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Microsoft and Facebook Just Built a 4,000-Mile Cable Across the Pacfic Ocean (popularmechanics.com) 151

An anonymous reader quotes Popular Mechanics: Microsoft, Facebook and global telecommunication infrastructure company Telxius have completed the Marea subsea cable, the world's most technologically advanced undersea cable. The Marea crosses the Atlantic Ocean over 17,000 feet below the ocean's surface, connecting Virginia Beach with Bilbao, Spain. Over 4,000 miles (6,600 kilometers) long and weighing nearly 10.25 million pounds (4.65 million kilograms), the Marea can transmit up to 160 terabits of data per second, which Microsoft notes is "more than 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection, making it capable of streaming 71 million high-definition videos simultaneously."
The undersea cable -- about 1.5 times the diameter of a garden hose -- contains eight pairs of fiber optic cables encircled by copper, a protective layer of hard plastic, and then waterproof coating. Its 4,000-mile route had to avoid everything from earthquake zones to active volcanoes.

Cables under the Atlantic Ocean carry 55% more data than cables under the Pacific, Microsoft writes, adding that "the project highlights the increasing role of private companies in building the infrastructure of the future."
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Microsoft and Facebook Just Built a 4,000-Mile Cable Across the Pacfic Ocean

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    NT

  • Pacfic or Atlantic (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 23, 2017 @02:47PM (#55251261)

    I guess the headline needs to be fixed.

  • Title wrong (Score:5, Informative)

    by gringer ( 252588 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @02:47PM (#55251263)

    Someone needs to read their own summary: this looks like the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific Ocean.

    • Re:Title wrong (Score:5, Informative)

      by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @04:12PM (#55251599)

      Someone needs to read their own summary: this looks like the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific Ocean.

      They didn't say it was the Pacific Ocean. They said it was the Pacfic Ocean. Must be a new one - caused by rising sea levels?

  • These certainly are strange days. The Pacific is now in the Atlantic*. Next you'll be telling me that Cats are living with Dogs and that US is actually a reality show a la Truman.

    How the fuck you get the Pacific I don't know. It's as if the last thing in the submission said "Pacific" and that's all the "editors" can remember - the last thing they saw.

  • Glad I took the time to read TFA. I would have been thoroughly confused given the headline and the summary text. Thanks for that.

  • by king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @02:53PM (#55251299)
    What is that in hogsheads?
  • Holy fuck EditorDavid. This is a whole new low. You've officially descended Slashdot to the depth of editing not even seen on Breitbart.

    ATLANTIC. PACIFIC. Seriously, you can't even get that fucking simple a fact straight?

  • by therealkevinkretz ( 1585825 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @02:58PM (#55251327)

    Headline says Pacific, article says Atlantic

    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      No, worse than that. Headline says "Pacfic".
      • by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @05:25PM (#55251899) Homepage

        Pacfic

        Blinky looked at PacMan, gazing at his wide mouth and unblinking eye. They'd been on opposite sides for so long, but now, as he watched the yellow circle swallowing the pills, he felt a fluttering in his sheet...

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Pacfic

          Blinky looked at PacMan, gazing at his wide mouth and unblinking eye. They'd been on opposite sides for so long, but now, as he watched the yellow circle swallowing the pills, he felt a fluttering in his sheet...

          Your Pacfic interests me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

  • by FrankHaynes ( 467244 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:04PM (#55251349)

    Only approved traffic will be allowed on the new cable. Anyone critical of Microsoft or Facebook will be banned from using it.

    • by lucm ( 889690 )

      Only approved traffic will be allowed on the new cable. Anyone critical of Microsoft or Facebook will be banned from using it.

      Gotta protect the pipe. It will only allow for 71 millions hd streaming at the same time. Just the Facebook and MSN ads take more than that.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      So encryption will be banned on it?

  • by MiniMike ( 234881 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:10PM (#55251385)

    ...4,000-Mile Cable Across the Pacfic Ocean ... connecting Virginia Beach with Bilbao, Spain

    Microsoft maps claims another victim!

