Google Is Backing a New $300 Million High-Speed Internet Trans-Pacific Cable 135
An anonymous reader writes Google has announced it is backing plans to build and operate a new high-speed internet Trans-Pacific cable system called "FASTER." In addition to Google, the $300 million project will be jointly managed by China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel, with NEC as the system supplier. FASTER will feature the latest high-quality 6-fiber-pair cable and optical transmission technologies. The initial design capacity is expected to be 60Tb/s (100Gb/s x 100 wavelengths x 6 fiber-pairs), connecting the US with two locations in Japan.
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I believe they have accepted the "if you want the cable to be able to actually connect to anything in the US, you need to let us splice this box into the cable" proposition by the NSA.
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Re:Big Challenge (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure if I'd rather have the NSA spying on my or China trying to steal my intellectual property.
I don't believe this is an either/or situation.
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I'm not sure if I'd rather have the NSA spying on my or China trying to steal my intellectual property.
I don't believe this is an either/or situation.
And if you're not sure what that means, Google "double penetration"... but maybe not at work.
Then again, with Google in the mix it will be "triple penetration"...
bottom line is everyone will have your data and you will be screwed, like now but faster!
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People here tend to think they're much more important and interesting than they actually are.
Re:Finally some Asian LPBs (Score:4, Funny)
they can do worse than making us a nice fat pipe for quality anime and JAV
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I can't argue against faster-loading pregnant furry futanari tentacle porn.
Did I miss any fetishes?
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yes this weird niche one where there are women having sex.
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you think that's weird, they even have bizarre specially named sub-genre of that kind where material is deposited in the women's tract at conclusion of sexual activities by the male.
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Yes, A LOT. I'm not sure of the rule number, but the minute you think you've listed all fetishes you didn't actually get them all.
Loli, Vore, TS, transformation, gassy, and on and on and on.
Slight problem (Score:5, Funny)
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You'll have to share with the others, otherwise you won't get any dessert.
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You can have it, but with your download limit of 250GB, you will be throttled after 0.004 seconds.
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My first thought too. We have two 100 GB/s pipes within a block of me, and lots of 40 GB/s pipes spread throughout campus, so (does math) ...
If we do some high def surgical research and genome swaps with collaborators in Japan, S Korea, and China this might fill up fast.
And that's just this campus.
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I had an opportunity early last year to have a 10Gbps pipe, from my desktop workstation, to the Internet.
Conclusion? MEH. Except for bulk data transfers, nothing outside the university's LAN has a low enough ping to make it meaningful. And even for bulk transfers... anyone whose server has a 10Gbps pipe who's not brain damaged is going to rate-limit it exactly because otherwise it would take one other guy with a 10G pipe to clog the whole thing.
It _was_ really impressive that I could upload a 4GB iso of the
My tax dollars at work. (Score:2)
Or at least I assume so, given how much this would benefit the NSA.
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Why are you so confident they don't already have it?
Between spies infiltrating endpoints and fiber-tapping subs (If the US has one, which they do, China almost certainly does too), it's best to assume all data is or can be captured in transit and focus on end-to-end encryption.
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So is it even worth it for governments to tap undersea cables? It is easy to negate the attack using end-to-end encryption. The sub also has to have the capability to record and store terabytes worth of information a second. I don't know of any recording device capable of that.
CATCHA: intent
Actually, all the sub has to be able to do is take the data and feed it back into the fiber with different destination addresses. Which means that the sub doesn't even have to stick around after pulling off the intercept. This DOES mean that the next group to intercept the data gets to see a whole bunch of encrypted (or not) data flowing to a mystery address, however.
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I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but could the tap be applied while they're still laying the cable? I mean, at some point a ship with a coil of cable sets off from the US, unreeling the cable as it goes. Once it's a couple of kilometers away, the NSA sends in the sub and applies the tap before the ship's even got over the horizon. Presumably that'd work, wouldn't it? Or do they have the cable lit with some sort of test data while they're laying it?
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That was one of the thoughts I had; the other was: the actual cable would be crazy to tap, but they don't have to. Instead of tapping all of the fiber strands sheathed in the power cable, why not just dip in at the boost point? You get a momentary power fluctuation which affects the entire service, and then everything goes back online -- with the booster replaced by a destructive intercept. To the remote telemetry, it reads like a temporary boost anomaly, when really it's an intercept.
