Tag Archives: growth

NANOG: The Impacts of Adding Undersea Capacity to East Africa

Keven Chege of KENET at NANOG 50 talked about rapid deployment of cable for Internet use throughout east Africa, despite vandalism including copper theft and sabotage by competing ISPs. Many national research and eduction networks (NRENs) at least planned in the area. KENET in Kenya has “Made the big leap from VSAT to fiber” and is helping coordinate the region; slides include proposed regional mesh map. Also talking to google and Akamai.

Akamai guy stood up immediately afterwards and said he hear KENET was talking to google and asked that they should talk to Akamai as well.

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NANOG: Submarine adopts 40G and 100G

Per Hansen of Ciena at NANOG 50 talked about growing capacity not by adding more data cables under the sea, rather by increasing spectral density. Eventually new cables will be needed, but meanwhile he thinks we can get up from about 2 bits to to 5 or 6 bits per Hertz. It does require more power: same energy per bit, but more bits.

Plus mesh networks for rerouting, even if it means rerouting backwards around the world, he notes. We’ve observed that sort of emergency backwards routing as long ago as January 2008, in the U.A.E. Cable Cut.

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NANOG: Coping with Relentless Demand Growth

David G. Ross ofThe David Ross Group Inc. at NANOG 50 talked about data cables under the sea, in which he revealed that Internet growth has not only not paused during the recession, it has increased, and it continues to increase in every region in which his company operates, including Asia, Middle East, and Africa. North Atlantic hasn’t had any new submarine capacity in years, in “the most competitive capacity market on Earth”. It will probably run out in a few years, so now there is demand to build new cables there. Each cable costs about $200 million to install.

Slight downside: early remark that he was sure things were the same as they were when he worked for a telephone company.

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