Feature: The Global Internet has Changed Forever and Requires Expanded Infrastructure

THE GLOBAL INTERNET HAS CHANGED FOREVER AND REQUIRES EXPANDED INFRASTRUCTURE

BY STEPHEN GRUBB, HERVE FEVRIER, ANDY PALMER-FELGATE AND MATTHEW MITCHELL

The global pandemic has changed all of our lives forever, particularly how we use and depend on reliable internet services. The internet was originally architected as a network based purely on best effort practices. However, the internet has now become an essential element in all aspects of our lives. We now rely on it for working at home, online education, connecting to friends and family, telehealth, and online shopping, especially for small businesses, whose livelihood has been threatened during the pandemic. In supporting our 3.51 Billion Facebook monthly users, we have seen our network grow by 50-80%, depending on the specific global region, in 2020. Personal connections to family, friends and community have become more important than ever during these times. Certain Facebook features such as 3-way or greater calling increased by 700% in some countries during the peak of the pandemic. Facebook groups provide a platform for connection with the community and those users with shared interests. In a survey of 15,000 Facebook users in 15 countries, over half belong to 5 or more Facebook groups. Of the survey respondents, 98% feel a sense of belonging and inclusion in these groups. Small businesses have been particularly reliant on online services as their traditional business channels and models have been disrupted. Facebook supports 200 million small businesses globally, has provided training for 100 Million businesses, and is supporting more than 1 million active Facebook shops.

Figure 1: Reliable Internet Services are now essential in all aspects of our lives.

But it’s much more than just about increases in network traffic and submarine network capacity. As people rely more and more on the internet for essential services, it also becomes about resilience and reliability of the network and increasing global network reach. Our global network needs to be highly resilient and reliable, and we address this with the combination of a highly meshed optical network and a parallelized 8 plane IP design. We rely on our global submarine cable network for connecting to our 18 data centers, as shown in Figure 2, and expanding the reach to our end users. During the pandemic we have announced our 5 largest submarine cable systems to date: 2Africa, Echo, Bifrost, Apricot and a new 500 Tb/s, 24 fiber pair trans-Atlantic system [1].

Figure 2: Facebook’s 18 Worldwide Data Centers.

2Africa, at 45,000 km, is now the longest submarine fiber cable system ever constructed. With the addition of the Pearls system, it now extends into the Arabian gulf, India and Pakistan. It connects 3 continents, having 46 landings in 33 countries, as shown in figure 2. 2Africa will provide nearly 3X the capacity of all the existing submarine cables to Africa. It potentially connects up to 3 Billion people, 36% of the global population [2].

Several studies have shown a positive correlation between the increase of the GDP of nations when they are connected to new submarine fiber cable bandwidth. Echo and Bifrost are two new very long submarine cable projects, on the order of 15,000 km each, that will connect North America to the Asia Pacific region, as shown in Figure 3. These new cable routes provide route diversity through the Java Sea, important for a resilient APAC submarine network. These submarine cables also provide connectivity to our new APAC data center, which is under construction in Singapore. Upon completion of these two new submarine cable systems, the overall trans-Pacific submarine cable capacity will be increased by 70% [3].

Figure 3: The 2Africa Submarine Cable System with the Pearls extension.