You don't need to b
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Because if you do actually cut the cable (with a boat anchor, near shore), then you can do whatever you want with it in the middle and nobody would notice.
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This is the direction I was going, but I'm not sure it's actually true -- the other end of the cable will still have access to all telemetry in the boosters and sheathe right up to the booster prior to the cut, won't it? Anyone with more experience with these cables willing to weigh in here?
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I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but could the tap be applied while they're still laying the cable?
In practice, the tap would go in without a problem, but the diagnostics at either end would detect a problem with the cable and give an approximate location Then it's up to the operator whether they want to accept a known damaged cable, or pay to investigate the "damage" before going live. It's possible they'd look for a rebate from the cable manufacturer, and just light it up. But I've not seen anything indicating any cable was "lightly damaged" and put into service. The liklihood that "damage" would g
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Beta? (Score:5, Funny)
Only 6 pairs? (Score:3, Interesting)
You'd think that since the sheathing probably costs more than the fiber, and the labor/paperwork/engineering involved in laying it probably dwarfs the equipment cost, they'd put in a lot more than 6 pair.
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The other 660 pairs are for the NSA.
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That doesn't even make sense.
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Does a total of 666 make sense?
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Wow...biblical numerology is hilarious.
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It will be a Revelation to you once you comprehend its significance.
Re:Only 6 pairs? (Score:5, Informative)
The limitation is in the amplifier equipment in the festoons on the ocean floor. In terrestrial cables we don't have that limitation and you'll frequently see 288 count cables on long-haul routes and 48 count cables going through neighborhoods and subdivisions.
Re:Only 6 pairs? (Score:4, Interesting)
For each fiber, you need an amplifier every 50 (?) km. You may run into a weight limit where the amplifier pack becomes too heavy to be suspended by the cable during cable laying.
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For each fiber, you need an amplifier every 50 (?) km. You may run into a weight limit where the amplifier pack becomes too heavy to be suspended by the cable during cable laying.
And those amplifiers require power, which is hard to transmit over a cable at those distances. (Well maybe not "hard", but the length imposes practical limits.)
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Re:Only 6 pairs? (Score:4, Informative)
They use optical amplifiers. The signal stays in optical form, and is guided through a special section of fiber. A laser pumps energy into that fiber section, some of that energy ends up amplifying the signal. So it still needs power to drive the laser.
Re:Only 6 pairs? (Score:5, Informative)
Delivered through a system as practical as it is insane-sounding: There's one power cable, doubling as an armor layer. The station at one end drives it +lotsofvolts relative to ground, the other drives it -lotsofvolts. All those amplifiers are hooked up in series.
Isn't this pointless? (Score:1)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that there was plenty of undersea cable that's under-utilized or sitting dark.
Don't we keep inventing new ways to send orders of magnitude more data through the same old fibers? Isn't this the reason of the original WorldCom market collapse? Isn't this still the case, and there is tons of dark fiber and bandwidth available?
I doubt this makes any economic sense, so I'm just suspicious that Google just wants to own and snoop more traffic.
Re: Isn't this pointless? (Score:3, Informative)
Those were 1Gb/s, these are 100Gbs with 100 WDM. Suitable for linking data centers, not just offices
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They were originally 1Gb/s, but aren't they potentially much faster now? There have been improvements in fiber transceivers, and that's what I'm talking about. Old 1G links are now 40G. Looking for references....
Re: Isn't this pointless? (Score:4, Informative)
Transoceanic cables have repeaters positioned along their length. They can't be upgraded to newer tech without help from the US Navy.
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So really, it's cheaper to lay new than to upgrade existing.
Re: Isn't this pointless? (Score:5, Informative)
No, because those submarine cables also include the amplifiers/regenerators spaced out across the ocean floor which aren't compatible with the slick new coherent optics. Most of the old ones are hardwired to regenerate Sonet framed signals.
So which agencies' backdoors are in there? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google ... China Telecom Global ... KDDI ... SingTel
Does that suggest at least 4 countries with NSA-like taps into the data.
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That's probably because of the guns. Too many Americans "forget" they have a Desert Eagle in the glove box, even after the customs guy asks them 3 times.
Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Many years ago, when I was 6 or 7, my grandparents drove me up to Prince Edward Island for a vacation. Getting through the border into Canada took about 45 minutes, with my grandparents getting grilled and the agents asking me about a dozen times whether I wanted to be with them and whether my parents knew where I was etc etc.. Getting back into the US took about 2 minutes. It seems like it's a Canadian neurosis.
