Highways of the XXI century
Next year we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of one of the greatest infrastructure projects fully implemented on the territory of modern Russia. In 1916, the section of the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed, bypassing the existing section of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). Thus, the Russian Empire actually became a monopoly on the physical connection of Europe with the countries of the Pacific region. A huge distance, more than 10,000 km, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, it became possible to overcome on steam steam in just 16 days, along the sea route, this road took at least 2 months. If we take into account the mentioned CER, in fact, the regular railway communication between the "East" and the "West" began even earlier - in 1901. In addition to such a significant anniversary, in the coming year marks 145 years since the first telegraphic communication between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. 30 years before the establishment of the railway communication, thanks to engineering thought and the enormous efforts of thousands of people, it became possible to transmit information from different parts of the world in a matter of hours. Such significant dates not only instill in us a sense of pride in our predecessors, but also involuntarily suggest reasoning about the present day.
After 100 years, the uniqueness of the territory of the Russian Federation has not only not lost its value, as a bridge between the centers of world civilization, but moreover has become more relevant than ever. If in the XIX-XX centuries, the most expensive goods were material goods, and their delivery was as important as possible in the shortest possible time, then in the XXI century information became more important than ever and therefore the infrastructure along which it moves.
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For obvious reasons, in the 20th century, the world situation was not too favorable to the construction of bridges between east and west. Two destructive world wars, unfolding uncompromising ideological confrontation, which separated our planet, dictated the policy of isolationism and closeness of entire regions of the Earth. The fall of the communist regime in the USSR and its satellites, as well as the revision of Chinese policy toward openness by the Chinese leadership, has infused new hopes in expanding economic ties between the East and the West.
The economic boom of the last decades in Southeast Asia, as well as those that have already achieved high parameters of the country's development, are generating from year to year an increasing demand for the disposal of the existing IT industry. IT backbones have become one of those limited resources with a shortage of residents of the PRC, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and other regional leaders. Laid over the years on the bottom of the seas and oceans of cable, around the countries of soc. camps, at the moment clearly do not satisfy existing needs and this is natural. In addition to the already mentioned factor of high growth in traffic consumption, technical progress cannot be ignored, which makes some of the functioning cables in conjunction with new technologies simply unsuitable for use.
One of the features of the existing connections between Europe and Asia is a huge number of laid submarine cables, with a frankly small amount of land. Crossing the entire Mediterranean Sea, skirting the Arabian Peninsula, Hindustan, overcoming another sea - South China, a data packet from Europe has a chance to get to a server hosted in China, the answer to the request will do the same route, but in reverse order. The physical distance between users on this route can reach 20,000 km, causing a network delay of more than 200 milliseconds. If the traffic from Europe is directed through highways tied to the USA, the distance will be even greater, and the network delay value PING will increase accordingly.
For the reasons given above, at the moment there is a lag in both the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of networks. In recent years, use cases for laying new highways through the Arctic region have been actively developed. For example, at the final stage is the fiber optic line, laid by the company Arctic Fiber. Starting from London, it must pass through the northern part of the Atlantic, Canada, rounding Alaska, and its finish is scheduled in Tokyo. The stacked fiber is created according to the latest technical standards and each of the cores will be capable of supporting data transmission at a speed of 100 Gigabit / s. The line will be commissioned in 2016, its length will be about 15,600 km. But even this promising project is inferior to analogues designed with Russia in mind.
The picture of the existing infrastructure between Europe and Asia is deeply not ideal, the reason for this is the very weak presence in it of the territory of the Russian Federation and the opportunities it carries. Regardless of the fact that undersea roads or land routes, all the shortest routes for uniting the Old World with the most developed regions of Asia lie through Russia.
Of the currently existing highways connecting the Eurasian continent through the territory of the Russian Federation, one can single out the Transit Europe Asia (TEM) main lines. Four lines - TEA-1, TEA-2, TEA-3, TEA-4, for the most part of their path pass through a rather narrow corridor that coincides with the laid, in the middle of the XIX century, Siberian Telegraph and a little later Trans-Siberian Railway.
The main objective of the project being created, conceived by Rostelecom back in 2003, was the ability to link two rapidly developing regions of the world. After 12 years, we can safely say that the high hopes that were placed on the project were fully justified. By combining western Europe with eastern China and further Japan, the TEM project's highways not only expanded the traffic diversion capabilities but also made it possible to reduce the network latency between its extreme users by more than a third.
