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How does the world get on the Internet?
From the deep blue sea to deep space, we explore the precarious infrastructure of the World Wide Web.
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Words by Alyssa Mercante
Design by Martin Flores
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outer Space
to earth
In 1994, when the web was comprised of mostly scientists and cyberpunks, a company called Teledisc proposed a $9 billion commercial constellation of broadband satellites. The idea had Bill Gates as a backer, but floundered in the face of insurmountable startup costs and the failings of similar companies. Teledisc halted production in 2002, and satellite internet was relegated to the shadows, used only for private companies, remote locales, and the high-altitude swindle that is shoddy in-flight WiFi.
To date, most broadband Internet satellites exist in geostationary (or geosynchronous) orbit approximately 22,000 miles above the Earth, an altitude that allows them to widely broadcast signals to the ground below from a fixed position in space. However, there are latency issues at such a distance, as well a serious lack of space: “Geosynchronous orbits are similar to parking spaces,” says Brendan Cunningham, Professor of Economics at Eastern Connecticut State University, “and they are in pretty finite supply.”
Which is why the hopes that fuel the current satellite space race rest on LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and VLEO (Very Low Earth Orbit) satellites. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the Richard Branson-funded OneWeb both hope to launch thousands of these to provide faster Internet in a less congested portion of space. Problem solved, right? Well, no. And not only because they are vulnerable to cyberattacks—satellites that are in lower orbits move across the Earth's surface, which increases the risk of collision with space debris and non-functioning or “zombie” satellites. “It’s an intricate and dangerous dance,” Cunningham warns.
nss-9
An internet satellite currently in geostationary orbit.
elevation: 22,236 miles
nss-9
ONE WEB
The Richard Branson-backed startup submitted a proposal to the FCC in March 2018 for a fleet of nearly 2,000 satellites in LEO (low-Earth orbit). The company is promising latency speeds of 30 milliseconds.
elevation: 750 miles
Oneweb
In 2009, two satellites collided at over 26,000 miles per hour, shooting as many as 2000 hefty pieces of debris into the atmosphere and recalling a 1978 theory called Kessler Syndrome. Kessler Syndrome posits that with the increased amount of satellites in LEO, the probability of collision is higher, and debris resulting from crashes could cause an endless waterfalling of space accidents.
Space Debris
Space Debris
Space x
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch was known for sending a Tesla into space, but its true purpose is to create a network of more than 4,000 satellites in low Earth-orbit and 7,500 satellites in very low Earth-Orbit providing internet to a proposed forty million subscribers by 2025.
elevation: 250 miles
Spacex vleo
elevation: 7.5 miles
Project loon
Project Loon made all of the pieces of a cell tower light enough to float within a balloon to be deployed several miles up and transmit signals it’s receiving from ground-based towers. Loon used this technology to provide Internet to more than 100,000 people in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and it promises to connect people in remote, underdeveloped areas when it’s fully launched.
elevation: 11 miles
project Loon
Deep Blue
Ninety-seven percent of all international data—from global currency trades to Premier League updates—depends entirely on more than 700,000 miles of undersea internet cables. Damaging them and disrupting service for entire nations is an alarmingly easy feat, one accomplished by typhoons, anchors, and peckish sharks. Last year, the UK’s Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach warned that damaging cables could “catastrophically affect both the economy and other ways of living.” This April, the nation of Mauritania got a taste of such catastrophe, experiencing a 48-hour total internet blackout after a cable between Europe and the African coast was severed.
Undersea cables have been the default data throughway since 1858 when the first transatlantic telegraphs were transmitted. Despite their antiquity and vulnerability, these cables provide a much faster connection than satellites do. According to ZDNet, broadband from in-ground cables has a latency (the time it takes information to travel from point to point) between 8 and 20 milliseconds, while satellites have an average latency of over 600 milliseconds. Still undersea cables have a built-in expiration date—most are built to last 25 years and replacing them is tedious, expensive, and time-consuming. They’re also vulnerable to attack, and not just by sharks, leaving many in the intelligence community wondering why a large scale attack hasn’t happened yet. Facing that possibility, internet providers are looking skyward for a solution.
Anchor
In November of 2016, the UK isle of Jersey slogged through a slow web connection for over a week after a ship’s anchor severed three submarine cables that connected the Channel Islands to the mainland.
Anchor
Shark
Back in 2014, Google reinforced all of their undersea cables with a Kevlar-like material after surveillance video surfaced of a shark attacking one of the fiber optic cables.
Shark
