This image caught my eye this afternoon;

[Via Digg]

Digging a little further brought up this image also;

[Via The Guardian]

I’d looked into this some time ago, noting the interdependance of continents on single connection points for their data resources, and this is a good example of that. The bottom image describes two separate incidents in which human sea activity disrupted data cable connections and resulted in major network shutdowns to entire regions. Whilst these events may occur fairly infrequently (I’d be interested to see some stats on the number of incidents in the last 30 years, or possibly just as interesting, stats on how frequently repair crews are scheduled for ‘routine maintenance’), the above images highlight an inherent weakness of the physical internet.

Some thoughts come to mind;

• Geographical regions as physical storage, or ‘plug-and-play’ Australia?
• How do you actually lay/repair cables spanning entire oceans?
• Is it possible to target a country’s umbilical data cord, in an act of piracy or terrorism-by-proxy?
• What kind of intercontinental landscape has been created under our oceans? If raised, would this undersea network be visible from space?