A submarine communications cable is a cable laid beneath the sea to carry telecommunications between countries.
The first submarine communications cables carried telegraphy traffic. Subsequent generations of cables carried first telephony traffic, then data communications traffic. All modern cables use optical fiber technology to carry digital payloads, which are then used to carry telephone traffic as well as Internet and private data traffic. They are typically 69 millimetres (2.7 in) in diameter and weigh around 10 kilograms per meter (7 lb/ft), although thinner and lighter cables are used for deep-water sections.[1]
As of 2003, submarine cables link all the world’s continents except Antarctica.
Submarine communications cable - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Internet
The United States has lost one of its most ardent proponents of IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol, with the death of Jim Bound earlier this week. Bound was a Senior Fellow with HP, Chair of the North American IPv6 Task Force and CTO of the IPv6 Forum.
U.S. loses IPv6 leader - Network World
History, IPv6, Internet
One day last summer, Google’s search engine trundled quietly past a milestone. It added the one trillionth address to the list of Web pages it knows about. But as impossibly big as that number may seem, it represents only a fraction of the entire Web.
Beyond those trillion pages lies an even vaster Web of hidden data: financial information, shopping catalogs, flight schedules, medical research and all kinds of other material stored in databases that remain largely invisible to search engines.
The challenges that the major search engines face in penetrating this so-called Deep Web go a long way toward explaining why they still can’t provide satisfying answers to questions like “What’s the best fare from New York to London next Thursday?” The answers are readily available — if only the search engines knew how to find them.
Now a new breed of technologies is taking shape that will extend the reach of search engines into the Web’s hidden corners. When that happens, it will do more than just improve the quality of search results — it may ultimately reshape the way many companies do business online.
New Search Technologies Mine the Web More Deeply - NYTimes.com
Internet
“Unless we’re willing to rethink today’s Internet,” says Nick McKeown, a Stanford engineer involved in building a new Internet, “we’re just waiting for a series of public catastrophes.”
That was driven home late last year, when a malicious software program thought to have been unleashed by a criminal gang in Eastern Europe suddenly appeared after easily sidestepping the world’s best cyberdefenses. Known as Conficker, it quickly infected more than 12 million computers, ravaging everything from the computer system at a surgical ward in England to the computer networks of the French military.
Do We Need a New Internet? - NYTimes.com
Internet, Security
SAN FRANCISCO — The global credit crisis may have caused the decline in consumer and business spending that is assaulting the giants of high tech. But as the dominant technology companies try to emerge from this slump, they may find themselves blaming people like David Title just as much as they blame Wall Street.
Mr. Title, a 35-year-old new-media manager at a film production company in New York, has dropped his cable subscription and moved to watching most of his television online — free. While shopping for a new laptop for his girlfriend recently, he sidestepped more expensive full-featured computers and picked a bare-bones, $200 Asus EeePC laptop, also known as a netbook.
“We’ve reached one of those moments in tech history when there are low-priced and free alternatives that are both user-friendly and reliable enough to make the switch,” Mr. Title said. “Then there’s the extra bonus of saving some cash.”
$200 Laptops Break a Business Model - NYTimes.com
Internet, Linux
Australian Geoff Huston is one of the foremost authorities on Internet routing and scaling issues. We sent Huston a few questions about the U.S. government’s plan to bolster R&D to secure the Internet’s core routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
Detecting Internet routing “lies” - Network World
Internet, Security
The U.S. federal government is accelerating its efforts to secure the Internet’s routing system, with plans this year for the Department of Homeland Security to quadruple its investment in research aimed at adding digital signatures to router communications.DHS says its routing security effort will prevent routing hijack attacks as well as accidental misconfigurations of routing data. The effort is nicknamed BGPSEC because it will secure the Internet’s core routing protocol known as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). (A separate federal effort is under way to bolster another Internet protocol, DNS, and it is called DNSSEC.)
U.S. plots major upgrade to Internet router security - Network World
Internet, Security
Google has begun preaching the wonders of IPv6 in the hope more awareness will help expedite the transition from the legacy IPv4 networks most people use today.
During a presentation at this year’s linux.conf.au in Hobart, senior Google software engineer Angus Lees recalled how Google’s IPv6 efforts started as a covert, hobbyist project about two years ago and has gained enough momentum that a AAAA record for google.com could be added to Google’s DNS in a year.
Google ramps up IPv6 mission, google.com a year away - Network World
IPv6, Internet
Kim Zetter writes …
Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region
Undersea Cables Cut; 14 Countries Lose Web — Updated | Threat Level from Wired.com
Internet
Craig Labovitz writes …
Growing financial pressures, unforeseen threats, and a volatile and rapidly changing business landscape — apt descriptions for both the world economy and this years Worldwide Infrastructure Security Survey.
Arbor Networks once again has completed a survey of the largest ISPs and content providers around the world. Some 70 lead security engineers responded to 90 questions covering a spectrum of Internet backbone security threats and engineering challenges. This fourth annual survey covered the 12-month period from August 2007 through July 2008.
A copy of the full report is available at http://www.arbornetworks.com/report
2008 Internet Security Report | Security to the Core | Arbor Networks Security
Internet, Security