
To replace even a fraction of the capacity in undersea cables
We'd need to be launching thousands of satellites per day, forever, and the night sky would be lit up a Christmas tree. No thanks!
As undersea cables carry increasing amounts of information, cyber and physical attacks against them will cause a greater impact on the wider internet. Something like 95 percent of international data flows through those submarine cables, at a time when shipping, military exercises, and more threatens those global pathways. …
You're thinking Starlink. Think telecomms satellites and you don't need thousands per day.
A proper communication satellite can handle quite a lot and, with the newer ones, more and more bandwidth. Now I'm not saying that they can handle the same amount as an undersea cable, but I'm sure we wouldn't need thousands of them.
But they have to be low (NEO) to keep the latency down. Hence lots of tiny ones. Geostationary satellites are way to far away.
Actually, they're.. not. At least for not all applications. My stock answer for this was 'how did voice calls work?' when they were carried often via satellite. Or just the fundamental latency between say, the UK and Australia. Sure, for some real-time apps and stuff like synchronous replication, latency is currently too high. But for a lot of others, eg bulk traffic like YT, Netflix or cat pics, it isn't. Some people with decent connections and proximity to content might notice a delayed response, but for a lot of traffic it wouldn't really matter.
Problem is really capacity and cost, and laser instead of radio links might help solve that issue. But then there are other political issues, eg the announcement that 'Net Neutrality regulations are back on again would mean delay insensitive traffic couldn't be shunted over to higher latency links. Even though that's easily technically feasible, and other than the economics, potentially desireable. We're back to everything on the Internet being best efforts, even when it shouldn't be.
"We'd need to be launching thousands of satellites per day, forever, and the night sky would be lit up a Christmas tree. No thanks!"
"You're thinking Starlink. Think telecomms satellites and you don't need thousands per day.
A proper communication satellite can handle quite a lot and, with the newer ones, more and more bandwidth. Now I'm not saying that they can handle the same amount as an undersea cable, but I'm sure we wouldn't need thousands of them."
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Hughesnet's new Jupiter 3 satellite is listed as having "over 500gbps" capacity. I assume it's less than 600gpbs, otherwise they would say "over 600gbps." This sounds like a lot -- BUT a single strand of fiber optic fiber can run multiple 100gpbs streams, hitting over 1tbps total.
Apparently they make undersea fiber cables (I assumed it'd be more than this?) with 12 pairs most often, some have 8 and some have 24. So (assuming 500gbps per fiber, which it sounds like is pessimistic, and 8 pairs), it'd take *16* satellites to replace the capacity of a single cable. So certainly not 1000s, but it's past the point where you could just put a large satellite or 2 up and take care of it. (There's also the issue of orbital capacity -- there's satellites would be reusing the same frequencies, you could not just put a dozen in the same orbital slot to get 12x the capacity.)
Or we could just lay a hundred such cables spoking out of the country to all kinds of other destinations, and monitor them.
Should be easy to spot something cutting dozens of cables, and you should be able to repair them all without major impact or loss of service.
"Resiliency" doesn't just mean making the cables tougher to cut through - it should also mean planning for continued operation in the face of more than the expected number of failures.
And, yes, other tech can help. But we should be laying more cables, to more places, with more safeguards, and using more technologies, to utilise more methods, to communicate via more and disparate paths, objects, countries and technologies.
That, in any sensible country, would mean laying lots more fibre in the sea, laying fibre through the Chunnel, more satellites and more groundstations, more radio communications (e.g. microwave across the Channel is completely viable), better inland telecoms network, etc. etc. etc.
A long time ago, we realised that the telecom network was vulnerable to being severed. So we built a nationwide series of microwave telecoms towers that are still up today (e.g. Stokenchurch). That way if London suddenly disappeared, we could still communicate across the nation. It was a major undertaking, and provided lots of resiliency. And then we abandoned it because "the Internet" got so much better at that.
To solve the problem all we need to do is use EVERY viable technology to communicate with EVERY viable destination as much and as resiliently and redundantly as possible.
' "Resiliency" doesn't just mean making the cables tougher to cut through - it should also mean planning for continued operation in the face of more than the expected number of failures.'
I thought that was the principle behind the internet architecture -- the ability to re-route dynamically in event of primary routes failing. It's long been recognised that routing diversity reduces with proximity to endpoints (ultimately, your single fibre to premises) but it now appears that there are weak links much nearer the core as well. Clearly it hasn't scaled well as demand has grown.