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It seems like it's a Canadian neurosis.
Nope. The process for entering the US from Canada without proper documentation for a minor is just as rigorous.
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We had proper documentation (notarized permission letter, notarized copy of my birth certificate, passport)... The reason I say it's a Canadian neurosis (albeit semi-seriously) is that I made many other (25 or so) border crossings as a minor without parental accompaniment (many more with one parent), and never had an issue anywhere else (including Mexico, France, Italy, England, Austria, US, Switzerland, Cayman Islands).
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I think it's largely random. We've traveled regularly to the US (from Canada) with our grandson since he was two, and had to show the custodial letter about half the time. Occasionally a 3rd degree, usually just a quick Q&A. Same thing with the dog - we always have his papers (immunization records) ready with our passports, and we've never been asked for them.
Come to think of it, the dog is probably worth more to the right buyer. :)
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There is a high rate of Americans kidnapping their child
It's impossible to kidnap your kid, they are kidnapping their ex's kid, who they might share genetic code with.
What's funny is that when I left the US, the three of us had three different surnames on our passport, and nobody said a thing. We had all the extra paperwork to prove who the 3 year old belonged to, but nobody cared. Flew from Hawaii to Fiji, no questions asked. I guess one parent with a kid is suspicions, a married-looking couple with a kid can go wherever, even if not married and the kid isn
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I made at least 25 border crossings (mostly foreign-foreign) while a minor and not under the care of my parents or with a cousin who was not under the care of their parents (including a solo one to Mexico to meet up with some family friends when I was 10, although IIRC that was pretty paperwork heavy with the airline)... Canada was the only time there was any trouble.
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My experience tells me absolutely nothing about whether Canada was being diligent in border screening.
In every single case I crossed a border as a minor it was with free will and full paperwork, so I can't say if the screening was diligent in a way that would uncover a coercive crossing situation.
It also doesn't tell me anything about their screening criteria. Making too many type 2 errors, like I experienced with my grandparents, means that resources are not being effectively directed. And that has costs a
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Non-custodial kidnapping is the most common kind of kidnapping. Something like 99.99999% of all the kids on milk boxes are custodial kidnappings. But Christ, you're his Dad and he's 15, they could have asked him.
The world's gotten a bit insane.
Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there? (Score:5, Funny)
Free medical checkups are one good reason to live in Canada.
Re:So which agencies' backdoors are in there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Does it really matter at this point how information traverses the Internet? It is a PUBLIC network. Do yourself a favor and encrypt all your traffic and you won't have to worry about which route your data takes to get to its destination. Doing it any other way is just not going to cut it these days.
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A fact that even Google, Facebook, etc. are learning, as they start to encrypt ALL traffic between their datacentres and not just rely on the promise of privacy from governments / ISPs.
This is the natural evolution of the Internet, prompted by such spying and interceptions - being used for nothing more than transporting encrypted packets whose payload cannot be determined to any significant degree. The Internet is fast becoming a darknet of its own.
I know that, for years, I haven't accepted unencrypted com
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I've been pushing (In the most annoying of manners) for my regular contacts to set up Retroshare as a secure IM program.
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I just checked our server logs for the last month. Out of the connections, less then 4-5% negotiated TLS.
Now, granted, about 90% of those connections were probably spam, so maybe as much as half of legitimate mail servers now negotiate TLS.
(Anyone got better data? I didn't feel like trying to figure out whether a particular connection was or was not a s
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https://usikkert.no/blog/the-s... [usikkert.no]
is a start.
I'm sure there are better around.
You can test particular domain mail servers here:
https://starttls.info/ [starttls.info]
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Probably, but anyone who cares, such as google, should be assuming that is happening and using wire-speed encryption hardware on both ends. Even without collusion, it's not that hard to sneak a 90/10 tap into an optical signal at a NAP and take a peek.
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Not really. It is the internet, consider it pre-tapped. USA capture on the edge in LAX (Thanks AT&T) , China captures on the GFoC. Doubt Japanese government or Singapore does much of their own taps.
In any case, who wants to support a tap a 5000 feet down?
Hmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rather Google come in and bust the telecom monopoly in my home town where I have a choice between Verizon FiOS and Comcast Xfinity ... if you want to call that a choice. The lesser of the evils is Verizon FiOS. At least the FiOS is truly fiber optic!
