Our world is connected. We see evidence of that from seeing social media updates from people around the world or news broadcasts that cover events happening from anywhere. But have you considered the physical infrastructure of the internet? Of course there are datacenters, giant buildings with loud computers buzzing away. But those buildings need to be connected to each other, to your modem at home, to mobile cell towers that are sprinkled all over the place, and connected "to the internet". But what does that mean? Contrary to popular belief, satellites are NOT how most information travels the world. Indeed, we have physical cables all over... but instead of sending electrical signals those cables carry light generated by lasers.

These cables not only exist alongside roads and hung on power lines. They're also running along the bottom of the world's oceans. The image attached below is an inventory of each of these underwater internet cables. What I find interesting is how many there are! It seems like a lot. But then when I think more about it I am also amazed at how few there are. If you pay attention you will see news articles describing occasional sabotage of these cables, here's one recently published by Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/submarine-internet-cables-egypt/. This is actually very important to the future and security of the global internet.

#internet #fiberoptic #infrastructure #submarinecable #lasers #packets

https://sudorandom.dev/portfolio/submarine-cable-map/

The data for generating this map is based on: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

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