Superfast client-specific undersea cables are shaping up to be a hot commodity for major tech giants. A new trend has seen service providers move away from the old model of leasing space on cables and into a new world of owning their own connections across the world. We've already looked at the MAREA initiative, and it's worth examining the similar case of FASTER, a cable connection between the U.S. and Japan set to live up to its name.
According to Wired, this cable has been at least two years in development and cost $300 million. This would be remarkable on its own, but it's especially important in the context of greater bandwidth growth and the Software Defined Networking revolution.
Working with international partners in China and Japan, Google is adding this initiative to three other undersea cables, as well as the land-based cable space it's purchased within the U.S. alone.
Supposedly, the connection will process 60 terabytes per second (tbps). According to a February article of The Inquirer, the data transfer rate of 1.125 tbps is already a world record– and while 60 tbps is a lot, MAREA is slated to be more than double the speed at 160 tbps. The world is getting FASTER…
Though this is quite the feat, not just any organization can do what these giants are doing.
Companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google are giant enough to do what only Telecoms have done in the past. They have dedicated undersea cable which can help them guarantee better performance which will be better than anyone else can achieve on a consistent basis through their telecom provider.
"It is also interesting to note that MAREA is landing in Virginia and Spain respectfully rather than the typical NY and UK. Why? Because both FB and MSFT have huge Data Centers in Virginia and Spain happens to have telecom partners with the most fiber-connected customers in all of Europe and perhaps in all of the world," said Michael Vannest, CloudSmartz VP of Application Development.
On top of that, researchers are hard at work discovering new frontiers of data storage. When both the speed and storage capabilities of modern systems increase, the result could be a massive demand for quick, intelligent networks.
In a recent Google blog post on FASTER, Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure Urs Hölzle said the connection provides unique speeds, even though it's just part of a larger system.
"FASTER is one of just a few hundred submarine cables connecting various parts of the world, which collectively form an important backbone that helps run the Internet," Hölzle said. This is particularly exciting news for our GCP customers in Japan, as we'll be opening our Google Cloud Platform region in Tokyo later this year."
While these larger than life companies can create their own bandwidth, service providers with key enterprise customers on their network are already demanding it. These providers working to scale and create new revenue generation products for their enterprise companies can start with Bandwidth on Demand and be up and running by the first of the year. Prepare for network function virtualization with CloudSmartz's solutions.