How do the internet wires get to sea floor level? And how would they get fixed if an issue arises?
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[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnBRlXfYe18&t=2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnBRlXfYe18&t=2s)
20.000 cables under the sea (Documentary about the huge fibre optic cables that connect us, 2010)
A big ship carries VERY big internet cables that are as thick as tree trunks, it slowly lays them down on the seabed, which can take a very long time.
Average about 100kms a day that they can lay down.
When a part is damages or faulty, they can see exactly where by sending signals from 2 different shores.
They then life a piece o cable up where it’s working, and cut it, then go past the faulty part, and cut another piece off, so they have 2 working pieces, and then connect those two again with new cable.
It’s, like, 30 years old but [Mother Earth, Mother Board ](https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/) is still a great read for this subject
There is a fantastic article in the New York Times on this process. It’s worth a google to see the pictures of how the cable is laid into the belly of the ship.
There’s specialised ships called “cable layers” whose job is doing this exact job. The ship carries gigantic spools of very thick cables, typically fiber optic cables, and as it sails it slowly lets out the cable on the seafloor. Care is taken so that the cable follows a good route through the sea floor, and divers or submersible vehicles may also be used to aid in this process. In many cases the cable is burried in the seafloor to be protected, though this is not always possible or necessary.
If a cable is cut, it is possible to detect the location of the fault by sending signals in the cable and measuring how long the signal travels for. A ship is sent out that fishes out the ends of the cut cable and it’s spliced with a new length of cable on the ship before it’s submerged back into the seafloor.
MY SON DOES THIS! What everyone else said, I’m just a proud daddyman to my boy, who works on a cable laying ship.
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