Google's 'FASTER' 9000km, 60Tbps Transpacific Fiber Optics Cable Completed (9to5google.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via 9to5Google: Google and an association of telecom providers have announced that the FASTER broadband cable system that links Japan and the United States is now complete. The system is the fastest of its kind and stretches nearly 9,000 km across the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, starting in Oregon and ending in two landing spots in Japan. The association consists of Google, China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, Singtel, and supplier NEC Corporation. The estimated construction cost of the project was $300 million in 2014. At 60 terabits per second, FASTER will help "support the expected four-fold increase in broadband traffic demand between Asia and North America." The system uses a six-fiber pair cable and the latest 100Gbps digital coherent optical transmission technology. The service is scheduled to start on June 30, 2016, and will help increase the connectivity between Google's data centers scattered around the globe.

Comments

6 pairs?

[ERJ]

Would it really be that much more expensive to drop 50 or more if you are doing it? I would think that most of the cost is not in the materials but labor.

Re:6 pairs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you are not factoring in the cost of a repeater every 60 km. Then you have to keep those repeaters powered and they are good for about 25 years. Oh you say you can leave them turned off till they need used. We have a lot of people who buy a back up circuit, never test it or check to see that it is still usable and find out when their main circuit fail their back up is down also.

Re:6 pairs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this article, and states 12000km
  http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/signaltwinning-trick-breaks-fiber-distance-record

Until the next (big) earthquake

[hcs_$reboot]

interesting

Google

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with all the Yay Google stories? Is Google paying the Slashdot colo bill or something?

Radiation Proof Cables?

[zenlessyank]

I don't want any radioactive zeros or ones showing up at my Ethernet port.

Re:Radiation Proof Cables?

[ravenshrike]

Is this how Skynet is born?

Splatoon lag?

[bpgslashdotaccount]

Will this fix the lag in Splatoon?

Re:Splatoon lag?

[Anonymous Coward]

9,000km/speed of light = 30ms.
Koreans tend to ragequit at anything above 10ms.
Don't worry, you are still safe.

Latency vs.Bandwidth

[_Sharp'r_]

The system is the fastest of its kind ... 60 terabits per second

Wouldn't that be the largest, the widest, or the broadest, or something like that? I'm guessing the latency for the distance isn't any lower than most other connections "of its kind", i.e.fiber optic, AKA light through fibers. Pretty sure light through the same material type generally travels the same speed.

I mean, we don't call this the "fastest" dump truck in the world because it hauls a larger payload a similar speed as other dump trucks.

Re:Latency vs.Bandwidth

[slimjim8094]

It depends what you mean by fastest. As you note we have a perfectly good word for "the time it takes for a bit to make it out the other end" - latency. Most people probably intuitively associate bandwidth with speed, though, because it's most directly relevant to what they do, which is try to transfer quantities of data. If it takes 1 minute to download a movie on one connection and 10 on another, but both are identical latency, most people will say the former is 10 times faster - because it is, for what they use it for. A gamer who has specific needs might prefer a lower-bandwidth but lower-latency (or jitter) connection, but probably wouldn't call it faster - they'd say it was lower latency because they know most people associate speed with bandwidth. Your dump truck wouldn't be called the fastest, but if the typical person had a mountain of soil they wanted moved and called up the earth-moving companies to give them a bid, the one with the biggest trucks would probably be able to bid the shortest time.

Of course, if it's a more direct routing, it may indeed be the lowest-latency link between those two points.

Re:Latency vs.Bandwidth

[adolf]

A 90's analogy:

"I need to buy a faster modem."

A Slashdotter's pedantic rebuttal:

"But it's not fast! It's stationary!"

Followed by,

"How fast is stationary engine, then?"

[...]

Please, just just stop.

Re:Latency vs.Bandwidth

[evilviper]

Wouldn't that be the largest, the widest, or the broadest, or something like that?

Communications speeds have always been predominantly measured by throughput / bandwidth. It's fastest because you can fit a lot more data through it in less time. If you're streaming a movie, you can start watching it much sooner, because the connection is faster. Latency would have almost no affect on that.

Lower latency is only important in a few narrow applications, and within practical limits, it doesn't matter in most usages, so it's not a typical measure. Low latency is certainly not what people want when they ask for a faster connection.

Re:Latency vs.Bandwidth

[hcs_$reboot]

People say "faster" because the page loads faster. Isn't that what counts practically?

Re:Latency vs.Bandwidth

[cdrudge]

Ignore him. He's that guy.

Google/NSA's spying isn't enough on Asian citizens

[yuvcifjt]

The headline should read that, because that's exactly what this project is all about.

NSA's Google can't encourage enough people to send them their personal details by utilising various Google spyware like android/chrome/mail/search/etc, so they had to forcefully enter the market and push themselves down peoples throat, whether people like it or not.

