Google Dissects Undersea Cable to Explain the Internet

Google cut open an undersea link that is typically confusing the world's seas trying to answer the question, "No truly, what is the Internet?"

The analyzation, transferred today to YouTube, brings out Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' 2006 remark that the Internet is a "progression of tubes." As Google clarifies, the tubes are really a progression of little aroused steel strands encompassing a littler plastic strand with gel and fiberglass inside.

We spent over seven minutes—an unfathomable length of time on the Internet—viewing the whole video so you don't need to squander your time or, um, stop up the Internet tubes superfluously. Here are the notable bits:

Most of the link—the outside layers of excited steel—is recently assurance for the "payload," or the fiber optic strands that convey beats of light.

The individual fiber strands themselves—every link has around two dozen—are no thicker than human hair. They're shading coded; a blue strand sends movement east, while a red one sends activity west.

Little repeaters lie each 50 miles along the link's course on the sea depths, intensifying the light flags so they can travel speedier.

The link is laid without much respect to the undersea territory, so it gets hung over mountain ranges, through coral, and around dynamic angling regions.

The main real distinction between Google's links and the transmit links laid more than a hundred years back is the glass strands—everything else is for all intents and purposes indistinguishable.

Google has as of late been growing its system of undersea links, which it offers with different organizations. A connection amongst Japan and Taiwan guarantees 26 terabit-per-second information exchanges and went online in September, and a 8,000-mile link will join Hong Kong and Los Angeles by 2018, conveying information from Facebook, Google, and others at 120 terabits for every second.