Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind - A User-View on the Criticality of the Submarine Cable Network
Understanding the importance of submarine cables from the user perspective.
“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.”
— Jules Verne. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. (1870)
Abstract
Submarine cables form the backbone of the global Internet, yet their criticality is often assessed purely through infrastructure-centric models. Our paper, “Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind - A User-View on the Criticality of the Submarine Cable Network,” shifts this focus to a user-centric perspective.
The project aims to provide a quantitative measure of the real-world impact of Submarine Cable Network (SCN) faults on end-user connectivity. By analyzing data generated by users, we reveal the actual resilience and vulnerabilities of the global Internet in the face of cable failures.
The accompanying code and dataset allow researchers to replicate our analysis and explore:
- How often and where SCN faults occur.
- The extent of the redundancy and failover mechanisms implemented by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
- The true impact of cable cuts on latency, throughput, and reachability experienced by users around the globe.
Project Details
The code and dataset are made publicly available to promote further research into the resilience of critical Internet infrastructure.
Dataset & Code
The project contains the code and dataset accompanying the paper.
- Code and Dataset Repository: https://github.com/NU-AquaLab/Criticality-SCN
Publication
- Paper Link: Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind - A User-View on the Criticality of the Submarine Cable Network
Citation
@inproceedings{Criticality-SCN:imc2020,
author = {Shucheng Liu and Zachary S. Bischof and Ishaan Madan and Peter K. Chan and Fabián E. Bustamante},
title = {Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind - A User-View on the Criticality of the Submarine Cable Network},
booktitle = {Proc. of ACM IMC},
year = {2020},
month = {10}
}