That sounds great, but what happens when Google obtains monopoly status in your area?
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That sounds great, but what happens when Google obtains monopoly status in your area?
A quick internet search indicated that there will be no problems, and that we shouldn't worry at all about this. I was then given a link to a free game download. BBL.
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In this case where it is pretty obvious that Google Fibre is going to go global, so a global monopoly.
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And what's your monthly cap with Comcast? Is it higher than 35GB?
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Must suck balls to have limits so low... I have a Netflix account with 4 HD connections (4 TV's) and I average 450-500+ GB's a month is usage. Already past 153GB's for this month. (Loving this Gargoyle firmware on my router.)
Although I did read a story on here that Comcast was trying to merge with my current ISP Time Warner/Brighthouse. if that happens I may need to switch to Verizon's FiOS and uuugghhh I would rather cut off my testicles. Customer service is well shit... one time I had to cut about 200 fee
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I'd rather Google come in and bust the telecom monopoly in my home town where I have a choice between Verizon FiOS and Comcast Xfinity ... if you want to call that a choice. The lesser of the evils is Verizon FiOS. At least the FiOS is truly fiber optic!
I'm right there with ya, only the monopoly in my area is shitty Verizon DSL, talk about being stuck with a single bad choice.
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WTF do you expect google to do? even on google fiber netflix tops out at 10mbps
you can splooge your shorts watching your speedtests all day long, but in reality it won't be that much faster since all the services you access won't be buying enough bandwidth on their end for you to take advantage of it
i have 2 LTE phones and Team Stream takes forever to update even though i can do a 20mbps speed test at the time. welcome to the internet
Does not compute (Score:2)
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They are still arguing about things like school history textbooks - China accuses Japan of whitewashing their atrocities, Japan accuses China of exaggerating some of them or presenting them in a way that makes them seem like current practice. But it's a peaceful debate involving much slinging of insults and very little slinging of missiles.
Everything you wanted to know about undersea cable (Score:3)
Neal Stephenson's utterly fantastic essay on the subject (all 42,000 words of it) for Wired [wired.com]
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I know that article is old as shit because I had a subscription to Wired when it came out. Fantastic stuff, though.
I just finished reading Snow Crash again last week. I almost never re-read books, but that's a classic. It was written in 1992 and set 20 to 25 years in the future, AKA right about now. The reason that Facebook purchased Oculus is because they want to basically create the Metaverse.
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Nothing new considering William Gibson wrote Neuromancer in the 1980s.
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1984. That's actually one of the only other books I've read multiple times.
The details of the Snow Crash version will probably be much closer to what Facebook ends up building.
Net Neutrality (Score:2)
I believe Google just fired a salvo into the Net Neutrality war.
Comcast et all: Hey content providers, it'd be a real shame if your speeds got real slow. A real shame. Howsa about some protection money, y'know just in case?
Google: Gee Comcast, seems your connection the the rest of the world is awfully slow, might be we just bypass you altogether...
Seems sort of like Backbone VS Last Mile: Fight!
At the very least a bit of future hedging going on. Google also has last mile service in a few areas. Imagine if t
Across the wide Pacific? (Score:2)
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Only if you are Sara Palin. (I'm not sure you understand the distance involved)
Seriously though, it's actually probably cheaper to lay it across the equator than try to put a cable across the bearing straight. The ocean is pretty turbulent in the straight, it's pretty turbulent any time you get closer to the poles. There were articles the other day that global warming has opened up so much water this summer north of canada that they've had 15' (3m) waves. You need calm water (including underwater currents o
It's not Google (Score:2)
"A consortium of six global companies announced that they have signed commercial agreements to build and operate a new Trans-Pacific cable system to be called “FASTER” (...) The six-company consortium is comprised of China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and SingTel."
The OP gives the wrong idea that Google backs up the project and the others are involved only in management, which seems incorrect from the orig
Can't wait for 60 Tbits/sec to my home (Score:2)
Let's mix China, Japan, & ... (Score:2)
... the NSA ... what could possibly go wrong?
Ah Cryptonomicon (Score:1)
Once again, scifi leads the way.
Internet (Score:2)
Why the fuck does everyone think this is actually going to be used for internet traffic?
Sure, part of the China Mobile side of things might be used for peering, I'd be shocked if any more than 5% of this capacity was going to be used for internet peering.
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Napatech is way too expensive.