Internet is connected by undersea cable or satellite

 99 of all internet traffic from this runs on a hidden network of undersea time how do they work. what's the future for them join us today as we plunge the depths and ask how the internet travels across oceans according to the authoritative submarine cable map website, there are currently 493 active or actively under construction sub-sea internet cables crisscrossing the globe these range from the relatively modest 300-kilometer Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan .wire running under the black sea to the gargantuan 6600-kilometer maria cable linking Virginia beach in us with bill bow, in northern Spain, maria weighs the same as 24 blue whales the firm's laying down this serpentine superhighway worldwide.

 There are now 1.5 million kilometers of undersea data wires arcadey about how much it all costs but professional estimates indicate. A typical transoceanic cable should set you back between three and four hundred million of dollars which seems like a lot because they're not especially thick typically around the girth of a garden hose and that includes layers of protective thixotropic jelly around the all-important fiber optic core plus multiple plastic sheaths and copper wiring to power the thing but even so on average they can ferry an awesome 100 gigabytes per second in data with newer and forthcoming cables can transmit 400 gigabytes per second so how does so much data fit down such slim channels part of the answer is an extremely sophisticated data-wrangling technique known as dense wavelength division multiplexing put simply dense wavelength division multiplexing lets data providers use more than one wavelength of light to convey information fiber optically instead several wavelengths are employed simultaneously and stacked creating astonishing data speeds this  happens at buzzing data center-like landing sites at either end of the cable are the cables just straight forward long wires not quite every 70 to 100 kilometers or so along with the seabed cables are punctuated with so-called repeaters these essentially serve as amplifiers keeping the signal strength up to par over long distances that's why the cables incorporate copper conductors by the way, carrying up to 10 000 volts of dc to power the repeaters how are the cables late they're first coiled into vast cylindrical drums on specialized cable-laying ships as much as a year's planning and charting will go into plotting the perfect trans-oceanic route bad locations for undersea cables include anywhere volcanic or anywhere especially earthquake or mudslide prone or anywhere heavily trolled by fishermen the cable is spooled out the back of the ship at a sedate pace of around 10 kilometers an hour if the ship encounters bad weather the captain can decide whether to break off the cord tie it to a boy and retreat to karma waters when the storm passes the  ship returns to the boy and picks up where it left off accidents and outages on the cables can and do occur in 2012 hurricane sandy in the u.s knocked out several key transatlantic cables disrupting networks for hours in 2011 the Fukushima earthquake in Japan caused similar online the vast majority of such disruptions however are the result of human carelessness typically trawler nets or wayward ships anchors cables situated close to the shore are significantly more at risk from such disruption as such the nearer to lander cable is the more likely it'll be carefully armor-plated many are even dug into the seabed in long dedicated trenches carved out using ship-drawn plows awesomely sharks have been spotted nibbling on one of google's subsea cables get your teeth into this 2014 clip more sinister even than that us government has consistently warned of interference in the cables from hostile foreign powers like Russia or china us government should know all about that whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013  how the NSA had no qualms eavesdropping on fiber optic communications the geopolitical implications of undersea cables are also fascinating last year the Australian used the link to gain access to Australia's sensitive internal networks so who owns these cables that's an interesting question it's an expensive business so historically nations or quasi-national telecom providers have picked up the bill the world's the biggest owner of cables remains America's at with a stake in some 230 000 kilometers of undersea cable the second-biggest owner is china telecom frequently cables are owned by groups the initial cost it's less helpful when something goes wrong and nobody can agree who has to put on a wetsuit and do something about it increasingly big tech is recognizing its scope for growth is limited by the undersea cable network so over the past few years the overwhelming majority of investment in undersea cable infrastructure has come from companies like Facebook which currently owns nearly 100 000 kilometers of cables google own  roughly the same amount Amazon has its massive private network hooking up the online giant's mighty AWS data centers through cables traversing the Atlantic pacific and Indian oceans plus the Mediterranean and the red sea and the south china sea the tech giants like to frame these vast environmentally disruptive infrastructure projects a civilization enhancing largesse on their part but they're also shareholder companies remember who know perfectly well that increasing the number of human beings online is the only way they can continue to grow to hang on a second you're probably thinking what about Starlink isn't our old mate Elon about to make the internet wireless any day now, for now, the cable is by far the cheapest and most efficient means of eating vast packets of data over incredibly long distances fast even normally bullish musk says Starlink is only aimed at people who don't presently enjoy access to high-speed fiber but who knows how that'll pan out in a decade or two for now the future is very much undersea cables  only this summer google and Facebook announced a joint initiative to build an undersea cable named apricot will link up Singapore japan Guam the Philippines Taiwan and Indonesia by the year 2024. the longest subaquatic cable ever a 45 000 kilometer billion-dollar monster called to Africa that will link up 33 nations was just bankrolled by a Facebook-led consortium what do you think will mankind's ingenious submarine network one day look as obsolete as the telegraph .