You would think that the Internet would be mobile now. That all connections travel from east to west, and back, via satellites and radio waves. That isn’t how it works. The Internet is visible, tangible, breakable, and wet.
As you can see in this beautiful illustration (click it for a larger image!) the main continents are connected by less than 10cm thick Fiber Optic cables.
Those cables are generally 69 mm in diameter and weigh over 10.000 kilograms a kilometer. In deeper waters, lighter and less insulated cables are used. The capacity for these combined cables is more than 7 million bits per second.
That capacity is rarely used though. In general only 29% is in use. Of that 29% more than 70% is for Internet Traffic.
So, feel free to download more and bigger files from those transatlantic servers. The capacity is there so why not use it?
Here is a blog post showing how undsersea cables are repaired
http://www.labnol.org/internet/internet-disrupted-as-undersea-cables-cut-again/6146/
That’s why European sites are so freaking slow in Asia! Great post!
Amazed from that cable spanning from Germany to Korea! Just 6000Km short of spanning the entire planet! Loving it… I like big things!
7 million bits per second? honest? :)
That article is pretty amazing, it just shows how much we still rely upon old technology to make new technology work. I suppose we are all on the shoulders of giants.