Microsoft and Facebook Complete 160Tbps Transatlantic Undersea Cable

Megalith

Megalith

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Much of our data and connected services live in the cloud, but most of our access to them from around the world (about 99 percent, in fact ) is actually made possible by submarine cables laid on ocean floors, thousands of feet below sea level. Now, more than 17,000 feet below the ocean's surface lies the "most technologically advanced subsea cable," providing up to 160 terabits (Tbps) of data per second, and it’s all thanks to Facebook, Microsoft, and Spanish telecommunication company Telxius.

With the Marea project, the two aforementioned tech giants collaborated with Spanish telecom infrastructure firm Telxius to lay an undersea cable that’s 6,600 kilometers (~4,000 miles) long between the Virginia Beach in the US and Bilbao, Spain, to transmit data at a speed of up to 160 terabits per second. For reference, that’s about 20,000 hours’ worth of Netflix HD video. Microsoft says this cable is the most technologically advanced one of the lot and is the highest-capacity cable in the world; it can be upgraded to support higher bandwidth in the future.
 
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rezerekted said:
"can be upgraded to support higher bandwidth in the future."
How?
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https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/22/microsoft_and_facebooks_transatlantic_cable_completed/
because while it contains just eight fibre pairs its landing stations can be upgraded to improve bandwidth.
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/20...letion-advanced-subsea-cable-across-atlantic/
This ability to interoperate with many different kinds of networking equipment brings significant benefits including lower costs and easier equipment upgrades, leading to faster growth in bandwidth rates.
 
rezerekted said:
"can be upgraded to support higher bandwidth in the future."

How?
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once you have fiber the change is with the optics not the fiber. Glass is glass. All they need to do is swap out the electronics on the end. Same as people do now to go from 1Gbps to 10Gbps to multiple 100Gbps wavelengths.
 
rezerekted said:
"can be upgraded to support higher bandwidth in the future."

How?
Click to expand...
DWDM

Your fiber cable carries light. Instead of thinking it as just light, imagine you can separate the light in to separate colors like a rainbow, and each color of the rainbow is a separate channel on the fiber. So instead of one pair of fiber leading to one SFP on each end, you can break that one fiber pair in to 100 channels, each with it's own connections and bandwidth completely independent of the other colors.

That's an oversimplification, hopefully it at least helps to understand how they carry so much bandwidth over fiber.

Feel free to research it further, it would take pages and pages to dive in to it on a forum.
 
Got a feeling this is to help hire more IT workers over seas to manage their cloud systems. After all, the biggest issue with the cloud is dealing with latency and congestion. This new cable might help eliminate that problem or at least alleviate it.
 
Eickst said:
DWDM

Your fiber cable carries light. Instead of thinking it as just light, imagine you can separate the light in to separate colors like a rainbow, and each color of the rainbow is a separate channel on the fiber. So instead of one pair of fiber leading to one SFP on each end, you can break that one fiber pair in to 100 channels, each with it's own connections and bandwidth completely independent of the other colors.

That's an oversimplification, hopefully it at least helps to understand how they carry so much bandwidth over fiber.

Feel free to research it further, it would take pages and pages to dive in to it on a forum.
Click to expand...

Thanks to all that replied.
 
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Exavior said:
once you have fiber the change is with the optics not the fiber. Glass is glass. All they need to do is swap out the electronics on the end. Same as people do now to go from 1Gbps to 10Gbps to multiple 100Gbps wavelengths.
Click to expand...
I can tell from what you wrote that you're not in the Australian Government... thats for sure! (they love copper.. its sooo technologically advanced and much cheaper then that fiber rubbish!)
 
Xrave said:
Hope this one is animal proof
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I'd be more worried about submarine sabotage. How long before a foreign company or malicious entity finds these and cuts them on purpose.
 
Rahh said:
I'd be more worried about submarine sabotage. How long before a foreign company or malicious entity finds these and cuts them on purpose.
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Don't think one of those groups would target it since their (fast) internet is just as dependent on it as ours.
 
That's an assload of bandwidth, considering the distance and environment. Damned impressive!
 
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