Cables have the Internet run over them.m9st of the time band you are quite right that even dark fibre can be effectively re routed down other under sea cables, the problem is that all the fibre is running at minimal costs and so 2 months isn't uncommon to fix a fibre issue. In 2 months a single sub can destroy a lot of the cables. There needs to be more moneybput back into getting the sla down to days rather than months to fix the cable. Most fibre to repair needs to be lifted from the ocean bed and rejoined, sometimes it's just a broken repeater, sometimes it's a cut cable.
A Chinese or Russki sub towing an undersea plough would be able to wreak havoc in the North Atlantic/Pacific and remain almost undetectable. Especially as they would move very slowly and therefore be acoustically silent. Cut a couple and then move to another location. Rinse and repeat.
Satellite jamming as has been shown with GPS around Russia is already there.
Power cables would be next but because of their size and the sheer amount of current being carried an explosive would work well especially if on a long time delay fuse. The same goes for pipelines.
A dozen subs could make life very difficult for the UK. Add in satellite jamming.... the population would riot without their fix of Sky Sports (/s)
Beyond around 300 to 600m depth, cables are not even buried. No need for a plough, a simple grapnel run with a shearing grapnel would wreck havoc.
And cost-cutting (or profit-gouging) by providers means there are far fewer cables repair vessels on standby than there used to be.
(Once upon a time trans-Atlantic cables came with there own repair vessel thrown into the deal, which remained fully crewed on permanent standby for repairs, such was the revenue from international telephone calls).
I'm sure that with his background he's fully aware that undersea telecoms cables were identified as critical assets requiring protection prior to WW1. Cutting cables is just* a denial of service attack that requires re-routing of traffic until fixed. The (few) major players who are able to actually disrupt world communications have more to gain by keeping it working and simply harvesting the information as it passes through, after all it's very hard to find where a line is tapped miles down in the ocean.
* very expensive to fix but unlike cutting cables in WW1 it's not going to shutdown links to any area once routing updates happen.
You should be able to pipe a port-mirrored cable direct to the Kremlin and it shouldn't make any difference.
If you aren't encrypting securely, the least of your problems is someone tapping an undersea cable.
That's the whole point of encryption - you should be able to post your public ("encrypting") key front page of The Times, along with your encrypted data. It shouldn't reveal anything at all about their contents or your private key.
It's why it's called public-key encryption, it's why known-plain-text attacks haven't worked for decades (except on inherently broken protocols), and it's why encryption exists.
Secure communication over an insecure channel.
There's a lot of info to be gained by side-channel and meta analysis. Encryption alone cannot solve that (but tor does a pretty good job)
Volume of traffic heading to a particular destination (or from a particular source), traffic patterns (continuous load, bursts, specific signatures) - it can all contribute to the greater intelligence picture.
400,000 V and 1200A travelling through a perp to earth tends to have that effect. And that was just from the attempted theft.
I have pictures from where some jippos attacked a 275,000kV cable with a hacksaw. The protection systems tripped the circuit, but not quite in enough time to get away with their whole hand intact; with literal bits of it attached to the saw that they aren't going to grow back.
Same site in question has seen two other fatalities amongst wannabe copper thieves in last 30 years.
Can you imagine the A&E visit afterwards and having to A) explain how it happened in the first place and B) the colossal fucking stupidity of these types that we allow to roam free at a quite literal cost to the rest of society?
What do you mean "before" they become top targets. They already are. European Powergrids are being built and planned offshore to such an extent that they aren't merely a commercial fillip but will soon become a necessary route for a functioning economy.
Speaking as a cable engineer, OHL makes vastly more sense in EVERY application and throwing all your eggs in the basket of expensive and hard to repair offshore. Cables should ideally only be used where there is absolutely no alternative.
From the perspective of protection, there is no armour in existence that can prevent a determined application of explosives in the right manner. And what do you do if you detect a threat? Torpedo it? Consequences of that are self explanatory.
A determined and well equipped attacker will have no problem cutting a line. Russia has of course converted an Oscar 2 submarine to be a submersible tender. Tracking the Oscar 2 is a challenge but not impossible. The submersibles on the other hand...
