senheiser
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2012
- Messages
- 4,037
- Reaction score
- -1
- Country
- Location
$1.5 billion: The cost of cutting London-Tokyo latency by 60ms
Share This Article
203
The massive drop in latency is expected to supercharge algorithmic stock market trading, where a difference of a few milliseconds can gain (or lose) millions of dollars. It is for this reason that a new cable is currently being laid between the UK and US — it will cost $300 million and shave “just” six milliseconds off the fastest link currently available. The lower latency will also be a boon to other technologies that hinge heavily on the internet, such as telemedicine (and teleconferencing) and education. Telephone calls and live news coverage would also enjoy the significantly lower latency. Each of the fiber optic cables will have a capacity in the terabits-per-second range, which will probably come in handy too.
Beyond the stock markets, though, the main advantage of the three new cables is added redundancy. Currently, almost every cable that lands in Asia goes through a choke point in the Middle East or the Luzon Strait between the Philippine and South China seas. If a ship were to drag an anchor across the wrong patch of seabed, billions of people could wake up to find themselves either completely disconnected from the internet or surfing with dial-up-like speeds. The three new cables will all come down from the north of Japan, through the relatively-empty Bering Sea — and the Arctic Ocean, where each of the cables will run for more than 5,000 miles, is one of the least-trafficked parts of the world. That said, the cables will still have to be laid hundreds of meters below the surface to avoid the tails of roving icebergs.
Each cable will be laid by a pair of ships: an ice breaker that leads the way, and a cable ship. Until now it has been impossible to lay cables in the Arctic Ocean, but the retreat of the Arctic sea ice means that the Northwest Passage is now generally ice-free from August to October; a big enough window that cable can be laid fairly safely. Existing cable ships (and there aren’t many of them) are all outfitted for balmier climes, so all three cables will require the use of a polar ice-rated ship that has been retrofitted to carry cable-laying gear.
Read more about the secret world of submarine cables.
For more information on the Russian Optical Trans-Arctic Submarine Cable System (ROTACS), check out the Polarnet Project (machine translated).
The Arctic Fibre and Arctic Link websites have information on the North American cables.
[Image credit: New Scientist]
Russia launches high speed, low latency link between Europe and Asia
October 22, 2013 Written by James Middleton
Russian carrier MegaFon has announced the commercial launch of an 8,700 kilometre long terrestrial fibre optic trunk connecting Europe and Asia. The DREAM (Diverse Route for European and Asian Markets) link extends from Frankfurt-am-Main to the Kazakhstan-China border, through the territories of Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and was created by MegaFon in cooperation with Kazakhtelecom and Interoute.
The companies claim that the terrestrial cable delivers higher reliability compared to submarine installations which can often be affected by external factors. A case in point being the geographical location of DREAM being planned out on a route with low seismic activity.
“The unique geographical position of Russia allows us to offer the market an attractive route for transmission of information. By cooperating with MegaFon, international telecom operators will be able to utilize the safest and most optimal route to organise the transfer of data for their clients, as well as increase the reliability of their networks. Every year the volume of traffic sent from Europe to Asia, along with the demand for the capacity of communication channels, is steadily growing,” said MegaFon’s General Director, Ivan Tavrin.
According to MegaFon the DREAM route offers a much reduced round trip delay time between Hong Kong and Frankfurt-am-Main when compared with existing trunk lines on the market, making it ideal for financial institutions, online traders and internet companies looking to gain a time advantage.
In the first phase of the project, MegaFon is ready to provide customers with reliable DWDM communication channels at speeds of up to 10Gbps although the fully constructed system has a potential capacity of up to 8Tbps.
“Provision of reliable capacity to Asia is currently very important for Europe,” said Renzo Ravaglia, Executive Vice-President, Service provider business, at Interoute, a pan-European backbone network operator that now pitches itself as a cloud services firm. “Terrestrial routes like DREAM are the ideal solution for development of high-speed circuits between these two parts of the world. The new path, from our point of view, will be an alternative solution to the existing transcontinental systems and meet high demand from the market,” said Ravaglia.