At the time when the first line - TEA-1 was created with a bandwidth of only 60 Gigabit / s, now all four queues allow you to transport traffic at speeds of up to 8 Terabytes / s. These figures are perhaps the most eloquent argument confirming the success of the entire project. But there is nothing surprising in this, because the TEM project was doomed to good luck from the very beginning. In addition to the need for new IT highways, an important factor also played into the hands of Rostelecom - almost the entire length of the cable route was laid overland. Thanks to the existing power transmission lines on the main part of its path, the TEM project optical fiber is laid along metal masts. The cheapness of such a solution, as well as the possibility of the fastest possible installation, detection and repair of cable damage became a clear advantage in comparison with the installation of cables along the bottom of the seas and oceans. Moreover, in contrast to the previous years, when the cable being laid was simply melted down, now all new submarine highways necessarily fit into the sea ground, which made such projects even more expensive and difficult. By the way, the reason for such a demand was the increasing frequency of fiber optic trawls and anchors of ships, one of such incidents in 2008 deprived Egypt of 80% of the Internet channels connecting it to the world.
Another example of a successfully functioning IT highway passing through Russia can be the EPEG project. The territory of the Russian Federation has become an integral part of the laying of a line connecting Europe, this time with the Middle East. Similar to the TEM project, the EPEG line, recently commissioned, runs partly along the route created more than 150 years ago by telegraph engineers, who connected the capital of Great Britain, London, with its copper administrative center in India, Calcutta, with copper wire. EPEG, which runs from the German city of Frankfurt am Main to the city of Muscat, which in Oman passed through the whole of central and eastern Europe, as well as the Caucasus region and Iran, completing its journey on the Arabian Peninsula. In the future, this route has all chances to be continued further to the east, connecting the two densely populated parts of the world Europe and the peninsula - Hindustan by a land highway.
In addition to already existing, successful projects implemented in Russia, at the moment new and equally large-scale and promising ones are being developed. Polarnet, in collaboration with Transneft, is in the final stages of developing a grandiose infrastructure solution for laying a trans-continental fiber-optic ring.
Back in 2002-2003, a plan was created for the creation of the “Russian Transarctic Cable System” (ROTAKS), according to the plan, in the very near future, the highway should pass through the Arctic region of the Russian Federation. The main objective of the project is to connect the two world capitals - London, Tokyo and further along Shanghai if the small PING is not so important for ordinary people in these cities; this parameter is extremely critical for the Shanghai, Tokyo and London stock exchanges. According to the information provided by the designers, it is expected that the delay in the ROTAX network between clients in London and Tokyo will be only 76.58 milliseconds. It is not difficult to notice that the project is a direct competitor of the pipeline being laid by the company Arctic Fiber, but according to the stated parameters, the latter loses to ROTAX. In addition to the fact that the Arctic project will most effectively connect the two world economic centers, it will also allow connecting the still little developed northern territories of the Russian Federation to high-speed Internet.
Over time, Polarnet found it possible to expand the Arctic project and to duplicate the northern line along the southern route, which should pass in the corridor of the already recalled Transsib. Thus, the highways will have to take Russia into the IT ring, giving new opportunities to provide cheap and high-quality Internet.
In general, the situation with the transit of traffic in the modern world is very entertaining. Traffic often travels between two clients not along direct routes, but along very unusual, seemingly at first glance, routes, which naturally also has its explanation. But if you study in detail the geography of the flows of this very global traffic, you can quite simply identify the main infrastructure nodes through which it travels around our planet.
In the light of the espionage revelations of recent years, including thanks to the unforgettable Edward Snowden, the picture of the IT world brings on unequivocal reflections. The absolute majority of European traffic, before getting into the world, passes through British and US. When it comes to broad underwater highways to Asia, a rather small number of them pass by the city-state - the ultramodern Singapore . According to the material published by Edward Snowden, fabulous Singapore has for many decades been a constant ally of the United States and the interstate intelligence organization Five Eyes (US, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand).
In the designated direction, the construction of alternative IT highways through the territory of Russia and the launch of traffic to bypass “low places” can become important not only from an economic, logical but also a political point of view. By connecting Europe with the countries of the Pacific region, new land lines can give both businesses and individuals an additional sense of security when sending confidential information through a network that you yourself have invented who .
