The other day, talking to my friend Luis, arose the question: Where does the information between America and Europe? Why satellite? Why cables?
Many people believe that when the phone call to another continent, or when you send mail, all information goes through satellites. Logical, right? We are in the XXI century, the era of communications! Well, the truth is that almost never so. It would be very expensive and slow. Imagine the amount of information that should be transmitted. And if we consider the Internet, each time you connect to a server page or on another continent, the information would have to go back and forth from one end to another of the globe.
And what's the solution? Well, oddly enough, is done with cables. "Are you saying that there are cables that connect Europe with America?" Yes, indeed. huge undersea cables are fiber optic travel thousands of miles under the ocean to allow the two continents to communicate. "But then it would take many of them ... "Indeed! I leave a scheme which are drawn and a link to an interactive application:
http://www.cablemap. info /
imaginaréis
As so, this operation is very expensive, but still worth it, because once lay the submarine cable, the costs are very small. Then I leave an animation of how it is done the laying of this cable:
But not all communication is carried by wires, there are times when the only alternative is satellite communications. For example, there are areas of the globe to which these cables fail, because they are so inmates (islands, polar regions, a boat in the ocean ...). Sometimes we do not want to depend on external resources and ensure good communication (eg war zones).
The current problem is that every time you need more bandwidth (each time you need more cables to carry the increasing amount of information.) With the rise of websites like youtube, megavideo ... that is, sites that handle a high amount of information, these cable are falling short of global demand. Already changed the old copper cables by modern optical fiber. But they glimpse in a few years will require more cables or a new technology.
That's it for me. Do not fail to send your questions and curiosities los.porques @ gmail.com
Entry previously published in The Whys .
Entry previously published in The Whys .
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