> There will be, what, 200+ fiber pairs in that cable.
Actually modern submarine fibre-optic cables usually contain four or less fibres. The massive traffic capacity is provided by multiplexing wavelengths down the same fibres. A modern terminal can typically handle up to 192 wavelengths @ 10Gbps (hence the multiterabit capacity).
Therefire ownership of a complete fibre pair in one of these things is a significant investment!
how do you repair a fiber-optic cable?
Send out a ship, power the cable down, cut the cable, grab one end and pull it up, buoy it off, grab the other end, splice it to a new cable section, recover the other end, splice at that end, test and drop.
The splicing generally can be fusion splicing where the fibre is accurately aligned and actually melted until it flows together (~ 0.03dB loss) or a mechanical splice where the ends are effectively clamped together (~ 0.3dB loss). Not sure which they use nowadays at sea for repair.
Contrary to what many have said there is not often a 'lot' of slack - the above method ends up inserting some new cable and hence the initial cut. The strain of pulling up the uncut cable would probably break it anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
You should be running Windows.
This is not a local festoon system it is a trans pacific cable.
Whoops the reference should be:
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/submarine
Apologies.
> There will be, what, 200+ fiber pairs in that cable.
Actually modern submarine fibre-optic cables usually contain four or less fibres. The massive traffic capacity is provided by multiplexing wavelengths down the same fibres. A modern terminal can typically handle up to 192 wavelengths @ 10Gbps (hence the multiterabit capacity).
Therefire ownership of a complete fibre pair in one of these things is a significant investment!
http://www.alcatel-lucent/submarine
Actually I'd hope it because she is honest.
Contrary to what many have said there is not often a 'lot' of slack - the above method ends up inserting some new cable and hence the initial cut. The strain of pulling up the uncut cable would probably break it anyway.
Who makes these things ... the main players nowadays are
Alcatel
, NEC and Tyco but there are others.