Let’s speak about geopolitical battle between China and the U.S. and the way it’s affecting the community. Has it brought about the 2 nations to disconnect?
This battle has actually affected us within the submarine cable business.
Just a few years in the past, Workforce Telecom objected to the PLCN Submarine Cable Touchdown License software, partially on grounds of their possession construction—which had some Chinese language possession—and in addition due to the cable’s topology.
The cable was going to land in Hong Kong. As a way to get approval, that needed to be reconstituted.
Right here’s one other one—BtoBE—additionally touchdown in Hong Kong.
Nope.
HKA—a 3rd cable system eyeing Hong Kong—coming straight from the U.S. mainland.
Once more, no. That’s not going to occur.
Political tensions have actually affected the cable business within the final 4 years, however have the U.S. and China’s networks disconnected?
I am going to have a look at a number of other ways of testing this delusion.
Direct Bodily Disconnect Take a look at
There’s actually a disconnection of direct bodily networks between China and the U.S.
Whereas there are some outdated cables that also join the 2 nations, it is fairly clear that newer cables will not be going to be allowed to take action within the close to future.
However that is not the entire image.
Oblique Bodily Disconnect Take a look at
Let’s additionally take a look at oblique bodily connection. To begin with, is it even attainable to get from the U.S. to China?
In fact, it’s. You will have to cease in Japan, or the Philippines, or Singapore and go from there onto Shanghai or Hong Kong, however there are a variety of choices for intra-Asian bodily networks. You simply should make an additional hop now.
Actually, there are 17 new intra-Asian cables which can be presently within the works, and lots of extra that have not been introduced but.
So already, our second check has been busted.
I additionally wish to remind everybody that whereas we’re accustomed to working on the bodily layer, there are seven totally different layers of the community stack.
Subsequent, we’ll speak about layer 4, layer 3, and layer 2.
Three Extra Disconnect Assessments
The video under walks by means of our assessments of BGP, community presence, and layer 2/3 connectivity.
The Conclusion
To summarize the outcomes of our disconnect assessments, there was a disruption of direct bodily connection. Nonetheless, oblique bodily connection has not been disconnected, and BGP, community presence, and layer 3 community hyperlinks are nonetheless rising.
Whereas tensions now not permit for brand spanking new end-to-end submarine cable connections proper now, to this point, general community connectivity has been unchanged.
So we will name this delusion busted.
Alan Mauldin and I tackled this delusion and 5 others throughout our presentation at SubOptic 2023. Obtain our slides for the complete breakdown.
