United States, Europe, and beyond."
The fact that these two giants felt the need to have their own cables indicates how much data they intend to move. Wired has an in-depth piece on it (though the publication blocks users with adblockers).
The fact that these two giants felt the need to have their own cables indicates how much data they intend to move. Wired has an in-depth piece on it (though the publication blocks users with adblockers).
xxhttp://www.wired.com/assets/load?scripts=true&c=1&load%5B%5D=jquery-sonar,wpcom-lazy-load-images,outbrain,blockadblock,tracking,ads,wired,wp-embed&ver=1464209915
(remove first 2 'x' chars from edited url)
you know, bloggers, you cannot stop us. if we want to block ads, we will.
oh, and FUCK YOU very much.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Doesn't marea also mean feeling sick, like you are going to throw up, in Spanish?
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
and how much of this is about security.
It wasn't all that long ago we found out that the US and UK governments had tapped into the current Atlantic cables in order to spy. I presume that this new cable isn't going to hosting public traffic, just what those two companies and anyone who pays them send down them. If a government was attempt to tap into it, not only would it probably be fairly easy to detect but it'd also cause some actionable litigation. Which would be the last thing any spy would want to come to light.
Conversely, who knows what hoops they had to hop through in order to get this project off the ground. Would it surprise anyone if there was some governing language which says "you have to let us tap" no matter who owns the cable?
Both companies are known for their data collection/mining of their user base, so this concerns me a bit. I know the article says the cable will be managed by Telxius but I wonder how much influence Microsoft and Facebook will have over that management? They are calling the cable "open" but they proceed to speak about how much benefit it will be to the Azure platform and possible Facebook. Will MS and FB traffic always have priority over everyone else? I just don't trust this whole endeavor because I really don't trust either of these two companies anymore.
Actually, they're preparing to move their datacenters OUT OF THE USA because of the NSA's insistence on cutting our own throat on privacy.
Also, in case TRUMP/HILLARY gets into office.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
For those without ad blocking and wondering what the fuss is about. Wired wants to run all of these scripts from external parties, and many of them are designed to track your movements on the internet (from uMatrix; quotes added to prevent active links).
"http://static.chartbeat.com/js/chartbeat_pub.js"
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"http://static.parsely.com/p.js"
"http://wired.disqus.com/count.js"
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"https://subscribe.wired.com/ams/page-ads.js?ad_category_prefix=2016&browser_path=%2F2016%2F05%2Ffacebook-microsoft-laying-giant-cable-across-atlantic%2F&cat_prefixes=%2C2016%2C05%2Cfacebook-microsoft-laying-giant-cable-across-atlantic
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
This is so people will have the bandwidth to (unwittingly) download the bloated Windows 10.
Table-ized A.I.
They chose spain so they can avoid being spied on by the British who read everything that passes through their country which is all transatlantic communications.
In Capitalist US, the commerce controls the Government.
"(though the publication blocks users with adblockers)."
The "Adblock Warning Removal List" fixes this. It should be used by anyone with adblock+.
You're welcome.
Doesn't Brave just load its own ads?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
More pairs = more power required for repeaters.
There was a pretty good article explaining all this on Ars yesterday.
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
So it does make sense to land elsewhere. Honest...
Either that or they want to build their own version of the Internet that they control, kind of like AOL on steroids.
Stop using Facebook and Microsoft products.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
>" it will connect the United States to Europe. More specifically, it will connect the State of Virginia to the country of Spain"
And even MORE specifically, it will connect the city of Virginia Beach in the *Commonwealth* of Virginia to the City of Bilbao in the province of Biscay in the country of Spain :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There are probably only 2 or 4 working fibers in the cable, due to amplifier space and power limitations. That's 80 or 160 OTU4s per pair, which is pretty easy to do with modern equipment.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
There's a Navy airbase at Virginia Beach, so I'd say that's a good choice considering the Russians have been snooping around our undersea cables lately.
I'm a 2000 man.
I find it very coincidental that Ars Technica just had a very well done article on the underseas cable managed by TGN..which is already pretty effing reliable.
Perhaps this is the very beginning of the privatization of the internet "tubes" and wrestle control of the data away from governments.
Facebook and Microsoft are laying a massive cable across the middle of the Atlantic.
Dubbed MAREA—Spanish for “tide”—this giant underwater cable will stretch from Virginia to Bilbao, Spain, shuttling digital data across 6,600 kilometers of ocean. Providing up to 160 terabits per second of bandwidth—about 16 million times the bandwidth of your home Internet connection—it will allow the two tech titans to more efficiently move enormous amounts of information between the many computer data centers and network hubs that underpin their popular online services.
“If you look at the cable systems across the Atlantic, a majority land in the Northeast somewhere,” says Najam Ahmad, Facebook’s vice president of network engineering. “This gives us so many more options.”
The project expands the increasingly enormous computer networks now being built by the giants of the Internet as they assume a role traditionally played by telecom companies. Google has invested in two undersea cables that stretch from the West Coast of the United States to Japan, another that connects the US and Brazil, and a network of cables that connect various parts of Asia. Rather than just leasing bandwidth on undersea cables and terrestrial connections operated by telecoms, the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are building their own networking infrastructure both on land and across the seas.
The fact that these Internet giants are laying their own cables—at their own expense—shows just how much data these giants must move. Consider the services they run: Google offers its eponymous search engine, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps, and so many more. Microsoft offers Bing, Office365, and its Azure cloud services. Facebook has its social network along with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The data moved by just a few online giants now dwarfs that of most others, so much so that, according to telecommunications research firm Telegeography, more than two thirds of the digital data moving across the Atlantic is traveling on private networks—namely networks operated by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. That’s up from 10 percent just a few years ago. “It’s a tremendous change,” says Telegeography analyst Tim Stronge.
With so much data flowing across their systems, these companies are scrambling to build new infrastructure. In addition to building its own undersea cable, Facebook is buying up what’s called “dark fiber”—unused terrestrial cables—so that it can control how its data moves from place to place and move it more efficiently. According to Ahmad, Facebook is now using dark fiber “pretty much everywhere” as the company expands its network into new regions. And the same likely goes for Google and Microsoft.
“We’re starting to see more of the large Internet content providers looking to build more of their own networks—whether they are leasing dark fiber or laying down new cables to build new routes,” says Michael Murphy, president and CEO of telecom consultancy NEF. “It makes sense.”
In the past, Facebook has joined consortia that operate other undersea cables—groups typically made up of telecom companies—but this project is different. Rather than letting a group build and control the cable—that is, rather than sharing lines with others—the company is laying its own dedicated lines and it has the power to use them however it sees fit. In the end, this allows Facebook to expand its online empire much quicker than in the past. “The consortium model is much slower than what we would like,” Ahmad says.
Much the same applies to Microsoft. That said, the two Internet giants aren’t abandoning the telecom industry altogether. The pair have brought in another partner: Telxius, a subsidiary of Spanish telecom Telefónica. Telxius will operate the cable, and Facebook and Microsoft services w
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
So they are doing this...but I STILL can't get anything better than DSL and I live in VA...right on the coast....