Facebook has also been driving important innovations in the submarine fiber cable industry in order to improve key metrics: increased capacity and availability while continuously driving the cost per bit and cost per fiber pair lower. The first innovation is Spatial Division Multiplexing, or SDM. We worked on the first techno-economic analysis of SDM and demonstrated that this would lead to both higher capacity systems (1 Petabit and beyond), but also continuously lower cost per bit to 48 fiber pairs and beyond.[4] 2Africa, Echo and Bifrost are all first generation SDM systems which make use of higher fiber counts leading to higher total capacity and lower cost per bit while increasing resiliency due to pump sharing. The increased fiber capacity also leads to significantly lowered operational costs per fiber pair. The new 24 fiber pair trans-Atlantic system just announced is a 500 Tb/s second generation SDM system. This system is the largest fiber count and capacity submarine cable system announced to date and will provide 200 times more trans-Atlantic capacity than submarine cable systems of the early 2000s. A second innovation we have driven is the substitution of Al for Cu as the conductor in submarine cable systems. The use of Aluminum makes the cable less expensive, lighter, and can potentially lead to lower resistivity submarine fiber cables which will be important in continuing to scale SDM cables of the future. Facebook has also developed Atlantis, a novel, predictive submarine modeling system that determines the lowest cost per bit submarine cable design while optimizing for the most reliable route between given endpoints. Lastly, Facebook is driving innovations for alternative power sources for future submarine cables, a critical investigative area for our continued scaling of power limited submarine networks. This includes consideration of ocean power buoys using a combination of wave power converters and solar panels, as shown in Figure 5. We are working with GEPS Techno, a cleantech pioneer in the Blue Economy, to develop and sea trial these new power sources, and the application to submarine systems. These mid ocean power sources could supplement the current land-based power sources in future large scale SDM submarine fiber cable systems, which can scale to several Pbit/s.

Figure 4: The Echo and Bifrost diverse trans-Pacific Submarine Cable Systems.

Figure 5: Ocean Wave power converter being developed for application to submarine fiber cable systems (Source GEPS Techno).

Our reliance and use of the internet in all aspects of our lives has fundamentally been changed forever by the global pandemic. We have realized the need for increasing the global network infrastructure. The rapid rise of the technologies of the Metaverse, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), will also require increasing amounts of bandwidth in our network. We have announced 5 new, large submarine cable projects during the global pandemic which are record setting in capacity, diversity, and resiliency, and increase our global reach with a focus on underserved regions. The metrics of the submarine cable industry, primarily capacity and cost per bit of transport, need to be continually improved to drive continued increases in submarine cable infrastructure. To this end we have contributed several innovations within the industry and will continue to lead and drive towards these key metric improvements.

DR. STEVE GRUBB

DR. STEVE GRUBB is currently a Global Optical Architect at Meta, working on the build of several new open submarine cable systems and investigating new optical technologies for Meta’s global network. Prior to Meta, he was a Fellow at Infinera where for 14 years he directed work on next generation Photonic Integrated optical and network technologies. He was also responsible for the first commercial introduction of Raman amplifiers in fiber networks. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. Dr. Grubb has over 100 published papers and conference contributions and over 75 issued US Patents.

Dr. Herve Fevrier

DR. HERVE FEVRIER has been working for the past 5 years as a Global Optical Architect in the Meta (Facebook) Subsea Engineering team. He is the Technical Working Group lead for 4 EMEA cable systems including 2Africa. He has also the mission to push innovation in the industry regarding wet plant equipment. Previously, Herve has been with Alcatel and Xtera Communications.

Andy Palmer-Felgate

ANDY PALMER-FELGATE is responsible for marine engineering and route planning of submarine cable systems at Meta and serves on the Executive Committee of the International Submarine Cable Protection Committee. Prior to joining Meta (Facebook) in 2016 Andy spent a decade with Verizon and working on submarine cable construction, operations, and maintenance primarily in the Asia-Pac region. Earlier in his career Andy was part of the Marine Operations team at Alcatel Submarine Networks. Andy holds a MSc in Hydrographic Surveying from University College London, a BSc in Ocean Science from the University of Wales, and a Diploma in Law of the Sea from the Rhodes Academy.

Matthew Mitchell

MATTHEW MITCHELL currently serves as Director of Optical Network Engineering at Meta Platforms responsible for optical backbone infrastructure covering the metro, long haul, and subsea spaces. Prior to joining Meta, he served as VP of Optical Systems Architecture at Infinera Corporation, and held positions at Corvis Corporation, and Lucent Bell Laboratories. He earned his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1995 and 1998, respectively. He has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and holds 28 patents in the area of optical transmission and nonlinear optics.

REFERENCES:1. https://tech.fb.com/inside-the-lab-connectivity/2. https://engineering.fb.com/2021/09/28/connectivity/2africa-pearls/3. https://engineering.fb.com/2021/03/28/connectivity/echo-bifrost/4. R. Dars, et. al., Journal of Lightwave Technology, 36(18) p.3855 (2018).

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