I know that for cross border internet connectivity, wires are laid across oceans, how is that made possible and how is the maintenance ensured?
In: Technology
Big boats with spools of cable literally just sail across the ocean, dropping it as they go. As far as animals are concerned, the cable is just a rock. Things like coral will grow on them. The cables are well-armored to prevent damage. There *was* a shark attack on a cable in the 80s (probably trying to eat something sitting on top of it). Far more common is an anchor or trawling net damaging the cable.
Cables are redundant – there are always two or more on the same path so that if one is damaged there isn’t an outage of service. When damage occurs, if it is in a shallow area divers can fix it. If it is in the deep open ocean, a ship will drop a hook and pull it up to be repaired on the surface.
Very big slow moving ships with massive spindles of weighted cables that verrrry slowly roll the cables out that sink down to the bottom. Maintenance is handled either by diving technicians or aquatic drones. Generally they hook a grapple line on the cable and hoist it up, cut the bad part out, and splice together. For the really deep stuff where that’s not possible they’ll pull the two ends up at the deepest parts they *can* reach, pull the now detached piece up, and either find the fault, repair it, and resplice, or splice a new length in.
Why don’t aquatic animals damage them? They totally do. Sharks like to take a bite out of internet infrastructure. We’re not entirely sure why.
You might like this
https://www.submarinecablemap.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable
TLDR- Very big boats. These cables are around the thickness of a garden hose supposedly, but are massively armored. If you look at the submarine cable map, there are hundreds of links between places, so if something goes wrong it’s easy to go out and fix a section either with underwater divers or by pulling a section up to the surface and repairing it.
They are also *very* expensive, $2-6 million *per kilometer* of cable. Animals don’t think much of them, and usually stuff will start growing on it.
Internet cables, known as submarine cables, are laid across deep oceans by specialized ships. The cables are designed to be durable and are often buried under the ocean floor to protect them from disturbances and marine life. Protective layers and materials, including steel armoring, help safeguard the cables from physical damage and abrasion. While occasional disruptions due to natural events or human activities can occur, the robust design and strategic placement usually minimize the risk of damage to these vital communication links.
Yeah there have been reports of sharks attacking the Internet. It’s less dire than it sounds but it makes for a hilarious headline.
https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/shark-attacks-threaten-google-s-undersea-internet-cables-video.html
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