Shorter cables - are they worth it?

[ChrisGreaves]

A recent report in the Toronto Star mentioned the prospect of running a cable under Lake Ontario, to make a shorter path between Toronto and Buffalo.
Another version of the report can be read at Business Financial Post

TBuffalo002.png

If I've used Google Maps correctly, a cable that lay alongside a major highway would be about 160 Km long, whereas a cable laid under the lake would be about 100 Km long.
Assuming that electricty travels at the speed of light in a vacumn, 300,000Km/sec, the shorter cable saves us about 0.0002 seconds per electron, or per bit, or per byte, or per packet, or per email and so on.
Multiplied by the millions of emails and cute pet photos each day, it still won't amount to much, will it?

The reason for laying the cable surely can not be faster access, can it?
I could buy into the idea of secure data, I can't believe that submarine cable is less prone to disaster than landline.
I am unsure of relative costs of land vs submarine. On land you have to dig a trench all the way. Submarine you just unroll the cable, but the equipment rental is probably greater.

It seems to me that the logic must be a little bit like car-pooling lanes. They can be a little bit faster⁽¹⁾, but you are travelling just as far as everyone else, and you drive through the same snow-storms and so on.

It seems to me too that the logic must be a little bit like first-class air travel. It can be a little bit more luxurious, but I don't drink champagne, and a mild sleeping pill takes care of about six hours of the flight (noisy babies, leaking earphones etc), and most times I get to where I'm going at the same time as the pilot and co-pilot. I don't need the express baggage check-in/out when I have only a shoulder-bag.


Am I missing something here? I am especially puzzled about the "greater speed" or "reduced time" aspects.

⁽¹⁾ I tend to avoid the car-pool lanes because I like to drive at the speed limit of 100Km/hr, and the car-pool lanes are populated by idiots who believe I should be doing more than 120Km/hr.


Thanks
Chris

[BobH]

Good article, Chris. Thanks for sharing it.

If I read your question correctly, you want to compare and contrast connections of equal total capacity using a new land route (indicated by the blue line in you map) with with an underwater route that is shorter. If that reading is correct, I have to believe that the underwater route will be much less expensive and probably less exposed to damage than a buried land line (which most fiber installations I've experienced seem to be, due to the weight of optical cables, I think). I would think the underwater route probably will have less environmental impact, as well.

[ChrisGreaves]

If I read your question correctly ...

And if you haven't ????(see further below)

... I have to believe that the underwater route will be much less expensive and probably less exposed to damage than a buried land line ...

OkeyDokey. I'll go with that. I really have not much experience in civil engineering (or civil anything, come to that).

But (this is "further below" see above)
I screwed up (again) - It was not the Toronto Star but the National Post and the paragraph that caused me perturbations was:-
The unique path helps eliminate risk for customers in case of failure along one of the other routes across bridges or through the tunnel in Windsor, Ont., plus it comes with faster speeds given traffic moves along a shorter path, Cunningham said. A more direct route means low latency, which is critical for financial transactions.

My emphasis on with faster speeds.

I've driven the blue route from Toronto to Buffalo. I know that it turns a sharp corner at the pointy end of the lake, but figured even so, it can't save that much distance, and hence time, at 300,000 Km/sec.

Toronto has a "faster" ceremony each spring, could be a helicopter flight from Toronto to Niagara falls (to save time) and then we had an Australian ferry that ran Toronto-Rochester for a season or so, to save time. Nothing ever really comes of it.

Now a submarine cable Toronto-Rochester would save distance (150 KM in place of 275 Km), but it's still only about 0.0004 of a second.

I suspect this is just anotherr get-rich-quick scheme dreamed up over a couple of pints at Bernie's Beer Bar ...


Chris

[BobH]

The shorter route might not be significantly faster for transmissions but should be significantly faster and less expensive to install and implement. I'm not sure how much fiber cable the shorter route would require, but fiber cable costs are not insignificant.

[Jay Freedman]

Judging from the quote, I'd guess that there is little or no difference in the time for a single signal to traverse either path, but the significant factor is the lower latency on the shorter path. That's usually measured as the round-trip time for a packet to travel from point A to point B and receive the response packet from B to A. Part of it is the actual travel time along the cable, but it also includes the slowdowns that occur through switches, repeaters, signal boosters, and intermediate servers. When you consider that a single transaction can require thousands of packets (and more if any packets are dropped or damaged), small differences in latency can cause noticeable delays in something like a web page being received.

[StuartR]

Some application are very sensitive to latency, for example if you are doing financial trading then it may be cost effective to build a data centre that is co-located with a major internet hub to shave a few microseconds off your timings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_laten ... l_markets)

[John Gray]

It is sad that the fibre cables will end up in a watery greave...

[ChrisGreaves]

Judging from the quote, I'd guess that there is little or no difference in the time for a single signal to traverse either path, but the significant factor is the lower latency on the shorter path. That's usually measured as the round-trip time for a packet to travel from point A to point B and receive the response packet from B to A. Part of it is the actual travel time along the cable, but it also includes the slowdowns that occur through switches, repeaters, signal boosters, and intermediate servers. When you consider that a single transaction can require thousands of packets (and more if any packets are dropped or damaged), small differences in latency can cause noticeable delays in something like a web page being received.

Hi Jay. Think of me as a three-year old (grin).

I suspect that in my mind "latency" effects such as you describe are what I think of if my signal has to go from Toronto via Hawaii to get to Sydney and then New York.
Rather like saying "all airplanes travel at 600mph, but going via Atlanta or Dallas can really up your travel time".
Is that close for a novice?
Thanks
chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Some application are very sensitive to latency, for example if you are doing financial trading then it may be cost effective to build a data centre that is co-located with a major internet hub to shave a few microseconds off your timings.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_laten ... l_markets)

Thanks, Stuart.
I note that some financial houses are behind the proposed scheme (as if they didn't have enough money already ... )

[StuartR]

I note that some financial houses are behind the proposed scheme (as if they didn't have enough money already ... )

That explains it then