Together, your Internet even better

Articles tagged with: cables sous-marins

New transatlantic cable in Bordeaux

on Friday, 01 October 2021 Posted in News Rezopole

New transatlantic cable in Bordeaux

One of the main transatlantic cable projects concerning France has just "landed" on a beach at Porge, near Bordeaux. The project was initiated by Facebook and built by Alcatel Submarine Networks. Orange, partner for the French part, was responsible for the operation. This required horizontal drilling 20 metres below the beach and the dune, in order to limit the impact on the environment and in particular the forest.

Named "Amitié", this cable links Massachusetts in the United States to Porge in France and Bude in England. It is 6,800 km long and carries a total of 16 pairs of optical fibres. It is scheduled to come into service in early 2022.

 

The French incumbent will benefit from two fibre pairs on this cable and will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the "landing station". Orange will provide the terrestrial links from this station to Bordeaux, then Paris and Lyon, and finally the rest of Europe. It also states that the cable will enable new data centres to be set up in the Bordeaux area.

 

Another transatlantic cable, "Dunant", was recently commissioned in the Vendée by Google. With traffic between Europe and North America doubling on average every two years, investment in new infrastructure is needed to absorb the increase. Between them, "Dunant" and "Amitié" will have more capacity than any previous transatlantic cable.

 

 

 Read the article

 

Source : L'Usine Digitale

 

 

 

 

Equinix launches submarine cable under the Manche

on Friday, 16 July 2021 Posted in Archives Rezopole

Equinix launches submarine cable under the Manche

On 13th July, Equinix announced the launch of a new international fibre optic cable project under the Manche. The network, called CrossChannel Fibre, will connect Equinix's London and Paris centres via landing stations in Brighton and Veules-les-Roses. It will be operational from the end of 2021.

 

"The 520-kilometre cable has 96 fibre pairs, will offer more than 20 Tbits per fibre pair, and will have the lowest latency of any network connecting London and Paris," boasts Equinix management, who also note that this is the first submarine fibre optic cable laying project in the English Channel for nearly 20 years.

 

This new project allows Equinix to continue to expand its network in France. To this end, the company recently signed a major partnership with Terralpha, the SNCF Réseau subsidiary responsible for developing the carrier's very high-speed network in France. The agreement will allow all companies hosted in Equinix data centres to use the 20,000 km of fibre optic cable running along the SNCF Réseau rail network.

 

The data centre operator expects to increase its turnover by 10 to 11% in 2021, thanks to the expansion of its data centre network and its cloud services.

 

 

 Read the article

 

Source : ZDNet

 

 

 

 

Decommissioning of the TAT-14 submarine cable

on Wednesday, 12 May 2021 Posted in Archives Rezopole

Decommissioning of the TAT-14 submarine cable

The TAT-14 telecommunications cable, which consists of two 19-year-old cables, is being decommissioned. This operation, carried out by Subsea Environmental Services, involves the recovery and recycling of the cable and bases, from land to deep water segments in the North Atlantic.
The first phase started in mid-April and will be completed by the end of 2021. It only concerns the onshore part, with the recovery of the coastal ends in Denmark and the Netherlands, but this work is not necessarily the easiest...

More than a year of planning has been required to consider the interests of multiple stakeholders in licensing, borders and jurisdictions, constructed buildings, crossings, and considerations of proximity to third party assets in various countries.

While the experiment is not new, it is being closely followed by the entire submarine cable community. It should allow for the identification of risks, analysis and implementation of necessary mitigations, while maintaining operations within a tight project schedule. Careful consideration of the project's impact on waste, environmental factors and opportunities to reuse portions are also examined.

Connecting Northern Europe directly to North America, TAT-14 has been replaced by the new Havfrue / AEC-2 cable since last month. This cable connects Denmark and Norway to the US, with a future extension planned for Ireland.

 

 

 Read the article

 

Source : Datacenter Magazine

 

 

 

 

In the Internet piping

on Monday, 18 November 2019 Posted in Archives Rezopole

In the Internet piping

According to Greenpeace, if the Internet were a country, it would be the third largest consumer of energy in the world after the United States and China. Because the web needs colossal infrastructures to function: submarine cables, data centers and servers by the millions.

