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Gone are the days when image pixels were loaded line by line.

Now even HD quality videos are available almost everywhere. How did the Internet become so fast? Due to the fact that the speed of information transfer has reached almost the speed of light.

The article was written with the support of EDISON Software.

We are developing geographic information systems, as well as doing creation of web applications and sites.

We love the World Wide Web! 😉

Information superhighway

For the miracle of modern fiber optics, we owe this man - Narinder Singh Kapani. The young physicist did not believe his professors that light “always moves only in a straight line.” His research into the behavior of light eventually led to the creation of fiber optics (essentially a beam of light moving inside a thin glass tube).

The next step towards using fiber optics as a means of communication was to reduce the rate at which light attenuated as it passed through a cable. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, various companies made advances in production by reducing interference and allowing light to travel longer distances without significantly reducing signal intensity.

By the mid-1980s, the installation of long-distance fiber optic cables was finally approaching the stage of practical implementation.

Crossing the ocean

The first intercontinental fiber optic cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean in 1988. This cable, known as TAT-8, was laid by three companies: AT&T, France Télécom and British Telecom. The cable was the equivalent of 40 thousand telephone channels, which is ten times more than its galvanic predecessor, the TAT-7 cable.

TAT-8 does not appear in the video above as it was retired in 2002.

From the moment all the bends of the new cable were configured, the information floodgates opened. In the 90s, many more cables lay on the ocean floor. By the millennium, all continents (except Antarctica) were connected by fiber optic cables. The Internet began to take physical form.

As you can see in the video, the early 2000s saw a boom in the laying of submarine cables, reflecting the growth of the Internet around the world. In 2001 alone, eight new cables connected North America and Europe.

More than a hundred new cables were installed between 2016 and 2020, costing an estimated $14 billion. Now even the most remote Polynesian islands have access to high-speed Internet thanks to undersea cables.

The changing nature of global cable construction

Although almost all corners of the globe are now physically interconnected, the pace of cable laying is not slowing down.

This is due to the increased capacity of new cables and our growing appetite for high-quality video content. New cables are extremely efficient: the bulk of the potential capacity along major cable routes comes from cables that are no more than five years old.

Previously, cable installations were paid for by consortiums of telecommunications companies or governments. Nowadays, technology giants are increasingly financing their own submarine cable networks.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google own almost 65% of the cloud storage market. It is no wonder that they would also like to control the physical means of transporting this information.

These three companies now own 63 miles of submarine cables. While cable installation is expensive, supply has struggled to keep up with demand—content providers' share of data has skyrocketed from about 605% to nearly 8% in the last decade alone.

A bright future for a faded past

At the same time, it is planned (and carried out) to disconnect obsolete cables. And even though the signals no longer pass through this network of “darkened” optical fiber, it can still serve a good purpose. It turns out that undersea telecommunications cables form a very effective seismic network, helping researchers study marine earthquakes and geological structures on the ocean floor.

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Source: habr.com