Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Benoit Kowalski gave the presentation at the event. The diagram below shows the standard subsea network architecture. The fibre optic cable and optical amplifiers are collectively called the wet segment. The rule of thumb is to bury the cable in waters a thousand meters or less deep. Approaching shore one has a choice. One can give bring the cable ashore using small boats. The cable initially lies exposed on the beach up to the beach manhole. Then the cable is buried from some point in the water up to the manhole where it is spliced into the front haul fibre that carries the signal to the cable landing station. From the CLS back haul fibre goes to a carrier neutral data center that serves as a point of presence (POP) or interconnection point. The other platinum-plated approach uses horizontal drilling to install a bore pipe from the manhole to a point on the sea floor offshore. This is much more expensive, but better protects the cable.  A couple of things to note. I...

Several data centre companies have asked for my thoughts on potential data centre sites that could exploit nearby subsea cable landings. Obviously there is a need for a new data centre in Marseille diverse to the Interxion sites. In fact, Telehouse Europe has such a plan, already has purchased a plot of land, and has LOIs from long haul carriers to bring it online. Quadrivium is retrofitting a former corporate data facility in Genoa to leverage 2Africa, Blue Raman, and the other cables that call it their home.  Trieste is my nomination for a future cable landing station and Internet gateway. The city has a large port that could easily accommodate subsea cables. Furthermore, the latency of an intercontinental subsea network landing in Trieste and delivering traffic to Milano, Zurich, Vienna, and Frankfurt is definitely lower than routing via Marseille and even Genoa. So Trieste offers diversity without a latency penalty for central Europe and Scandinavia.  Trieste was a great p...

Technology: Standard 100G wave coherent optics. Shorter repeater spacings to maximize per fibre pair throughput.  Fibre Pairs: 8.  Founding Fathers: Facebook and Microsoft Consortium Members: Facebook, Microsoft, and Telxius.  RFS: May, 2018.  Route: Direct Ashburn Equinix to Spain.  Landings: Virginia Beach, VA. Bilbao, Spain.  Notable Features: First cable to directly link Ashburn Equinix to Europe. Also first cable to adopt the open cable system model where each consortium member selects their own submarine line termination gear and owns either fibre pairs or spectrum.  Potential Throughput: 224 Tbps.  Marea is the first cable to give the cold shoulder to New York City and the UK. It directly links Ashburn Equinix via a Virginia Beach landing to Continental Europe with a Spanish landing. The cable completely bypasses the UK and the Northeastern US. This reflected Ashburn Equinix' rising importance and the desire of network planners  to avo...