Here is a TeleGeography news article worth a quick read: http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=19783&email=html It appears that that article assumes that capacity will not be increased by WDM products...have those that been applied on those links already reached the cables' maximum capabilities based on current technology? Frank -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of michael.dillon@bt.com Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 9:11 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: New TransPacific Cable Projects:
Not to mention that the Taiwan straits earthquake showed a clear lack of physical diversity on a number of important Pacific routes, which I know some companies are laying fiber to address.
Anyone who took the trouble to read the two articles knows that one of the two cables is a USA-to-China direct cable that does not hop through Japan. This is really part of a larger connectivity story for the People's Republic of China along with the trans-Russia cable being built by Russia's railway-backed TTC and China Unicom. http://europe.tmcnet.com/news/2007/09/20/2954870.htm I wouldn't be surprised if this is somehow connected with GLORIAD as well. In any case, the USA-China direct route is clearly avoiding the Taiwan Straits weak point. And the other cable, which Google is involved in, is connecting the USA and Australia, a country that has always had connectivity issues, especially pricing issues. This has led to a much higher use of web proxies in Australia to reduce international traffic levels and this may be the key to why, Google, an application developer and ASP/SaaS operator, is trying to build a cable link to the major English language market in Asia-Pacific. Seems to me both builds are adressing diversity issues in different ways, and if this results in a bandwidth glut to the region, that may be part of the plan. --Michael Dillon