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:14PM (#55251397)

    Microsoft and Facebook laid a giant cable across The Atlantic [wikipedia.org] to keep them from posting any more mean things about them. This wasn't an accident, they did this pacifically because they heard bad things were going to be in the next issue.

    I'm not sure how you guys got all confused about something so simple. ;)

  • by aaarrrgggh ( 9205 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:15PM (#55251401)

    Seems odd to build new cables with such a low strand count-- is it just a function of the optical amplifiers?

    • Re:Only 16 strands? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @04:48PM (#55251743)

      For technological reasons, this gives the best value. There are also undersea fiber-optic cables with just 4 strands, and two of them are reserve ones. So the 8 pairs seen here are actually pretty high. And yes, it is mostly the amplifiers needed, they cannot get too large or you cannot just put them in the cable. These amplifiers are pretty tricky with laser-pumped Erbium embedded into the fiber.

  • by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:15PM (#55251403) Homepage

    = 4650 tonnes. Which would have been a lot easier for most people to grog straight away. Still, at least they didn't measure it in elephants tho I suppose it won't be long before submitters drop to that dumbed down level.

    • by Motard ( 1553251 )

      I don't think I can grog that much.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      4.65 Gigagrams
      4.65 Gg

  • by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:19PM (#55251413)
    Nevermind the failure at geography. The whole damn headline is wrong. Neither Facebook nor Microsoft did anything other than write a big fat check to the telecom company that runs undersea cables. If Amazon and Apple were to have the driveways of their headquarters repaved, would the slashdot headline breathlessly scream "Amazon and Apple Build New Highway!" or something similarly retarded?
    • Did they build gigantic multi-billion dollar headquarters, or did the construction companies they hired?

      • Depends on their level of involvement in the architecture and design of the buildings, doesn't it?

        But just as the appropriate verbiage for my example would be, "X had their driveways repaved," the correct way to write TFA would be "Facebook and Microsoft commissioned/ordered/payed for/bought a trans-Antarctic cable."
    • by msauve ( 701917 )
      So, it's the Foxconn iPhone?
      • If it's Foxconn IP with an Apple sticker on the outside, then sure. If it's not, then no.
        • by msauve ( 701917 )
          Non sequitur, since when Microsoft and Facebook do the design and development, you claim it's different.

          From a MS press release: "Microsoft and Facebook agreed to partner on the development, Spanish telecommunication infrastructure company Telxius, a subsidiary of telecom provider TelefÃnica, joined as the third partner to manage the construction process and operate the cable." From a Facebook press release: "Microsoft and Facebook designed MAREA..."
  • by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:19PM (#55251415)
    They did not do this out of altruism. They expect to make a handsome profit over selling access to it. I find it hard to get excited about corporate giants that innovate. I get more excited when the little guy achieves something big.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      "corporate giants that innovate" are exceedingly rare. Don't look at them without proper eye-wear.

  • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:19PM (#55251417) Journal
    They also moved pacific ocean between USA and Europe.
  • by rickyslashdot ( 2870609 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:25PM (#55251449)

    Holy Sh!t, EditorDavid - you either need more coffee, or more beer, or better weed (maybe all 3) - AND a $4.99 globe (with pencil sharpener) - to determine what the difference between PACIFIC and ATLANTIC mean to the REAL WORLD - - - - ooops, guess I forgot where I was posting, since /. does seem to make up it's OWN real world on occasion -lol-

    I really, REALLY hope this was a spoofed sig, and not a post from one of /.'s REAL editors . . . . .

  • CALEA Compliant (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:34PM (#55251475) Journal

    I wonder if the NSA has tapped it yet.

    • I wonder if this cable is a response to the revelations of NSA tapping cables.

      Does this provide Microsoft and Facebook any more protection (legal or technical) against NSA tapping without warrants?

      • I'm sure the major powers have tapped everything, as well as placed little bombs hidden somewhere along those thousands of miles, for every undersea cable, ready to go in case of a war.

