How does laying ‘trans-Atlantic cables’ along the ocean floor give us all internet?
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What exactly is the question about?
Fiberobital cables can carry a tremendous amount of data and by adding optical amplifiers you can have very long links across the Atlantic.
Cable connections across the Atlantic predate the internet by a century. The first telegraph cable that worked for a long time was laid down in 1866 and was in operation until 1965
Fiberobital cable across the Atlantic can carry a lot of data that can be used for internet traffic. It is not giving us all internet because it is only a small part of a global network with a lot of fibers and other connected technology. You also need lots of server to all the services we access online.
>How does laying ‘trans-Atlantic cables’ along the ocean floor give us all internet?
It doesn’t. Transoceanic cables are just one part of the necessary network infrastructure.
But if you want to access data or a service hosted on a Brazilian server but you’re located in France then at some point some kind of signal will have to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Unsurprisingly this is done via cable.
Well before “internet” all was fine and dandy. There were transatlantic telephone cables already. Then internet comes along. There was a new demand for transatlantic and transpacific high capacity traffic. Thus enters the optical fiber cable. This allowed high capacity traffic to go from America to Europe to Asia to Africa. Otherwise you’d be limited to just the internet where you’re located.
I have a computer in the UK, and you have a computer in the US. I want to send you some data. You want to send me some data. We need to connect our computers together.
A long-ass cable starting at my computer, stretched across the bottom of the ocean, and ending at your computer is no worse solution than any other once you’ve gotten the logistics right.
Now swap the computers out for large ISP’s and you’ve connected together the UK and US’s networks.
* The internet is a network of computers.
* Some of those computers are on the other side of the world.
* Undersea cables give us a way to connect to those computers.
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