 

Above all, the Internet is a story of endless cables and vast buildings filled with fibers and servers. From the cable ship depositing fibre at the bottom of the oceans to the data centre hosting our data, the Digital offers a visible and palpable but too often overlooked face. This report from France Culture takes you on a journey of discovery of these essential building blocks without which the Internet would not exist.

 

99% of intercontinental communications pass through submarine cables. The remaining 1% travels by satellite, as this technology is much more expensive and much slower in terms of throughput. But to install these huge cables, you need very special boats: cable-layers. Built around large tanks storing optical fibre, these vessels are rather rare. Indeed, there are only about forty of them in the world.

The backbone of our connected society: submarine cable is an expensive and sophisticated technology that is mastered by few players in the world. The market is dominated by three companies in 2019: the American Subcom, the Japanese Nec and the French Alcatel Submarine Network (ASN), owned by the Finnish Nokia since 2016. But to invest in the submarine Internet cable, count a few tens of millions of euros for a small regional cable and up to several hundred million euros for a transpacific or transatlantic link. Dominated by the States in the 19th century when communication was carried out in Morse code, cable laying then became the business of national telecom operators, but the GAFAMs have taken over in recent years.

 

Another essential component of the Internet is the data centre. These large buildings house servers and computer equipment that allow us to access our data. The geography of data centers covers the geography of economic capitals: London, Frankfurt, Paris, Madrid, etc. But sometimes, hosters act on other criteria; thus Marseille has become one of the most important cities in the world in this field.

"Over the past five years, Marseille has become one of the main hubs for content exchange in the world. The city is now the 10ᵉ global hub for network concentration and data exchange [...] there is a geographical advantage thanks to the 14 submarine cables that land here and allow data to be transmitted all around the Mediterranean but also to the Middle East and Asia" Fabrice Coquio, President of Interxion France.

 

To transmit all this data to our computers and telephones, the Internet also relies on 600 exchange points around the world, some twenty in France, including France IX.

"[...] France IX was created about ten years ago to structure the French Internet. The aim was for the major operators to be able to exchange information with each other on "motorways" while avoiding congestion. All these players are connecting to our infrastructures in order to have the fastest route" Franck Simon, President of France IX.

 

Faced with the monopoly of the giants of Silicon Valley, can the salvation of Europe - and France - come from all these actors? "It's true that we have some nice leftovers. We still had a large telecom industry, a large components industry. On a personal level and with my 25 years of experience in the digital world, perhaps we should leave from industries where we are still strong, with great traditions. We are good at the Internet of Things, home automation, design, etc. If we want to fight back, we have to find strategic high points, and it does not consist in making one against Google, one against Facebook or one against Netflix... We can do it if we want, but we will probably have to invent our own path with our own genius. It will also be necessary to create a unified European market for digital technology and to find new financing strategies; the BPI (Public Investment Bank) has changed the situation a little, but it is not yet enough" Henri Verdier, Digital Ambassador.

 

 

 

 Read the article

 

Source : France Culture

 

 

 

 

Global bandwidth : total throughput of 446 Tb/s

on Thursday, 05 September 2019 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX

Global bandwidth : total throughput of 446 Tb/s

Of course, the international bandwidth is increasing, but this masks a rollercoaster evolution in recent years. This is at least what a study published on Wednesday by the Telegeography Research Institute found.
Indeed, according to this analysis, global Internet bandwidth increased last year by only 26%, the lowest annual growth rate in at least 15 years. Although the pace is slowing, international bandwidth has almost tripled compared to 2015.

 

A dynamism attributed, by Telegeography, largely to the African continent. With a compound annual growth rate of 45% between 2015 and 2019, it is the continent that has experienced the fastest growth. The Asian continent is not to be outdone, with its bandwidth volume reaching a compound annual rate of 42% over the same period.

 

"Since we started tracking international Internet capacity in 1999, the most efficient channel has always been between Europe, the United States and Canada. This route was overshadowed by the Latin American-US and Canadian route, which experienced an explosion in bandwidth," according to the research institute.

 

A paradigm shift due in particular to a better integration of the countries of the American bloc, "while Asia and Europe have a greater diversity of connectivity". The researchers also note that content providers have an increasingly important role to play as they now dominate the creation of the backbones of the global Internet through submarine cables. The latter connect the different Atlantic or Pacific coastal countries. In view of the latest transcontinental submarine cable projects, the evolution described by Telegeography does not seem likely to slow down.

