Networks

May 10, 2024

Hervé Février Wants to Troubleshoot the Industry's Biggest Challenges

Dr. Hervé Février has an engineer's brain. (His colleagues have actually used the term "technical wizard.")

After four decades in optical communications, he saw that the industry was as exciting as ever, brimming with digital infrastructure problems in need of solutions.

May 3, 2024

Philip Low Plans for AI Deployment and Decarbonization

Philip Low, Chairman of Platform Markets Group and Managing Director of Headwinds Consultants, has a lot on his plate at the moment.

Apr 4, 2024

All About Cloud Regions, Zones, and On-Ramps

Today, I'm breaking down three fundamental components of cloud networks.

Apr 3, 2024

The Reality of Latin American Connectivity

A few weeks ago, TeleGeography headed back to São Paulo to participate in the Capacity Latin America 2024 conference.

There were few dull moments, with the Latin American wholesale connectivity market full of activity. Among the many discussion points, a few key themes are worth mentioning.

Let’s have a look.

Mar 15, 2024

Beyond the Red Sea Blues: West Africa Faces Fresh Cable Faults

As if three cable faults in the Red Sea weren’t enough of a headache, a series of West African cables were damaged on March 14.

The precise location and cause of all of these faults are not known at this time, but let’s look at what we do know.

Mar 14, 2024

Explaining the Internet Through the Lifecycle of a YouTube Video

Last week, we wrapped up a five-part podcast special that literally explains how the internet works.

This series describes precisely how data moves around the world, covering the basics of internettransport networksdata centers, the cloud, and WAN along the way.

At the end of each episode, I thought it would be fun to relate what we talked about to a real world example: the lifecycle of a YouTube video.

To paint the full picture, I've compiled each piece of the story here. Keep reading to find out how a video goes from one camera to millions of screens around the world.

Mar 12, 2024

The Data Center Market Blazes a New Trail

When it comes to the nature of exploration, there are typically a number of underlying forces at play, some positive and some negative.

The “pioneering spirit” could be inspired by the excitement of new opportunities, or by the pressure of existing difficulties.

The data center market happens to be dealing with both of those sentiments right now, with several factors driving it to new places.

Mar 5, 2024

What We Know (And Don't) About Multiple Cable Faults in the Red Sea

We recently wrote about how Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are causing headaches for the undersea cable industry.

Since then, the industry has suffered three cable faults in the region.

Feb 23, 2024

Flashback Friday: Submarine Cable Repair in the 1980s

If you've read over our Submarine Cable Frequently Asked Questions, you know that cable faults are common. On average, there are over 100 each year.

Of course, as a society heavily dependent on these cables, we've gotten quite good at repairing them. But what was the repair process like a few decades ago? How were cables fixed in the era of the Walkman? Time for a trip down memory lane.

Feb 22, 2024

What Are Data Centers?

We're back with episode three of our five-part podcast special, which explains the nuts and bolts of the internet.

You've come to the right place if you're interested in understanding how those cat videos travel from the source to your phone. 

In episode two, we explained how the internet is made of transport networks to carry data over (mostly) fiber optic wires distributed worldwide. And in the episode before that, we discussed how the internet is a network of networks operated by thousands of mostly private companies.

But we haven’t yet covered exactly how and where those networks meet and exchange traffic with each other and access their destinations. So today, it's data center time.