All of the world’s internet runs in cables on the ocean floor. How is that possible when we know so little about the oceans and when some parts of the ocean are too deep?
In: Technology
The route for cables is checked before laying them down, in sort of the same way you “call before you dig” when installing a pool at home.
The companies who own the cables want to make sure the path they’re laying them on is relatively clear of issues (massive depth changes, volcanic activity, etc.) and mitigate cable damage with layers of protection. Like a coax cable, the data is sent along a proportionately small ammount of the cable, inside copper, alumninum, kevlar, and stranded steel.
If there is damage you can tell where in the cable it is with a fiber optic cable tester, it times the response and strength of signals to give a distance estimate, then you send out a ship with a crane attachment to patch the cable.
CNN has a nice report that goes into even more detail here: [cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html](https://cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html)
It’s all relative.
The number one threat to Internet in your area = a construction worker with a backhoe. Cables buried underground in a city are much more likely to be damaged than undersea cables. There is much more digging going on.
While the ocean is very deep in a few places, they don’t run cables there. The ocean, below a couple of km in depth, is amazingly free of backhoes, life, and digging in general. A cable can just lie there undisturbed, sending along Internet.
The ocean isn’t too deep. And we can make a lot of cable. There’s 700,000 miles of cable along the ocean floor. That’s more than going to the moon and back.
And it’s made durable enough so nothing is going to damage it.
The ocean floor has been mapped we know what the surface of the floor is shaped like, to lay the cable you get a large boat and slowly pay out the cable from the back of the boat and it sinks to the ocean floor.
May I recommend this magnificent article about undersea cables from Neal Stephenson.
Mother Earth, Mother Board:
https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
I read anything this guy writes.
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