Does your internet come from the ocean? — How does the internet actually work!
A very considerable thought that we usually ignore even though we are almost every time active on cyberspace(or internet) but don’t bother to question whether from where does this internet actually comes from, so I presume your curiosity ends here.
“The internet is not a luxury anymore, it is a necessity.”
~President Barack Obama
We are all aware of satellites, towers, and routers — the first that thing comes up to our mind when someone says the word ‘internet’. So is it really from where it’s coming from, I mean it is, but the birthplace? The answer is suppressing and the opposite of what we so far assumed it to be, it just turned to an opposite angle. Most of us thought it’s the sky but eventually, your internet comes from within the ocean.
Now we know, from the ocean, but how?
So the cyber force reaches us through ‘Transatlantic Cables’. Remember these two highlighted words, throughout the journal, they will be used numerous times.
What are ‘Transatlantic Cables’?
The ‘Transatlantic Cables’ also known as ‘Transatlantic Telegraph Cables’ or ‘ Submarine Communications Cables’ are cables running undersea throughout the ocean that use optical fiber technology for carrying digital data. Not only the internet but telecommunications and private data traffic also travels through these cables. All such cables presently in service use optical fiber technology till today, 18th February 2020.
Origin
William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone introduced their working telegraph in 1839. As early as 1840 Samuel F. B. Morse proclaimed his faith in the idea of a submarine line across the Atlantic Ocean. By 1850 a cable was run between England and France. The oldest such cable was the line between St. John’s and Nova Scotia, and in 1855 an attempt was made to lay a cable across the Cabot Strait in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. In 1856 a steamboat was fitted out for the purpose, and the link from Cape Ray, Newfoundland to Aspy Bay, Nova Scotia was successfully laid.
Failure of the first cable
The two senior electrical engineers of the company had very different ideas on how the cable should be worked. Lord Kelvin and Dr Wildman Whitehouse were located at opposite ends of the cable, communicating only by the cable itself. Kelvin, located at the western end, believed that it was necessary to employ only a low voltage and to detect the rising edge of the current flowing out of the cable and, once this had been done, nothing would be gained by further monitoring. At the eastern end of the cable was Whitehouse. He was the company’s chief electrician and a doctor of medicine — any electrical knowledge that he possessed was self-taught. Whitehouse believed that, in order to have the current at the receiving end change as rapidly as possible, the cable should be driven from a high-voltage source.
The effects of the poor handling and design of the cable, coupled with Whitehouse’s repeated attempts to drive the cable with high voltages, resulted in the insulation of the cable being compromised. All the while, it was taking longer and longer to send messages. Towards the end, sending half a page of message text was taking as long as a day. In September 1858, after several days of progressive deterioration of the insulation, the cable failed.
(source — Wikipedia)
Enough of theoretical knowledge, now let’s discuss how these wires have become a problem and what steps can be done to resist?
One flaw out of many-
Even though, the American Economic Review found that the transatlantic telegraph substantially increased trade over the Atlantic and reduced prices. But a major drawback was seen when a wire between the US and Russia was damaged by sharks and some similar fishes.
Well, we humans first dominated and acquired all the land and elapsed the green. Now it was the marine life's’ turn. This is totally unacceptable in eyes of ‘marine life laws’, for which the committee of fishes then decided to give this big man(humans) a taste of punishment. And it turned out that the heir of marine — sharks, did injustice to humans for the sake of their own justice. So let’s not take lame jokes any further and talk facts.
This damage was certainly turned out to be a massive obstacle in Transatlantic wires’ functioning. After 1980, cables were buried, but that didn’t stop significant breaks from happening. In 1929, the Newfoundland earthquake caused a massive undersea mudslide that broke several Trans-Atlantic cables.
The repair for such wires is altogether a big inevitable snag! Broken cables require an elaborate repair procedure. Firstly, to find where this breakage is — the approximate distance to the break is determined by measuring the resistance of the broken cable. The repair ship navigates to the location. The cable is hooked with a grapple and brought on board to test for electrical continuity. Buoys deployed to mark the ends of the good cable and a splice is made between the two ends. The repair might end in two or three lines theoretically, but practically, it costs a chunk of labor, thousands of dollars and sometimes several human lives. All this, just a minor breakage in the wire.
The cure-
Although, with passing time many new technologies have been working to improve the functioning and minimizing all the faults in Trans-Atlantic wires, in which we surely are improving and succeeding but still it feels necessary to have something more functional(a faster internet) and which is cost-effective at the same time!
So for that! We may consider Loon LLC by Google(Alphabet Inc.), prosperity. This is one of the best alternatives out of many for Trans-Atlantic wires, which we may see changing our lives altogether in the nearest predictable future.
Loon LLC is an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary working on providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The company uses high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere at an altitude of 18 km to 25 km to create an aerial wireless network with up to 4G-LTE speeds.
I may discuss it in more detail in my next article! Till then see ya guys and if you liked my work — please don’t forget to follow and give a clap below. ;)