©Mark
Ollig
When
Andrew Blum learned his internet outage was caused by a squirrel that had
chewed through a copper cable, he became curious about determining where the
physical part of the internet was.
Blum,
a published writer and a correspondent for Wired magazine, began a personal
quest to learn, firsthand, where the other end of his home internet cable went.
He
wanted to pull back the curtain and see for himself what this mysterious cable
was connected to out in the physical world.
“What
would happen if you yanked the wire from the wall, and you started to follow
it? Where would you go?” pondered Blum.
And
with that, Blum embarked on a personal two-year journey; visiting the places
and people that make up the physical internet.
At
the 60 Street Hudson building in New York, Blum saw physical hardware:
data-packet router boxes servicing online networks, possibly those of Facebook,
Google, or Twitter. These routers were physically linked with yellow fiber-optic
cables to other routers of major Internet Service Providers data networks.
“That’s
unequivocally physical,” Blum realized.
The
60 Street Hudson building is also home to about six major communication
networks that have fiber-optic cables traversing under the oceans. These
fiber-optic cables connect America with Europe and many other parts of the
world.
An
undersea fiber-optic cable originates from inside a building called a landing
station, and usually is located along a seaside neighborhood.
Most
undersea fiber-optic cables crossing the oceans of the planet are about as wide
as a garden hose.
A
representative working for a communication’s company told Blum of a location,
date, and time where he could see firsthand a fiber-optic cable brought onto
shore from a specialized cable landing ship. The location was a beach south of
Lisbon, Portugal.
Blum
traveled to Lisbon, and arrived at the specified location around 9 a.m.
While
standing on the beach, Blum could see the fiber-optic cable landing ship
stationed approximately 1,000 feet out in the ocean.
The
next thing he noticed was a man in a diving suit walking out of the water onto
the shore holding a green nylon rope. This rope was the fiber-optic cable’s
messenger line, used to pull the fiber-optic cable onto the beach.
Blum
then heard and saw a bulldozer driving onto the beach.
This
bulldozer was used to pull the messenger line; which was attached to the
fiber-optic cable aboard the landing ship.
The
bulldozer finished pulling the messenger line onto shore, and with it came many
feet of fiber-optic cable.
The
fiber-optic cable floated atop the water, attached to buoys which positioned
the cable in the proper location.
The
man in the diving suit went back out into the water with a knife to cut off the
buoys and allow the fiber-optic cable to sink and rest on the ocean floor.
Blum
took a photograph of the cable workers using a hacksaw to cut open the end of
the fiber-optic cable pulled in from the ocean. It was being prepared for
splicing to another fiber-optic cable being brought down from the coastal
landing station.
“When
you see these guys going at this cable with a hacksaw, you stop thinking about
the internet as a cloud; it starts to seem like an incredibly physical thing,”
said Blum.
This
column writer was able to contact Blum for a brief interview.
Blum
had just written a book about his two-year adventure and was kind enough to
answer some questions for me.
B&B:
Andrew, you said some people visually see the internet as the cloud-like image
Opte has created. After two years of exploring and writing a book about the
physical side of the internet, how do you see it now?
AB:
I now have a pretty clear image of its physical realities, particularly the
hubs closest to my home in Brooklyn. When a web page hangs, I often picture my
cable company’s router, and curse the traffic on the yellow fiber-optic cable
feeding it.
B&B:
Many people feel the internet is connected worldwide via Earth-orbiting satellites;
however, we know this not to be the case. What did you know about this before
you started your investigation?
AB:
No, even when I started, I knew it wasn’t connected by satellites. I’d read
Neal Stephenson’s awesome piece in Wired from 1998, “Mother Earth Mother
Board,” so I had a good starting understanding of the “tubes” under the ocean.
B&B:
Vinton Cerf has talked about an “interplanetary internet.” What are your
thoughts about Earth linking its network with other planetary bodies?
AB:
I think that fits perfectly with the basic philosophical idea of the internet:
a network of infinite networks.
B&B:
What surprised you, or stays in your mind the most during your two-year
exploration of the physical side of the internet?
AB:
How small the internet turned out to be, both physically – the list of its most
important buildings is surprisingly short; and culturally – the list of network
engineers actively involved with interconnecting networks is also surprisingly
short.
B&B:
Andrew, is there another technology you would like to someday investigate and
write about in the future?
AB:
Good question. I’ve been thinking a lot about that now, but I don’t yet have a
good answer.
I
appreciate Blum for taking the time to talk with me about his book, “Tubes: A
Journey to the Center of the Internet.” It can be ordered from Barnes and Noble
at https://bit.ly/2U5qK2e.
Update:
Andrew Blum’s new book, “The Weather Machine” will be available June 25, and
can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.
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| Image: Kyodo/Associated Press |