I understand it’s just signals and 1s and 0s but don’t the signals overlap in the undersea cables?
In: Engineering
Undersea cables are like super highways for data. They use fiber optics to send tons of information at lightning speeds, allowing millions of people to connect simultaneously.
You know how physical mail has an address to help the mail service move each piece, but all the pieces go into a common box or sack and the boxes/sacks are sorted at different points?
Digital information works exactly the same way, is just hidden behind a whorly circle or a progress bar so you can’t see it.
You click on a reddit thread and your device sends a request to reddit that identifies your device and the servers used along the way, then reddit sends you the thread you clicked on with an address header that knows the return route so your device can load whatever thread you clicked on. Along the way it goes through dozens of servers and cables and is sorted back and forth at every change point. An undersea cable moves huge amounts of data and the processors on each end sort what goes in and out so each data request is shunted along the network to your local ISP or cell tower, satellite, etc who then pings your device to say the data has arrived and instructs the device to access the content.
It’s a little more involved, but at the end of the day it’s the same as a postal service, just for digital content instead of paper or cardboard.
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