Submarine Cable Routes

Following up on communications resiliency in and around the PRC after the Taiwan earthquake (previous posts here and here) an individual from Telegeography (whose maps I'd linked to in those posts) contacted me with links to maps that more accurately portray what I'd been seeking: physical undersea cable routes (page soon to be updated, I'm told), as well as overland routes and services between Asia and Europe via Russia... all of which is only as useful as the knowledge, foresight and budgets of those charged with provisioning resilient capacity for offices in-region.

UPDATE: Speaking of network gridlock in China...

Comments

[Edward Vielmetti]

I've mapped out a few traceroute sessions (using looking glass servers at several providers) for traffic within Asia.

As of the last time I checked, I was seeing round-the-globe routing for a number of routes that would have gone via Taiwan in the past. E.g. Hong Kong to Korea via routers in Egypt, London, New York, California etc and ping times to match (600 ms+).

Certainly this is rerouting and the network is "up" at this point, but if you have applications that have depended on speedy interactive response this unexpected globe's worth of lag is going to be a problem. Add to that the sudden observation that one more fiber cut anywhere along a long, long, geopolitically fragile path is now a real risk.

See more at

http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2006/12/singapore_to_se.html

thanks

Ed

[Edward Vielmetti]

Their new issue isn't out yet, but I'd expect the next copy of "Submarine Forum" http://www.subtelforum.com/ to be very interesting. This 6x/yr publication covers the ins and outs of the submarine telecommunications industry (technology, tools, finance, politics, etc).

[Gunnar]

This is really, really long, but really good

"If the network is The Computer, then its motherboard is the crust of Planet Earth. This may be the single biggest drag on the growth of The Computer, because Mother Earth was not designed to be a motherboard. There is too much water and not enough dirt. Water favors a few companies that know how to lay cable and have the ships to do it. Those companies are about to make a whole lot of money."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html