Inside the Beach House Connecting the World’s Internet

all transatlantic data traffic in a Facebook phone call Netflix emails whatever is for the most part carried by submarine cables I think most people don't realize that that is the case you have submarine cables crossing the oceans terminating at very discrete buildings if this place wasn't here you would definitely feel that your internet connection is not working as it usually does I think most people have no idea what this is this is just another building in the industrial area my name is Kel Sorensen and I'm the marine maintenance manager so I'm responsible for the maintenance of all our sea cables adain Straits North Sea and the Atlantic this is where you try and set on what we refer to as the wet part the dry part to the terrestrial networks so this is cilia carries Network North American Europe in this map you can see sea cables she were responsible for the TAT 14 is the 14th transatlantic transmission system but at one was installed in 1957 so the tech 14 is a ring system connecting Denmark to New Jersey and then from your Jersey goes back to Europe why the UK we're really just a highway highway for data so this is the demarcation point for the dry part meets the wet part this is the gateway of theta coming from the u.s. swartz Europe and the other way will the cable terminating here from the US is 7,500 kilometers you can't have somebody in Denmark entering something a Google search that request is coming here for that signal to travel to the US and back will be around 80 milliseconds I mean this is what it's all about I mean without the fibers everything else doesn't matter so this is a control room where you monitor the cable system the cable system is been monitored by different management systems Green is that you're all good and if you get the changing colors these are notifications of technicians working on network elements this is live traffic yeah live data being carried across the cables the worst that could happen here I mean that's cable cut that's the worst that can happen we've had a fall between Sweden and bornholm where our cable took a hit from an anchor this one shows the damaged cable section cable has been twisted and that is this is what happens when it's been hit by an anchor and dragged along the seabed the armoring wires that should have been surrounding the inner core of the cable is a miss you have different layers of farmerie a stronger armoring in shallow waters and then the deeper you go you require less summary when you're out in the middle of the ocean at 5 kilometer water depths you have no armor the important thing of course is the fibers that transport all the data we have a cable caught on a cable from here to the US I mean there's no there's no data there's no connectivity and if you consider the fact that all intercontinental data traffic is carried by around 10 cables maybe that gives you a good the site is important for one of them it's indispensable most days filled with routine jobs it happens we have that cable false wouldn't say it's not a big thing but it's a it's something that we deal with I think as a transmission engineer working as a transmission janu you cannot go and think that a lot of people depend on what you're doing if you get all stressed up during outages you cannot focus and then it takes even longer to get it fixed so if you're that kind of person who gets dressed up you probably should find something else to do well if I had to say one thing about the internet that they didn't know is the biggest misconception most people seem to think that it's all satellites and it's all wireless now that's just it's so wrong it is a very physical thing but obviously you don't see them this is the beach panel where we have the LAN cables meeting the sea cable not much to see and from here we have horizontal drill pipe going across the June stand on the beach extending 500 meters out into the ocean from there we start the lay of the sea cable damages to our sea cables caused by a number of factors external aggression like angers fishing gear and then of course you can like in deep water landslides but really more than 90 percent is caused by fishing here and then Hank in shallow water remaining 10% of sharks of course oh yes all those shocks all the time the sea cable that we're standing on top up came all the way from from New Jersey to land right on this beach what we see here is the tool and markers for the u.s. cable the rear marker and the front marker if you look at them from the ocean side and they're aligned then you know that you are actually right on top of the cable so if you're about triangle or if you're a fishing vessel about to deploy your fishing gear you might wait until you're clear off the cable safe both ships observe this and that obey these markers or do they ignore them it is our hope that they've watched them and obey them I think there's a lot of things a lot of infrastructure that is a potential target and maybe that's also the reason why there's no big science on the building [Music] so this is the cable coming in from the outside from a beach band home entering the building we have the fiber cable and the power cable as simple as that 7500 kilometers and now it's year finest hard to believe intelligence agencies would try to tap information here as I see it that wouldn't make any sense because they're just too much filtering required that would be the obvious thing the TAT 14 system is a ring system so if you lose one cable and you can route your traffic the other way around and still reach your end target but also more globally you have a number of cable routes connecting the same consonants if one cable is down you still have several other routes these are one of our cable ships that will call out and then we need a repair to be done or an inspection [Music] I'll say the biggest change probably over the last five years is that you have seen what we call content providers people like Google Facebook Amazon Microsoft Apple coming to the market building their own C cables there are new C cables being built constantly there's nothing that can replace it they are here to stay that's for sure [Music]

Channel: Motherboard

Views: 1,397,277

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: motherboard, motherboardtv, vice, vice magazine, documentary, science, technology, tech, sci-fi, artificial intelligence, AI, virtual reality, VR, vice videos, future, cryptocurrency, privacy, security, cyber, internet, transatlantic cables, beach house, connection, denmark, marine maintenance, undersea cables, submarine cables, data, web, world wide web, tcp/ip, fiber, communication, how the internet works, how transatlantic cables make the internet run

Id: iMAThVcqzuk

Length: 8min 39sec (519 seconds)

Published: Thu May 31 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Panzerpest]

Det er skørt at tænke på, at alt internet i verden kører gennem 10 tynde kabler.

[u/DerSpider]

Berlingske udgav i 2014 også en artikel om TAT-14 stationen i Nørre Nebel; "Huset med kablet"

[u/I_Pick_D]

Hvor er det forfriskende for en gangs skyld at høre en dansker tale så godt engelsk i en video fra et udenlandsk medie.

[u/Uplus0021]

Henrik Moltke lavede en ret fed podcast om samme emne for et par år siden: "Hvor Internettet Bor"

EDIT: Mit link er åbenbart dødt, og udsendelsen er slettet fra internettet/DR.

[u/The_ZALL]

Meget interessant

[u/Beefsideiron]

det er jo lissom at være på arbejde at se den video.
Og være hjemme i vestjylland på samme tid.

[u/Trivilian]

Hvis man er yderligere interesseret i hvor søkablerne er og hvor mange der er, kan man tage et kig på Submarine Cable Map.

[u/northtown88]

This here Jen, is THE internet.

[u/JurijFedorov]

De bruger jo M'et fra Monsters, INC. i deres logo.

Større udgave. Rigtig fed film forresten.