Just as farms are transformed over time into megacities, as forest paths turn into broad highways, modern infrastructure rarely appears on the “bare” place. In addition, it is much easier to implement a new project on the basis of ready-made, often these most ready-made projects are created in the most suitable, or moreover, the only possible places in a particular territory. Laying the Trans-Siberian Railway in the second half of the 19th century, engineers chose the most rational route that could connect two Eurasian continents. Cutting through the tunnels in the rocks, building bridges across the mighty Siberian rivers and deep beams, our predecessors not only improved their age but also made an invaluable contribution to the future, which we call today.
Severed world
After 100 years, the uniqueness of the territory of the Russian Federation has not only not lost its value, as a bridge between the centers of world civilization, but moreover has become more relevant than ever. If in the XIX-XX centuries, the most expensive goods were material goods, and their delivery was as important as possible in the shortest possible time, then in the XXI century information became more important than ever and therefore the infrastructure along which it moves.
')
For obvious reasons, in the 20th century, the world situation was not too favorable to the construction of bridges between east and west. Two destructive world wars, unfolding uncompromising ideological confrontation, which separated our planet, dictated the policy of isolationism and closeness of entire regions of the Earth. The fall of the communist regime in the USSR and its satellites, as well as the revision of Chinese policy toward openness by the Chinese leadership, has infused new hopes in expanding economic ties between the East and the West.
The economic boom of the last decades in Southeast Asia, as well as those that have already achieved high parameters of the country's development, are generating from year to year an increasing demand for the disposal of the existing IT industry. IT backbones have become one of those limited resources with a shortage of residents of the PRC, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and other regional leaders. Laid over the years on the bottom of the seas and oceans of cable, around the countries of soc. camps, at the moment clearly do not satisfy existing needs and this is natural. In addition to the already mentioned factor of high growth in traffic consumption, technical progress cannot be ignored, which makes some of the functioning cables in conjunction with new technologies simply unsuitable for use.
One of the features of the existing connections between Europe and Asia is a huge number of laid submarine cables, with a frankly small amount of land. Crossing the entire Mediterranean Sea, skirting the Arabian Peninsula, Hindustan, overcoming another sea - South China, a data packet from Europe has a chance to get to a server hosted in China, the answer to the request will do the same route, but in reverse order. The physical distance between users on this route can reach 20,000 km, causing a network delay of more than 200 milliseconds. If the traffic from Europe is directed through highways tied to the USA, the distance will be even greater, and the network delay value PING will increase accordingly.
For the reasons given above, at the moment there is a lag in both the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of networks. In recent years, use cases for laying new highways through the Arctic region have been actively developed. For example, at the final stage is the fiber optic line, laid by the company Arctic Fiber. Starting from London, it must pass through the northern part of the Atlantic, Canada, rounding Alaska, and its finish is scheduled in Tokyo. The stacked fiber is created according to the latest technical standards and each of the cores will be capable of supporting data transmission at a speed of 100 Gigabit / s. The line will be commissioned in 2016, its length will be about 15,600 km. But even this promising project is inferior to analogues designed with Russia in mind.
Transit Europe Asia
The picture of the existing infrastructure between Europe and Asia is deeply not ideal, the reason for this is the very weak presence in it of the territory of the Russian Federation and the opportunities it carries. Regardless of the fact that undersea roads or land routes, all the shortest routes for uniting the Old World with the most developed regions of Asia lie through Russia.
Of the currently existing highways connecting the Eurasian continent through the territory of the Russian Federation, one can single out the Transit Europe Asia (TEM) main lines. Four lines - TEA-1, TEA-2, TEA-3, TEA-4, for the most part of their path pass through a rather narrow corridor that coincides with the laid, in the middle of the XIX century, Siberian Telegraph and a little later Trans-Siberian Railway.
The main objective of the project being created, conceived by Rostelecom back in 2003, was the ability to link two rapidly developing regions of the world. After 12 years, we can safely say that the high hopes that were placed on the project were fully justified. By combining western Europe with eastern China and further Japan, the TEM project's highways not only expanded the traffic diversion capabilities but also made it possible to reduce the network latency between its extreme users by more than a third.