- By Sebastian Anthony on March 20, 2012 at 1:04 pm
- 21 Comments
Share This Article
203
The massive drop in latency is expected to supercharge algorithmic stock market trading, where a difference of a few milliseconds can gain (or lose) millions of dollars. It is for this reason that a new cable is currently being laid between the UK and US — it will cost $300 million and shave “just” six milliseconds off the fastest link currently available. The lower latency will also be a boon to other technologies that hinge heavily on the internet, such as telemedicine (and teleconferencing) and education. Telephone calls and live news coverage would also enjoy the significantly lower latency. Each of the fiber optic cables will have a capacity in the terabits-per-second range, which will probably come in handy too.Beyond the stock markets, though, the main advantage of the three new cables is added redundancy. Currently, almost every cable that lands in Asia goes through a choke point in the Middle East or the Luzon Strait between the Philippine and South China seas. If a ship were to drag an anchor across the wrong patch of seabed, billions of people could wake up to find themselves either completely disconnected from the internet or surfing with dial-up-like speeds. The three new cables will all come down from the north of Japan, through the relatively-empty Bering Sea — and the Arctic Ocean, where each of the cables will run for more than 5,000 miles, is one of the least-trafficked parts of the world. That said, the cables will still have to be laid hundreds of meters below the surface to avoid the tails of roving icebergs.
Each cable will be laid by a pair of ships: an ice breaker that leads the way, and a cable ship. Until now it has been impossible to lay cables in the Arctic Ocean, but the retreat of the Arctic sea ice means that the Northwest Passage is now generally ice-free from August to October; a big enough window that cable can be laid fairly safely. Existing cable ships (and there aren’t many of them) are all outfitted for balmier climes, so all three cables will require the use of a polar ice-rated ship that has been retrofitted to carry cable-laying gear.
Read more about the secret world of submarine cables.
For more information on the Russian Optical Trans-Arctic Submarine Cable System (ROTACS), check out the Polarnet Project (machine translated).
The Arctic Fibre and Arctic Link websites have information on the North American cables.
[Image credit: New Scientist]
Russia launches high speed, low latency link between Europe and Asia
October 22, 2013 Written by James Middleton
Email
Russian carrier MegaFon has announced the commercial launch of an 8,700 kilometre long terrestrial fibre optic trunk connecting Europe and Asia. The DREAM (Diverse Route for European and Asian Markets) link extends from Frankfurt-am-Main to the Kazakhstan-China border, through the territories of Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Austria, Germany, and was created by MegaFon in cooperation with Kazakhtelecom and Interoute.The companies claim that the terrestrial cable delivers higher reliability compared to submarine installations which can often be affected by external factors. A case in point being the geographical location of DREAM being planned out on a route with low seismic activity.
“The unique geographical position of Russia allows us to offer the market an attractive route for transmission of information. By cooperating with MegaFon, international telecom operators will be able to utilize the safest and most optimal route to organise the transfer of data for their clients, as well as increase the reliability of their networks. Every year the volume of traffic sent from Europe to Asia, along with the demand for the capacity of communication channels, is steadily growing,” said MegaFon’s General Director, Ivan Tavrin.
According to MegaFon the DREAM route offers a much reduced round trip delay time between Hong Kong and Frankfurt-am-Main when compared with existing trunk lines on the market, making it ideal for financial institutions, online traders and internet companies looking to gain a time advantage.
In the first phase of the project, MegaFon is ready to provide customers with reliable DWDM communication channels at speeds of up to 10Gbps although the fully constructed system has a potential capacity of up to 8Tbps.
“Provision of reliable capacity to Asia is currently very important for Europe,” said Renzo Ravaglia, Executive Vice-President, Service provider business, at Interoute, a pan-European backbone network operator that now pitches itself as a cloud services firm. “Terrestrial routes like DREAM are the ideal solution for development of high-speed circuits between these two parts of the world. The new path, from our point of view, will be an alternative solution to the existing transcontinental systems and meet high demand from the market,” said Ravaglia.