 

 

 

 

 Read the article

 

Source : Les Echos

 

 

 

 

When Facebook wants to surround Africa

on Wednesday, 17 April 2019 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX

When Facebook wants to surround Africa

In the Wall Street Journal the company decided to talk about this disproportionate operation, called "Simba". Very few details have so far been revealed about the project. We only know that it would be connected to existing access points, particularly on some beaches on the east, north and west coasts.

Surrounding Africa with a gigantic submarine fibre optic cable would allow almost the entire population to enjoy the Internet. Facebook knows that to extend, it must absolutely attack this continent inhabited by more than 1.2 billion people and which is not yet very well connected to the rest of the world. This is due to infrastructure that is still under development and completely uncovered areas. So if several million Africans could connect to the Internet tomorrow and create a Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram account, the social network would save a lot of users in a very short time.

However, there would not yet be a signed agreement for the installation of this huge cable. And this is not the first time Facebook has talked about installing an underwater cable to connect the world. Facebook was pulling a transatlantic cable over 6,500 kilometers long, Marea, in 2017 with the help of Microsoft. The installation began in 2016 and provided a stable connection in 2018 by connecting Virginia Beach, United States to Bilbao, Spain.

 

 

 Read the article

 

Source : Siècle Digital

 

 

 

 

 

Internet: the cable battle

on Friday, 27 July 2018 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX

Internet: the cable battle

The dependence on digital and its infrastructures is increasing every day. To ensure their independence, the majors of the sector therefore invest in the network (Internet). Sophy Caulier reveals, in an article in Le Monde Économie on June 24, the battle that is being played out between the various players on this gigantic network.

Composed of three main elements: data centres, networks and interconnection points, the Internet is indeed a physical network. The cumulative length of the submarine cables is thirty times around the Earth, or 1.2 million kilometres. However, even though this infrastructure was built to be resilient, it is on the verge of overdose. For information, Netflix occupied one third of the bandwidth in the United States during peak hours in 2016. Another example: in 2018, companies are increasingly storing their data on the cloud with more than 20% growth for the French market. But the risk of overloading the network does not really worry.

The main threat is actually the breakage of submarine or land cables that can cause an Internet outage for several days. This was the case at the beginning of the year in about ten countries on the west coast of Africa. The infrastructure therefore remains fragile despite the redundancy of cables. Companies like OVH, InterCloud or Colt choose to build their own network to protect themselves but also to reduce costs and guarantee quality services to their customers.

GAFAM, which has had data centres for a long time, is also investing heavily in cables. "They deploy their own cables to interconnect their data centers on all continents without going through telecom operators. The challenge for these actors is to set the costs. In other words, they'd rather own than rent! "says Jean-Luc Lemmens, director of Idate DigiWorld's Media-Telecom division.

But when it comes to developing countries or certain geographical areas too far from cables, Internet giants deploy networks via satellites, UAVs or balloons. Amazon, Facebook, Virgin or SoftBank also have great satellite ambitions. Nothing seems to be able to stop the almighty GAFAM in their race to control the armature of the Net.

Click here to read an extract of the article (full article if you subscribe to Le Monde).


Source: Le Monde Économie

 

 

Underwater cables: the invisible war

on Thursday, 03 May 2018 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX

Underwater cables: the invisible war

Some 400 submarine cables weave an invisible yet crucial network for our connected world. 1.3 million kilometers long, they are essential to the proper functioning of the Internet and account for 99% of intercontinental trade. These little-known infrastructures are attracting more than ever the envy of States, intelligence services and Internet giants.

 

Find the show Le Dessous des cartes, Câbles sous-marins : la guerre invisible in replay here.

This video is available until June 14th, 2018 only.

 

 

 


Source : Arte VOD-DVD

 

 

Undersea cables 2017

on Tuesday, 02 May 2017 Posted in Archives Rezopole, Archives GrenoblIX, Archives LyonIX, Archives EuroGIX

Undersea cables 2017

Every time you visit a web page or send an email, data is being sent and received through an intricate cable system that stretches around the globe. Since the 1850s, we've been laying cables across oceans to become better connected. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber optic cables constantly transmitting data between nations.

 

Find here the animated map, made by Business Insider, which reveals the 550,000 miles of cable hidden under the ocean that power the Internet!

 

 

 

 

FaLang translation system by Faboba