        As with anything cool and complex, the angry men ready to destroy it are prepared, to preserve their power.

        • I wonder if there's a secret undersea war. The US should build a little machine to regularly go up and down these cables, and cut free anything that's on it that doesn't belong.

          • by dave562 ( 969951 )

            I forget which one of the first five Defcon's it was, but I remember sitting in on a presentation where the presenter laid out where all the undersea cables terminate and made the case that it would be pretty easy to destroy them. Keep in mind this was about 20 years ago, so they likely have additional connection points. Or maybe not.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @03:34PM (#55251479)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • More evidence of man-made "continental shift" and "ocean change". Unless the UN quickly acts, 97% of scientists think the Bering Sea will surround Tahiti in 15 years.

  • by pipingguy ( 566974 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @04:13PM (#55251603)
    Maybe it goes leftwards from the west coast all the way around to Spain?
    • by mikael ( 484 )

      Only during regular office hours. Outside of those it goes in the opposite direction.

  • You know the NSA can't wait to tap into that. https://www.wired.com/2016/09/... [wired.com]

  • FLAG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sootman ( 158191 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @05:36PM (#55251957) Homepage Journal

    One of my favorite articles of all time from any source is the piece Neal Stephenson wrote for Wired about the Fiber Optic Link (around the) Globe, or FLAG, in 1996.

    https://www.wired.com/1996/12/... [wired.com]

    It went from England to Japan (about 28,000 km/17,500 miles) and carried "just under 8 Gbps of actual throughput". 21 years later, this new cable has TWENTY THOUSAND times the bandwidth. Nice.

    • by CG_Man ( 993435 ) *
      Yes!!!! What a great read that was. That's probably the reason for my positive view of Wired all these years since.
  • How? One of the biggest on the whole planet run south to north smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean separating the North American Plate from the Eurasian You may even have heard of it. Its called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The two plates are continuously pulling apart from each other, generating earthquakes all the time. You lay cable across the Atlantic west to east, you have to cross it

    • by Anonymous Coward

      How? One of the biggest on the whole planet run south to north smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean separating the North American Plate from the Eurasian You may even have heard of it. Its called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The two plates are continuously pulling apart from each other, generating earthquakes all the time. You lay cable across the Atlantic west to east, you have to cross it

      I worked on the hydrographic survey for the East Asia Crossing back in 2001. We did the deep water multibeam sonar from Hong Kong to Singapore and back up to Taiwan and drew up the preliminary route maps. Also surveyed the landings in Manila using high resolution multibeam and sidescan. There were several geologic features we had to develop around due to excessive slopes, etc. Just northeast of Singapore the projected route went over a previously uncharted subsea volcano. I was running the multibeam and nav

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Tunneled it Pacific over or under Atlantic just like ipv6 over ipv4?

  • I live in VB. Where is the facility located?

  • The Top secret 6 strands of Fiber Optic cable in there that is only available to certain agencies.

  • Fake news for nerds (Score:4, Interesting)

    by whoda ( 569082 ) on Sunday September 24, 2017 @12:12AM (#55253109) Homepage

    With headlines like this staying uncorrected on a 'smart persons' web site for hours, it is easy to see how just a little fake news could sway an election using the less-informed public.

  • Is the usage of obscure units some kind of inside joke that I'm unaware of. Here are all the units used in the summary:

    * Over 17,000 feet below the ocean's surface [should be in meters]
    * Over 4,000 miles (6,600 kilometers) long [Thank you for having a proper unit. But WTF is with the precision. Weight is given at least with three significant numbers.]
    * weighing nearly 10.25 million pounds (4.65 million kilograms) [Million kilograms. Really? How about tons?]
    * 160 terabits of data per second / more than 16 m

  • ... then again it's not like our government let us say what's on our mind either anyway ..

  • So two of the world's most evil companies now control the largest data pipe between continents. This is very scary for Freedom.

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