Just saw [this post](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrivNA3LNel/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) and I know it’s a very oversimplification, but what are these cables and what do they exactly do ? And who repairs, manages these cables.
In: 13216
the “just 400” cables each bundle several fibre optic fibres, for example [this new cable between north America and Japan](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/topaz-subsea-cable-connects-canada-and-asia):
> The width of a garden hose, the Topaz cable will house 16 fiber pairs, for a total capacity of 240 Terabits per second
240 terabits is “how much” goes through that cable. but what does that mean again? 240.000 gigabit is 240,000,000 megabit is 240,000,000,000 kilobit.
a nice video stream needs up to 14,000 kilobit.
how many of these fit through that cable? 240,000,000,000 ÷ 14,000 ≈ 17,143,000 seventeen million different 4k video streams. or, same math but other resolutions: HD 1024p 34 million, hd720p 70million
that is, eli5, _a lot_ lot.
[not eli5 video bandwidth needs table](https://support.video.ibm.com/hc/en-us/articles/207852117-Internet-connection-and-recommended-encoding-settings)
long story short: even though existing cables each provide less capacity (e.g. “only” four fibre pairs), all ~~400~~ 500 of them together provide enough “data highway” for the world.
sibling comments have provided insight into who operates them, and how they are put there and so on.
Latest Answers