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You will notice that almost all the cables are laid out in a ring shape. For example, check out the TAT-14 cable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA...

If only a single cable break occurs, every point is still reachable from every other point -- the worst thing that happens is that ping times might increase because the packets will have to travel a longer route.

This layout is called a self-healing ring: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring



As typical L2 technology for such cables is SDH/SONET, the difference in latency after single ring failure tends to not be noticeable for normal IP traffic.


Interesting. Can you expand on this? How is that possible?

If we take the TAT-14 example again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14#mediaviewer/File:Map_TA...

How will the ping times not increase dramatically from Bude (UK) to Saint-Valery-en-Caux (FR) if the connection between them breaks?


The total length of the cable is 'only' 15,428km. So the maximum one-way latency between any two points is only ~70ms assuming 0.7C. You'd definitely notice if you were gaming, but probably not if you were watching YouTube.




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