Actually, you can use HFGW (High FrequencyGravity Waves) and MFGW (Medium Frequency Gravity Waves) which bypas thermohaline and thermocline layer submersible stealthing techniques.
HFGW and MFGW waveforms go through air, deep water and rock with no issues whatsoever. Offset MFGW and HFGW to form interference patterns and you can find ANY object that disturbs those patterns using common DSP aka Digital Signal Processing techniques. These even work as over-the-horizon radar at 4k/8k/16k resolution per frame at 1000 fps or more for optimal high speed and low speed objects tracking in ANY environment and in ANY weather!
We did this 25 years ago so this ain't new technology to hunt slow and high speed aircraft and hypersonic missiles, deep water submarines, deep underground structures and deep space vessels.
We use a portable cyclotron colliding accelerated iron and tungsten nuclei together in order to create and collect the gravity waves needed by using GWASER technology aka a Gravity Wave laser!
V
I think you've taken a sci-fi novel or two a little bit too literally. Got any papers to back up claims that these have actually been built? Certainly heard theories about them espoused.
If they were the real deal then either A) they are so incredibly classified that you shouldn't be blabbing about it or B) everyone would know about them.
Too many cables, too much distance. They're only capable of being protected inshore and against low tech actors. So the best strategy is a combination of "keeping on good terms with one's neighbors" and "keeping an eye on informal groups who might fancy themselves are powers" plus a bit of inshore surveillance.
Typically the people pushing the Paranoia Button have a huge financial axe to grind -- they want to sell protection, usually at an exorbitant price. It would also be prudent to keep alternative channels operational, not just satellites but also land and H/F links. A lot of traffic is really not essential, its just cat videos and endless advertising (plus the usual website bloat) so if there was a serious outage the traffic volume could probably be slimmed down quite a lot without it being much of a loss.
NCA (North Canadian Aerospace) is PLEASED to announce no more security issues with long distance communications FOREVER MORE!
Our trapped Xenon 65,536 by 65,536 Microwell Array on Borosilicate Glass Panel removes bandwidth limitations by using Albert Einstein's long-pontificated Spooky Action at a Distance physics to quantum entangle huge arrays of trapped inert Xenon gas molecules which retain "Quantum State" information (i.e. Spin and Position) which can be read and written using an INFERRED STATE of a local nano-structure which is set and read via a UV-band laser (i.e. Blue). These inferred stated get "Magically Transferred" to the local Xenon gas particles which transfer THEIR state instantaneously to a far away device which also has a "LOCK" upon the current communications device's trapped Xenon gas particles.
At PetaBytes per Second bandwidths, we can send entire information libraries and the most massive uncompressed real-time HDR DCI-16K resolution video plus multi-channel plus metadata audio streams to anywhere on Earth instantaneously! Live Transmission of 10 streams of video+audio+metadata using real-time Video Frame Colour Correction and Audio FX Processing and Metadata Overlay Latency at 1000 frames per second using 1.89:1 Cinema Production Aspect ratio video at 16,384 at 8640 pixels 64-bit RGBA colour is ONE FRAME which is basically imperceptible to the human eye and ear! This opens up live control of avatars, robotic systems and allows real-time broadcast of ultra high resolution video/audio/metadata no matter the distance. Spooky Action at a Distance (i.e. Quantum Entanglement) has been TESTED via peer-reviewed research at over 50,000x the speed of light which means distance is no longer an issue as we can be ANYWHERE on Earth and off it OR in the deepest undersea or underground locations and STILL receive a crystal clear signal with NO degradation. Quantum entanglement goes through EVERY type of rock and wall, so no more blocked signals will compromise your important data and audio/video transmissions! All communications securely go where directed all the time with no blockage whatsoever.
Since there are NO radio waves to output, input, process or intercept, communications security in by-definition fully built-in AND there are NO FCC (Federal Communications Commission - USA) or DOC (Department of Communications - CANADA) licences required since the normal EM spectrum IS NOT USED! Telcos and ISPs are also not needed as the hardware and software are ONE SINGLE COMBINED ITEM needing no server nor any in-between entity to process network communications. All comms are fully peer-to-peer needed no middle-man to control content delivery destinations.
