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Google and Facebook Are Building the Fastest Trans-Pacific Cable Yet (techcrunch.com)
Google and Facebook are working together to lay a nearly 8,000-mile fiber-optic cable between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. The cable will have a bandwidth of 120 terabits per second, Google said, adding that this makes it the highest-capacity route between the United States and Asia. TechCrunch adds: Once the new 12,800 km cable is at full capacity, it'll be the highest-capacity trans-Pacific cable yet. Until now, that record was held by the FASTER cable, which Google also has a stake in. Google tells TechCrunch that all parties participating in building the cable will have their own portion of the cable and that the company will have its own fiber pair to keep its own traffic private. The new cable will become the sixth submarine cable that Google has a stake in (the others are Unity, SJC, FASTER, MONET and Tannat). While it may seem unusual for Google to partner with Facebook on this kind of project, submarine cables often feature these kind of partnerships. Facebook and Microsoft recently teamed up to build a trans-Atlantic cable, for example, which at 160 Tbps is even faster than the Pacific Light cable (but also only half as long). Amazon, too, is starting to invest in its own submarine cables, but so far, the company has not partner with other industry giants to do so.
Thumbs up!
so sad
Have you seen what happens with electrons when sent through nano-scale copper traces?
Electrons flow into the beginning of the "trace", exits at the end of the "trace", bouncing along the outer electron shells of the copper atoms.
This quantum tunneling effect breaks the light speed barrier, but at such a small scale, it's hardly noticeable, but it is "faster".
Once they figure out how to pair quantum entangled photons or electrons that they can control the spin on in more than one direction, we will no longer need cables at all. To use a term I first encountered in Orson Scott Card's writings, this "ansible" communication would be instantaneous between the paired (or if the CIA / NSA gets in the act, tripled) electrons/photons.
Once that's been done, I expect to see all kinds of breakthroughs, most of which I've already patented via the "on an ansible" metric.
... this is dogs and cats lying down together.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
ALL YOUR PACKETS ARE BELONG TO NSA
Because Google.
And Facebook.
I have found a way around the lameness filter, but the code is too big to fit in this margine
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The length of the cable is 12,800 km.
The speed of light is 300,000 km/sec.
The velocity factor of fiber is about 68%.
The data rate of the cable is 120e12 bits/sec.
The amount of time that the data stays in the cable is 12,800 km / (300,000 km/sec * 0.68) = 62.7 milliseconds. Multiplying that by the data rate of 120e12 bits per second yields about eight terabits or one terabyte. That is the amount of data "stored" in the cable, at any instant, during transit.
It's not much of an addition to the Google/Facebook data cosmoplex, but it is solid state, liquid cooled, highly distributed and largely immune from fires and small meteor strikes.
They don't generate the traffic, the users do when they request content, be it videos or webpages.
And the users are already being charged.
Are you telling me cable companies arent making a profit?
Just think of the DDOS that will be possible with a trans-Pacific pipe this large! All for Facebook/Google? Sigh.
Lol. Just in case anyone is taking this seriously:
* Comcast's most recently completed year completed with $8.2B in net income. More than 10% of revenue. That's a lot, they surely are not restricted from investing in physical infrastructure
* Charging by the byte is not a complaint of net neutrality supporters. However this is a problem if certain bytes are charged but others aren't.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I knew this pedantic post would be here. I just knew it.
Here's why it's "faster" - not because photons move through it faster than usual, but because per huge chunk of data, the total transfer time will be smaller. Less time used = faster. Much like how gigabit Ethernet is "faster" than 100Mbps Ethernet - the electrons move at the same speed, but the data moves through the queue quicker.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You realize that tapping a wire of encrypted traffic does little right?
1. Cable and Telcos not making enough money: HAHAHA hahaha ahahhahha heeeheeheee Heh. Oh, were you being serious?
2. Apparently Google, Facebook, etc. are fine with laying their own undersea cable, as this story is about them doing exactly that. What have you got a problem with again?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Well, as long as everyone has a fair share of the data, everyone will be happy! ;)
I'm sure the Secret Court of Evil has already ordered a backdoor, however they failed to sign up for Amazon Prime, so it has not shipped yet.
That's why the government's steal the decryption keys too.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Imagine the increase in simultaneous hacking attempts that can be made with this new cable!
must flow!
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Bad analogy.
Consider these two scenarios;-
* You in your car following another 10,000 cars trying to pass down the 10 km stretch of 2 lane highway.
* You in your car following another 10,000 cars trying to pass down the 10 km stretch of 10 lane highway.
Ask yourself, what scenario would you travel the distance the fastest? Do you break any laws of physics?
When the Snowden stuff came out, it turned out that the NSA was tapping cables, including cables belonging to Google, and getting tons of cleartext traffic.
The article says that Google wants its own pair "to keep its traffic private". Maybe that's just a misunderstanding or misphrasing. But it doesn't inspire confidence given that they screwed up and didn't encrypt last time.