Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage(status.hetzner.com) |
Hetzner subsea fibre cut outage(status.hetzner.com) |
This outage Hetzner is reporting isn't a big deal due to robust backups, but these things can cripple a small island outpost.
Internet in Congo if you're not on the UN satellite
In all likelihood much less interesting, probably snagged in a fishing net or hit by an anchor.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/27/russia-black-s...
Break detected
Ship has been commissioned
Ship is at harbor
Ship has sailed out to the cut
Fusing the ends
Service restored
https://www.hetzner.com/presse-berichte/2016/01/156818
> Hetzner Online GmbH, the first major Central European provider of data center services to construct a new data center park in Finland, is also a user and co-investor in the Cinia CLion1 cable connection.
> There is currently an ongoing fibercut at our subsea cable. Our cable provider is working on fixing this. There is currently no ETA. (Last update: 2022-05-23 14:09 UTC+0)
Worst case everything just gets a bit slower (right?), depending on how much traffic went through that cable.
https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/14/google-un...
These used to be big, expensive, standalone devices (I'd occasionally use one in a previous job). Nowadays, there are portable, handheld units specifically for identifying where a break has occurred and the same, basic functionality is often even built into the gear used at either end of connections (e.g., even the "enterprise" switches -- from Brocade and Cisco -- that I use at home).
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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_time-domain_reflectome...
According to [1], a plough is dragged along the ocean floor behind the cable laying ship. The plough digs a trench that the cables are fed into. I can't really tell from the pictures whether the trench is covered back up.
[2] shows a really cool animation. Apparently ploughs like these can bury cables 2-3 meters into the ocean floor, and use a jet of water to help dig. Good stuff.
1: https://www.quora.com/How-are-major-undersea-cables-laid-in-... 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hEDTRU_F2s
I rate the current situation as a strong 3/4 Johnny Mnemonics!
>these days
I had the pleasure of using one of the devices that had that when I wired my old house. Borrowed the kit from ... an institution that allowed me to get their gear for a weekend. (Yes, I knew people in there.) Having the device tell me that a given strand in a CAT5e cable was faulty at <this many meters> from my location made it surprisingly easy to detect where I'd messed up.
Nowadays, for shorter runs (that are still long enough to need repeaters) there are also purely optical repeaters where instead separate fiber strands deliver light from a pump laser.
Syndroooooooome out
To be specific - you invested in EU taxes, while others invested in cable.
[1] https://www.lightwaveonline.com/network-design/high-speed-ne...
There is some movement towards having more pairs in newer cables, e.g. the Grace Hopper will have 16 pairs, cf. https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/announ...
https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-afr...
u/Denvercoder9 mentioned that there are 8 strands of fiber in this particular cable. Each strand can host multiple wavelengths of light, that do not really interfere with each other. There are different ways of dividing up the usable frequency range; here's a site with some examples: http://www.3coptics.com/News/11.html (Remember, light has a frequency & a wavelength. Human vision covers wavelengths from around 400 nm (nanometers, the UV end) to 700 nm (the IR end)).
The beams of laser light sent down a fiber strand have a wavelength (a central wavelength), and a width. The beam essentially needs exclusive ownership of wavelength ± width. The diagrams on the linked page show how channels are separated to give each channel a set width.
So, when an entity owns a part of a cable, they own a set of wavelengths, likely one or more contiguous blocks of wavelengths, that they can use for whatever. All owners will pay (probably based on the % of wavelengths they control) for a company to operate the cable (running the stations at each end, where the wavelengths are split out on to separate fibers for each owner). The owners will also pay for another company to do repairs as needed.
A metaphor with light would be if you had two lights, one red and one blue. If you shine them both at the same spot, you'll see purple. If you put a prism in that spot, it'll split the red and blue light back out separately. At a very high level, that's what happens with fiber optics.