We at NCA have SOLVED the Quantum Decoherence issue which previously preventing stable entanglement and prevented "reliable reading" of an entangled particle's spin or position! By using INFERRED STATE read and write, no direct action upon the actual trapped Xenon particles takes place. It is a nearby nanostructure that gets and sets via laser pulses, the current state of the entangled Xenon gas set who "magically send" their current state to the nanostructure AND receive a new state from said nanostructure at a preset pulsed laser clock schedule. This gives us Petabytes per Second data rates!
All mechanical designs, internal workings, source code software and manufacturing processes of the NCA Trapped Xenon Gas Microwell Quantum Entanglement Communication System is being made WORLDWIDE fully free and open source under GPL-3 licence terms for both hardware and software.
No more phone companies! No more ISP's! Ultra High Quantum-level Security using Fully Peer-to-Peer Communication at Ultra High Speed!
And It's Available NOW!
V
The NCA website is being disclosed publicly later this weekend with patent-free, world-wide fully open source under GPL-3 LICENCE TERMS of 60+ high technology disclosures for you to download TO MAKE FOR YOURSELF!
We are GIVING way ALL of this technology! We will even be showcasing our tape-out design of a 128-bits wide combined-CPU/GPU/DSP/Vector Math super-chip which runs at 2 THz clock speed which you can etch for $50 USD on our open-source 3D multiband green and red Laser Borosilicate glass etcher and copper trace and semiconductor dopants vapour deposition printer which you can buy or build for less than $2000 worth of parts! It prints an entire working chip in less than 24 hours which has 50 PETAFLOPS of 128-bits wide number crunching horsepower! You can make your own MULTI-EXASCALE data centre and AI SERVER farm in just a few weeks!
Once the site goes live, download the design and manufacturing PDFs, the STL and CAD/CAM/CAE/FEA files, the source code and you are good to go!
V
What can I say? I'm a bit tapped out at the moment but I could always use extra processing power, a 2Thz 50 petaflops CPU would be lovely and I'm sure I could scrape together the $50 for it.
And the Xenon comms device, I don't know that I need 65536x65536 but if I could put together one inexpensively I could see keeping one here, taking one to relatives, so when I want to send them something I can just firehose files back and forth as fast as those disks can handle them.
Amazing if true!
--Henry
It's all open source! For the Tape Out Design of the 128-bits wide super-chip, you CAN burn ito to CMOS or GaAs allowing your CPU's per cubic metre of space BUT we print ours on Borosilicate wafer at 200 mm by 200 for less than $50 USD per chip using a 1000 by 1000 head RED and GREEN Laser etching array and a multi-head vapour deposition confinement-beam-based copper nano-powder and semiconductor dopant deposition system.
We are setting up our master website and hopefully should be finished later this weekend to disclose on a Worldwide, publicly free and open source under GPL-3 Licence terms a set of 60+ high technology disclosures that will BLOW YOUR MIND! Terawatt-scale Power production, super-chips, quantume entanglement-bases long-distance PetaBytes-Per-Second peer-to-peer communications, non-aerodynamically-based aerospace propulsion systems, Shor's Algorithm-secure combined video/audio/metatdata communications software with Live-FX and live green/blue/yellow screen compositing and live group whiteboard, fast quantum computing-resistant encryption, Aluminum-Sulfur battery systems and Boron Nitride supercapacitors for 5 megawatt/hour EV driving range (1600 miles (2400+ km) on a single charge while towing 25,000 lbs! We also have Ultra high precision ONE MILLIMETRE resolution Global Positioning System using picosecond timing clocks, GWASER systems, realtime HFGW/MFGW deep ocean and deep underground 3D scanning systems, shape-changing optics for IR/UV/RGB + Distance imaging and realtime frame-by-frame volumetric 3D Object/3D Environment Scanning, inexpensive 3D-XYZ volumetric displays, high-light-sensitivity DCI-16K/32K/65K Resolution RGBA/UV/IR image sensors at Full Frame and Medium Format sensor sizes and whole lot more technologies we will be introducing!
We will be advancing human technology by 500+ years in the next few weeks !
All for your perusal UTTERLY FREE AND OPEN SOURCE!
V
I'm hesitant ... should I ask you what you smoke because it looks quite powerful, or should I avoid what you're smoking because it looks way too powerful ... difficult decisions.
BTW, does the hyperloop anti-cosmic megatron with enriched Tritium actually work to counter AI-inferenced nano-scale swarms of drones ?