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Map Showing the International Undersea Cables

news.com.com — The vast bulk of international telephone and Internet traffic travels through underwater cables. This map shows the cables that were in use as of the end of 2004 and gives an indication of where traffic is heaviest.

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  • bytefoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Kewl.
  • Zukunft, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Atlantic Ocean's got it going on.
  • tburke261, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Just out of curiosity, how much badnwith does each cable have on average? Gigabit? Multi-Gigabit?
    Does anyone know?
  • thecolor11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Good going, now all the sharks know exactly where they are.
  • tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1tburke261: There's a bandwidth scale based on linewidth in TFA. Nothing appears to be rated under 10Gbps though...
  • Thud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wonder how much slack is in those cables to allow for sea floor expansion?
  • SoulMaster2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Wow, I never knew it went through cables. I just assumed it was through satillites.
  • chaos86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0no wonder my internet was so damn slow in perth, western australia, despite being broadband.
  • mancat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Poor Africa. Nobody cares about your Internet.
  • whateverdigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Reminds me of Cryptonomicon...
  • reisyboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nope some of it is sats to get to more remote places but still sea cables. They still maintain some of the original copper telephone cables used as backups so kind of cool, but kinda ***** but if they all broke its still there as a mild fix. Anyway i want to know how they cross the mid-Atlantic ridge without melting an all those cracks i mean they cant stick it to the floor, so what they suspend it? I mean come on how much buffeting must that have to take? what if a ship sank on it... meh anyway doesn't really matter, worse comes to worse they can use satellites to replace all these cables untill fixes are made if it was necessary.
  • Linuxrocks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Good going, now all the sharks know exactly where they are.

    LOL
  • motorbikematt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12
    http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun2000/961809790.Eg.r.html
    http://www-dsg.stanford.edu/holbrook/CableCosts.html
    http://www.atlantic-cable.com/Article/Easton/



  • heydroid, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0easy to find with a search, map is small and not detailed, no digg
  • scotty588, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Very interesting.
  • navigatenet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0had always wondered about this--neat :-)
  • mikeazorin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0New York is leaking... all the way to Manchester.
  • JackSeoul, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well that explains Australia's extremely expensive bandwidth bandwidth pricing. Glad I'm in South Korea, look at all the cables driving my 100Mbps FTTH internet connection :-)
  • PSUstoekl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1wow, that's just crazy. I had absolutely no idea. I mean, between the US and australia, that's close to 10,000 miles of underwater cable! crazy!
  • modian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6That's ridiculous, sharks don't use the inter +++ATH0

    CARRIER LOST
  • illegal_op, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0that partially explaines why my stats for my site shows very little activity from Africa.
    __________________
    http://www.leve1.com
  • 2GMario, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2am i the only one that thinks maybe terrorists could look at the map and make a loose assumption where the cables actually are ? maybe bomb it ? there goes international phone and data communication.

    its interesting, but it wasent important for me to see it if it means someone with bad intentions sees it also
    • killuminati96, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"am i the only one that thinks maybe terrorists could look at the map and make a loose assumption where the cables actually are ? maybe bomb it ?"

      it would probably easier just to bomb all the communications satellites

      moron...
  • troydoogle7, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0*****
  • kkaabboomm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0whateverdigg:

    i'm re-reading cryptonomicon right now! and this map reminded me of that too!
  • jczer68, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Interesting that they have undersea cables that aren't really necessary... like the ones from south america to other parts of south america. Was it too much trouble to place it across land in some of these areas? I guess I could understand avoiding certain conflict areas, like the ivory coast and afghanistan. But undersea cables from mainland US to Alaska? Guess we just don't trust those Canadians, lol :D
  • modian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7larger maps:

    http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/teleglobe_large.gif
    http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/alcatel_large.gif
  • TomP, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Next up, A moddified version of google maps called Cablr which gives more details where the cables are :P (actaully that aint a bad idea... )

    - Tom | http://www.tomwrote.info
  • tempest, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Now which one runs to the island in "Lost" tv show?
  • gofargogo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html

    Neal Stephenson's Wired article from several years ago on just this thing. It's a good read for the where, why and how of cables, and why no one will bomb them.
  • buckdog05, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Terrorists could use this?! They would have to bomb a portion of the Atlantic close to the size of Mainland US.
  • NeoTechni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"what if a ship sank on it"

    According to the book "Sphere", they can tell where breaks occur.
  • mrinternet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Inaccurate no digg (its showing only about 80%) or the map is 15 years out of date.
    Also it is showing some but not all suppliers.
    Interesting but no digg.
  • molecool, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0GREAT - we just gave any terrorist a detailed map on how to sever Internet traffic between continents - way to go!! ;-)
  • Carbito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Australia needs a lot more international bandwidth capacity. That probably explains why bandwidth is so expensive down here.
  • tsupersonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow, look at all those cables. Wonder if there is maintenance and if there is I wonder how they do it...

    Hmm, very interesting pic.
  • Archeologist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wow, I wonder how they put it there
  • kkaabboomm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0as to why it runs around south america and not through it...there's this really really really large thing there, called a tropical rain forest. we really aren't keen on driving through there and either burying cable or stringing it on poles...it's a helluva lot easier to just lay it on the bottom of the ocean, less hassle, fatter cables, the whole shebang.
  • bchang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Austrailia must have serious bandwidth problems, but im in canada so im good.
  • mousky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Was it too much trouble to place it across land in some of these areas"

    Um, yes. Ever heard of mountains and rain forest? In South America, the majority of the population lives near the ocean. Why drag cable across the rain forest and the mountains when you can quickly and much more cheaply lay a ring around South America.
  • teh_techie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Try out http://telegeography.com/maps
  • kingamoon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0why is this dugg again? lame ... this is some lame *****. It's a freaking slow digg day today isn't it.

    dugg :)
  • rtphokie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Wait wait, there is just too much detail there.
  • Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sea floor expansion? Lol, even if it were expanding, that would only become a problem in about 50,000 years, at which point we will all just be bodyless energy beings anyway. But the Atlantic is contracting, and the Pacific is expanding, that is why there are lots of Islands (and volcanos) in the pacific, but basically nothing in the Atlantic except Iceland. All the Atlantic islands eroded hundreds of thosands of years ago.
  • nytrox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Interesting article with images of a fibre optic submarine/terrestrial cable being laid on the seabed connecting Auckland in the north of New Zealand to Christchurch in the south.

    http://www.seaworks.co.nz/Text/foaqualinklay.htm
  • sgtpinky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0lol, are you 'terrorists could take out the internet' guys for real?

    Yeah, I am an aussie. I have a ping of like 400 to Europe, which sux because I want to play games with my german mates. Would be nice to get a bit more pace down here. It's a hell of a long way away though, Australia.
  • Arch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wonder if the earthquake/tsunami from last year damaged one of the cables over there.
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