Talk:Submarine communications cable

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I've slapped a Stub template on this one. I am sure another kind of notice (a "work in progress" type of thing) would have been more appropiate, but I haven't found anything that convinced me enough. Unfortunately, being totally ignorant on the subject at hand, I cannot fill in the blanks and make the issue disappear althogether, which would be the way to go.--80.58.43.44 22:47, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lagrange?

I don't think there's any such thing as a "Lagrange" transform...should this not be Laplace? Or maybe Lord Kelvin did his differential equations the old-fashioned way? --Wtshymanski 01:03, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Map

Did someone consider creating a map of those cables ? This would definitely be more visually strinking than the list. Maybe I could do that, but does someone know of an automated (or scriptable) way to do it ? I assume the map will have to be changed often.

Yes, someone did. In my case, I've looked at various sources of mapping information that could be used under Wikipedia's GFDL licence, and realised that it is a *BIG* project to draw maps of all the submarine cable systems - especially if trying to draw them in a consistent style, and keep them in a format that can be easily edited and updated. I don't have the time to do that, unfortunately. By the way - it would be useful if you could sign your comments with four tildes like this ~~~~ (which will automatically put in your username (if you have one) or your IP address and date&timestamp the comment), or even better, register a username. Thanks for the comment. WLD 16:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, could you then put here the list of sources you found, if you still have them ?

And do you know if it's at all possible to run scripts here on Wikipedia ? I guess it's not, but I'd like to know for sure.

I registered a username : Aftereight 18:54, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't got the list on the PC I'm using at the moment. However, there's one major mapping project that looked promising, but I don't remember its name. Amongst other things it seemed to be in use by epidemiologists, and used a command line interface to generate maps. One minor problem will be generating sensible cable routes - there's some, but not much, public information available. I would guess the obscurity helps to prevent those with malicious intent from finding out too much. Drawing some kind of curve that avoids coastlines to join landing points is probably 'good enough', but creation of the connectivity maps will require knowledge of where the branching points in some of the submarine cables is. Again, not easily get-attable information. Oh - I have no idea about scripting on Wikipedia. Thanks for registering - and welcome to the wonderful, if sometimes frustrating world of Wikipedia. WLD 19:29, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Here's a nice map [1], but I doubt we can use it on Wikipedia due to licensing lissues. It'd look great on this page, though. --Dantheox 23:25, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes - it's a Telegeography map. Not useable on Wikipedia. The project I was thinking about is this one http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/ - Generic Mapping Tools. One decision to make is the format to have the maps in - I think the obvious one is PNG format, unless Wikipedia (and browsers) support SVG. The ideal would be to have a template of the world's coastlines onto which cable routes could be plotted (and edited if necessary - which is why SVG would be good). WLD 23:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

GMT looks really fine, but I suspect that the amount of data needed to make an useful map is quite huge. What would you think we should have on the map ? The example at [2] looks fine, but not too informative in my opinion. I think cable names and bandwidth could be useful, along with cable landing points. Also, I'm creating a template Template:Submarine_communications_cable, so please have a look and fix it if you think it's utter crap :-)Aftereight 17:32, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the usage seems to be using Infobox in the template name for what I want to do, so I'm creating Template:Infobox_Submarine_communications_cable instead.

There's rather a lot of cable systems, so I don't think an overview map could have it all and still be small enough to render nicely on a screen. KDDI have a nice map here http://www.kddi.com/english/business/oversea/pdf/kddi_gnm_en.pdf - but to see the detail, it has to be expanded quite a bit.

I like the Infobox a lot. I was daydreaming about doing something similar. Ideally, we'd list the cable system technology (there are still some coax cables in use), the design capacity and currently lit capacity and have a map of the particular cable system's route. Ownership gets a bit complicated. Some of the newer cables have one or two owners, but the older ones were usually built by consortia with lots of members. Hmm mustn't get too enthusiastic - I'm meant to be taking a Wikibreak! WLD 21:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The KDDI map is really nice, although it lacks the bandwidth of each cable. But you're right about it being too large to fit on a screen. We should probably make several maps for each part of the world. Plus it could be nice to create separate pages for cables in each area.

But we do need some kind of specialized database to put all the map data in, don't we ?

As to the Infobox, feel free to add more cells. I put it on the TAT-14 page for a test, so you can try it there too until we settle on the bits of info we put in. Then we can start updating other pages to include it. Aftereight 15:00, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I've made some changes - feel free to revert them if you wish. We're probably not following the correct protocol to create a new Infobox, but I guess we'll get there in the end. I'd like to suggest the Infobox name be Infobox_Submarine_communications_cable_system or Infobox_Submarine_telecommunications_cable_system, as some of the self-healing ring topologies are built from more than one physical cable (this is me being typically pedantic). As for the maps, I think they would have to be created offline and a PNG put up, with colours chosen carefully (so, for example, red/green colourblind people can read them). I'd expect GMT can output in a suitable format, which wouldn't take up too much space. WLD 18:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Operation PLUTO and Siemens Brothers

I don't really get this bit. First, Siemens was a Nazi company during WWII that allegedly employed contrentration camp slave labor, and secondly, the Operation Pluto article doesn't mention Siemens brothers at all. Confused.