Re:Google/NSA's spying isn't enough on Asian citiz

[Anonymous Coward]

A cable system being built by a Japanese firm out of Chinese components, managed by Singaporean, Chinese and Japanese telcos. But it has Google as a minor sponsor, so you think it's an NSA plot?

Waiting for the next two undersea fibers...

[kybred]

They will be CHEAPER and BETTER. But you'll only be able to use any two of them at one time.

Re:Waiting for the next two undersea fibers...

[zlives]

less than the third of the price of instagram... atleast we have our priorities straight.

Re:I bet latency still sucks

[hcs_$reboot]

It's Google, so they probably made FTL photons

It would, actually

[Sycraft-fu]

Undersea cables are interesting beasts. When you look at them they are MASSIVE and so you figure there are a lot of pairs. Nope. 4-8 usually. All the rest is shielding and power. The big limiting factor size and cost wise is the amplifiers. You have to have a bunch of optical amplifiers in-line with the cable, and those have to be powered from the shore. Obviously each channel needs its own amplification so in the case of 6 pairs that's 12 amps. You then need a set of 12 amps periodically along the cable.Every few hundred km or so.

Hence, undersea cables are small in count when laid. Very different form land. If you hook up a building, fuck it you probably lay 144 fibers minimum because that's a small sized bundle. However for those long-haul undersea connection, it is just a few fibers per massive line.

Re:It would, actually

[LWATCDR]

Makes me wonder why they do not run the cable up to Alaska and then to Japan. The total cable would be longer but less of it would be at sea.

Re:It would, actually

[Durrik]

Mainly for latency reasons. From what I can find from a simple google search most optical cables transmit light 31% slower than in a vacuum. This means that for every 1000 km you add to the length of the cable you ad 4.8 ms of latency (if I did my math right)

4.8 ms might not seem like a lot, but when you're talk about needing speed it is one of the factors that is important. Trading, online games, etc. I'm not sure how much distance you will add if you run it up to Alaska and then over. If you're wanting to run it by land over to Alaska and then over to Japan it could be a fair amount, it might save a bunch on initial cost but will hurt latency. Plus there's Canada in the way, so you'd have to work through all that red tape too, and that might cost more (time == money) than just running it straight across the ocean.

Re:It would, actually

[Shatrat]

You did the math right. 5 microseconds is what I use at work because that also will cover the electronics, transponders, OTN switches, et cetera.

Re:It would, actually

[LWATCDR]

Would it actually be a lot longer? Often airliners will do a great circle route and stop in Alaska when going to Japan or Korea. It would be easier to maintain but I wonder if it would be any cheaper to run. After all the bottom of the ocean is free and you just need a ship to spool it out. It might be cheaper then running it over land.

Re:Google/NSA's spying isn't enough on Asian citiz

[yuvcifjt]

Anytime google is involved, they're getting something out of it.
But I may just be wrong, and google is funding this out of the goodness of their corporate hearts ;)

But when I think about Google's Fiber, Wifi, DNS, etc, it's obvious there's no stopping them in the lengths they go to, to further invade and learn about individuals, especially those that don't use any google products and manage to some-what evade their tracking using adblock, etc.

Re:Wow

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Loads Google home page in less than a second!

Great cultural exchange!

[Knightman]

So Japan can now watch American p0rn faster and American can watch Japanese p0rn faster also! ;)

Re:Google/NSA's spying isn't enough on Asian citiz

[Threni]

A for-profit business spent millions of dollars on something directly connected to their business and you've figured out that they did it as part of the business? Wow, you're a fucking smart guy. NSA better look out before you investigate whether or not they too have.... no, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Re:I bet latency still sucks

[Blaskowicz]

Tachyons upgraded my computer to Windows 3010.

Isn't this google fiber thing old news?

[ai4px]

I recall back in 2007 they proposed an easily installable FO link... https://archive.google.com/tis...

Re:Isn't this google fiber thing old news?

[sydbarrett74]

I think they renamed that project SHIT (Sewer Hosted Internet Topology).

Re:Isn't this google fiber thing old news?

[sydbarrett74]

There is at least one ISP in London doing this. I've heard of other projects in European cities where they'd rather not dig up streets in the 'old city' portions, so they snake cabling through sewers.

Re:I bet latency still sucks

[Killall -9 Bash]

A tachyon is any particle traveling FTL. Pedantic and wrong.

Re: Google/NSA's spying isn't enough on Asian citi

[Lije Baley]

No plot, it's just the newest lane in the "Offshoring Superhighway".

Re:Google/NSA's spying isn't enough on Asian citiz

[cjjjer]

Google has only one product and that is you the user.

Re:I bet latency still sucks

[Chuckstar]

Technically, I don't think you can be both pedantic and wrong. ;)

(Uh, oh. What if I'm wrong?)

They should consider using sync and

[pjv936]

replicating most of slowly changing web contents. Use the capacity for phone calls between people.