Several years ago we talked about the installation of submarine cables which are essential to guarantee and optimize connectivity across the Internet. As the network of networks adds more users, the demands on infrastructure also change, leading to the replacement/removal of existing cables, or the deployment of new ones. However, we never explored in detail the inside of a submarine cable. Today we have not one, but two videos that take care of that.
We all have plenty of reasons to hate our providers. Access is expensive and slow, something especially true for users who depend on mobile connections. The responsibility of providers falls within the local scope, but once we enter the international plane, the best way for the Internet to grow and improve its performance is… installing more submarine cables.
Like our access, the process of manufacturing and deploying a submarine cable is expensive and slow. A ship can take a month just to load the coils, without considering factors like the weather. What makes these cables so expensive? Why do they take so long? A good part of the answer to both questions lies in the interior itself, and today we will look closer.
Inside a submarine cable
There are two videos: On the one hand, we have Dan and Lincoln from the What’s Inside channel, and then we find Nat y Lo, who work at Google. Both teams joined forces to get a piece of submarine cable and privileged access to the construction and loading of the MONET cable, which connected the cities of Santos and Fortaleza in Brazil with Boca Raton in the United States. Everything begins in the center, with fiber optic organized in pairs and colors. In the most demanding cases, a cable can have up to twelve pairs of fiber optic running through its core.
Everything else is protection: The fiber optic is inside a plastic tube filled with gel. That tube is in turn covered with metal wires. Then follows a copper sheath that, besides sealing, is also used to provide power to the repeaters, located every 80 kilometers.
From there on, the rest depends on the route the cable follows, and if there is a greater risk of cuts, it receives one or two additional layers of galvanized steel. The last protection is made up of nylon strands and tar.
