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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

Submarine cables are a mystery to a lot of people. I had to show my dad a complete map of the cables once to convince him they exist. He just couldn’t fathom we’re actually able to run thousands of km of cables at the bottom of the ocean.

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I heartily recommend Andrew Blum's book Tubes: Behind the Scenes at the Internet for any non-technical folks interested in the physical infrastructure that makes all that internet magic happen. It's more in the travel memoir/popular history genres than actual engineering, but a very atmospheric layman's introduction.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23047146-tubes

And of course, if you're ever in SW England, the Museum of Submarine Telegraphy near Penzance is an awesome geek-out experience.

My favorite Wired article of all time was the 1996 article written by Neal Stephenson all about undersea cables. I can’t believe I was able to find a link, but I may still have the physical copy someplace. That was an amazing example of long form writing and was my introduction to Stephenson.

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

The moment I saw the subject I thought of the same article. It is one of the all time great articles of 'early modern' era of the net.

I really miss wired.

I got into the Internet with their 93 article by William Gibson where they sent him to Singapore.

It was a really neat place to have articles by people like Stephenson and Gibson.

Heh do you recall Mondo 2000

It was what wired was inspired by...

Also since we are on the topic: 2600 was a great phreaking resource back in the day... 2600 may still be going though...

I didn’t read Mondo 2000 in real time and I think found it on its last issue.

2600 is still going last I checked, along with monthly meetups in my mall.

'Disneyland With The Death Penalty':

https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/

Another article which left a mark on me is Bruce Sterling's 'The Future? You don't want to know':

https://www.wired.com/1995/11/wired-scenarios-future-dont-wa...

In the original print edition, this was a tumult of mad typography, as well as an essay, which was a very Wired thing but taken to extremes. Appropriately for a cyberpunk writer, it may not entirely hang together logically, but it delivers a thrilling stream of eyeball kicks. I still remember the conclusion:

Real futurism means staring directly into your own grave and accepting the slow but thorough obliteration of everyone and everything you know and love.

Does this sound like fun? It can be.

Just don't expect it to move a lot of product.

Thanks for sharing! I remember enjoying the undersea cable plot in Cryptonomicon.

Inspired by another recent HN post about subsea cables, I'm currently reading The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage which walks through the history of the telegraph. It blows my mind that North America and Europe were connected by undersea cable before the start of the Civil War.

It's also part of his recent collection "Some remarks"

If you want to go back to where it all began, I recommend "A Thread Across the Ocean" by John Steele Gordon:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/410958.A_Thread_Across_t...

Andrew Blum's Ted talk https://youtu.be/XE_FPEFpHt4?t=292

What happens if the cable stops working? What are the troubleshooting steps?

Figure out roughly where the problem is (a number of ways of doing this), then send a boat out with a hook to grab the cable off the bottom of the ocean. Pull it up to the surface, fix it, and lower it back down.

Incredibly expensive operation, so you want to avoid this if at all possible...

What measures are taken to avoid this? I read somewhere that these cable are not actually buried into the ground, but rather lay on top of the ground. That sounds very risky to me?

They are buried only when close to shores or in other high risk areas. There is no point in burying a cable if the sea bed is 3 miles under the surface. There is still danger, from animals biting into the cable (sharks are known to do this). But the cables are wrapped in steel cables so not even a shark should be able to cut through.

> There is no point in burying a cable if the sea bed is 3 miles under the surface.

There is a point, it's just not something we're able to do. You can get the cable onto the sea bed by lowering it from the surface. We know how to get to the surface.

To bury it, you'd need to run a digging operation at the bottom of the ocean.

...which we're able to do, we do somewhat similar digs for offshore oil all the time, but it's not worth the gargantuan expense. The risk of leaving it exposed is worth it.

When we're saying incredibly expensive, what are we talking here? $10M repair job?

I googled and found this https://ore.catapult.org.uk/app/uploads/2018/02/Export-Cable...

Costs between £5.3m and £15.5m

Wikipedia has a nice gif of the repair process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...

Funny random thing from that. In 1959 the Americans got annoyed by a Russian trawler breaking their cable and complained they'd broken the Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables of 1884. Who'da thought this was going on in 1884?

> Who'da thought this was going on in 1884?

It's well-known in Britain, at least. It looks to be part of the science examination taken at age 16 [2].

On your Wikipedia page, the section "British dominance of early cable" [1] describes the early success in this technology.

Last time I was at the Science Museum in London, they had an exhibition on transatlantic cables. I think it's part of the permanent exhibition. [0] [3]

[0] https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-per...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/teach/class-clips-video/the-invention-of... (video probably only available in the UK).

[3] https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/search/gallery/infor...

You would probably be interested in looking into the USS Jimmy Carter submarine....

The one the NSA uses to pull up and splice spying equipment into undersea cables....

They don't do that with most of the cables, the cable just comes ashore and goes into the NSA/GCHQ box and that is it.

So I guess that Google have done a deal with the devil already with this, wherever that cable comes ashore will be the mystery room with mystery kit inside, much like what goes on in Sennen in Cornwall. Cable and Wireless operate the cable, it goes to the GCHQ box that then connects with GCHQ in Bude and then on to the doughnut in Cheltenham where the spying for the NSA is done. This is the 'special relationship'.

Nobody thinks Google is evil(!) so you have to wonder how much is done as per the 'Glomar Explorer', with the whole thing being a bit of a cover story. The race is on for Africa with the option being Google doing it or the dreaded Huawei doing it, which would really mean getting the USS Jimmy Carter out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

“Britain's very first action after declaring war on Germany in World War I was to have the cable ship Alert (not the CS Telconia as frequently reported)[12] cut the five cables linking Germany with France, Spain and the Azores, and through them, North America.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cab...

I’d like to read more about the theory behind that decision. There are so many interesting possibilities if the cables were left in place.

Also, how did the Zimmerman telegraph happen if Germany to Mexico was cut off?

The telegram was sent to the German embassy in the United States for re-transmission to Eckardt in Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

I believe they had enough wireless stations to get across the Atlantic or they could communicate via diplomatic bag through neutral countries/ones with intact cables

The first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858. I guess the major continents all had been connected before the end of 1800s.

If he thinks that's amazing. Tell him about how Five Eyes and Russia managed to tap those cables!

Well I still have trouble with that, and a map wouldn't help very much. Imagine convincing governments to make the huge en-devour of placing thousands of kilometers of cables under the sea, and maintaining them, just for some "nerd stuff". If they did, they probably had a very good reason convincing them.

Except that is generally not governments doing it; it is private companies. It is pure profit motive. Despite the great cost, the cables are profitable.

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