US Navy is worried Russia planning to cut the undersea cables that carry 95% of internet traffic

Business Insider via Reuters ^ | 10/26/2015 | Peter Cooney

[Genoa]

Maybe I’m slow, but how would this not disadvantage Russia just as much as anyone else?

[Dilbert San Diego]

I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

[tet68]

They wouldn’t have to break them now, just plant
remote control mines on them for use at a time of
their choosing.

[Genoa]

Don’t tell me the cloud’s not in the sky.

[Gen.Blather]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/tech/gallery/internet-undersea-cables/

With this and a few air bursts over the United States we’ll all be back in the stone age. (Actually, that would imply a certain level of survival skill. We can’t chip arrow heads or hunt buffalo.)

[Crazieman]

Both activities are regulated by Fedzilla and probably carry the death penalty. I haven’t really kept track of the million pages of laws in the last couple years.

[so_real]

US Navy is worried Russia planning to cut the undersea cables that carry 95% of internet traffic

Why on Earth would they cut something they can tap into? Intercepting data and injecting misleading data are far more valuable tricks than cutting one data route off.

[chrisser]

I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

My understanding is that the distance involved is the issue with satellite communications. The information is travelling close to light speed, but having to go up to a satellite and back down introduces a delay that would not exist in the more direct route beneath the ocean.

I could be wrong, however.

[hotsteppa]

I am surprised too.

[sefarkas]

Next it will be asteroids.

How many years have there been undersea communication cables? One hundred by now???

[Fhios]

This stuff plays out month in and month out for years. It just makes good news for today.

[T-Bird45]

How many years have there been undersea communication cables? One hundred by now???

1858, Ireland to Newfoundland.

[Signalman]

Almost all internet traffic is carried via fiber optic cables undersea and over land. A small fraction is carried by satellites and microwave.

[Signalman]

What the internet looks like:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/tech/gallery/internet-undersea-cables/

[jdege]

I can recommend Arthur Clarke's How the World Was One.

[SkyDancer]

Not sure but in asking around, if those cables were fiber optic then you couldn’t tap them, then too, copper wire is only good for 33,000 feet before the bandwidth fails or something something.

[Fhios]

35,786 km is the ‘about’ distance of geosynchronos satellites. 299792 km/s is how fast light travels. So looks like a 250ms round trip packet. Not including losses. So yea, that’s slow for people playing twitch games or even moderately paced mmorpgs but still fast enough for huge amounts of data otherwise.

[NYRepublican72]

I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

You can go that way, but the lag/speed/reliability for satellite internet will really bog you down. It's much faster using fiber optics.

Not to mention, if the weather gets bad, your speed can bog down, just like it does if you are watching Direct TV/Dish during a bad thunderstorm. The residential internet satellite providers have to use accelerator programs to make the net work faster.

[MUDDOG]

Cut the ones outsourcing work to India.