At the time when the first line - TEA-1 was created with a bandwidth of only 60 Gigabit / s, now all four queues allow you to transport traffic at speeds of up to 8 Terabytes / s. These figures are perhaps the most eloquent argument confirming the success of the entire project. But there is nothing surprising in this, because the TEM project was doomed to good luck from the very beginning. In addition to the need for new IT highways, an important factor also played into the hands of Rostelecom - almost the entire length of the cable route was laid overland. Thanks to the existing power transmission lines on the main part of its path, the TEM project optical fiber is laid along metal masts. The cheapness of such a solution, as well as the possibility of the fastest possible installation, detection and repair of cable damage became a clear advantage in comparison with the installation of cables along the bottom of the seas and oceans. Moreover, in contrast to the previous years, when the cable being laid was simply melted down, now all new submarine highways necessarily fit into the sea ground, which made such projects even more expensive and difficult. By the way, the reason for such a demand was the increasing frequency of fiber optic trawls and anchors of ships, one of such incidents in 2008 deprived Egypt of 80% of the Internet channels connecting it to the world.
Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG)
Another example of a successfully functioning IT highway passing through Russia can be the EPEG project. The territory of the Russian Federation has become an integral part of the laying of a line connecting Europe, this time with the Middle East. Similar to the TEM project, the EPEG line, recently commissioned, runs partly along the route created more than 150 years ago by telegraph engineers, who connected the capital of Great Britain, London, with its copper administrative center in India, Calcutta, with copper wire. EPEG, which runs from the German city of Frankfurt am Main to the city of Muscat, which in Oman passed through the whole of central and eastern Europe, as well as the Caucasus region and Iran, completing its journey on the Arabian Peninsula. In the future, this route has all chances to be continued further to the east, connecting the two densely populated parts of the world Europe and the peninsula - Hindustan by a land highway.
Polarnet
In addition to already existing, successful projects implemented in Russia, at the moment new and equally large-scale and promising ones are being developed. Polarnet, in collaboration with Transneft, is in the final stages of developing a grandiose infrastructure solution for laying a trans-continental fiber-optic ring.
Back in 2002-2003, a plan was created for the creation of the “Russian Transarctic Cable System” (ROTAKS), according to the plan, in the very near future, the highway should pass through the Arctic region of the Russian Federation. The main objective of the project is to connect the two world capitals - London, Tokyo and further along Shanghai if the small PING is not so important for ordinary people in these cities; this parameter is extremely critical for the Shanghai, Tokyo and London stock exchanges. According to the information provided by the designers, it is expected that the delay in the ROTAX network between clients in London and Tokyo will be only 76.58 milliseconds. It is not difficult to notice that the project is a direct competitor of the pipeline being laid by the company Arctic Fiber, but according to the stated parameters, the latter loses to ROTAX. In addition to the fact that the Arctic project will most effectively connect the two world economic centers, it will also allow connecting the still little developed northern territories of the Russian Federation to high-speed Internet.
Over time, Polarnet found it possible to expand the Arctic project and to duplicate the northern line along the southern route, which should pass in the corridor of the already recalled Transsib. Thus, the highways will have to take Russia into the IT ring, giving new opportunities to provide cheap and high-quality Internet.
A bit of paranoia
In general, the situation with the transit of traffic in the modern world is very entertaining. Traffic often travels between two clients not along direct routes, but along very unusual, seemingly at first glance, routes, which naturally also has its explanation. But if you study in detail the geography of the flows of this very global traffic, you can quite simply identify the main infrastructure nodes through which it travels around our planet.
In the light of the espionage revelations of recent years, including thanks to the unforgettable Edward Snowden, the picture of the IT world brings on unequivocal reflections. The absolute majority of European traffic, before getting into the world, passes through British and US. When it comes to broad underwater highways to Asia, a rather small number of them pass by the city-state - the ultramodern Singapore . According to the material published by Edward Snowden, fabulous Singapore has for many decades been a constant ally of the United States and the interstate intelligence organization Five Eyes (US, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand).
In the designated direction, the construction of alternative IT highways through the territory of Russia and the launch of traffic to bypass “low places” can become important not only from an economic, logical but also a political point of view. By connecting Europe with the countries of the Pacific region, new land lines can give both businesses and individuals an additional sense of security when sending confidential information through a network that you yourself have invented who .
The future relies heavily on the past
Just as farms are transformed over time into megacities, as forest paths turn into broad highways, modern infrastructure rarely appears on the “bare” place. In addition, it is much easier to implement a new project on the basis of ready-made, often these most ready-made projects are created in the most suitable, or moreover, the only possible places in a particular territory. Laying the Trans-Siberian Railway in the second half of the 19th century, engineers chose the most rational route that could connect two Eurasian continents. Cutting through the tunnels in the rocks, building bridges across the mighty Siberian rivers and deep beams, our predecessors not only improved their age but also made an invaluable contribution to the future, which we call today.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/263255/
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