TAT-14

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TAT-14
Cable type Fiber optic cable
owner France Telecom , KPNQwest , Sprint , Concert , Deutsche Telekom AG
Landing points North , Blåbjerg , Shetland Islands , Manasquan , Tuckerton , Bude (Cornwall) , Saint-Valery-en-Caux , Katwijk
overall length 15,000 km
speed 640 Gbit / s per route (1280 Gbit / s)
cables 8 (4 pairs)
active since March 21, 2001
Amplifier spacing every 50–70 km

TAT-14 is the abbreviation for Trans Atlantic Telecommunications Cable no. 14 (dt. Transatlantic communications cable no. 14), a powerful underwater cable , the North America via two routes with Europe connects.

structure

The TAT-14 was inaugurated on March 21, 2001 after two and a half years of construction.

The cost of its production and laying approximately amounted to 1.3 billion US dollars , with about half of the amount was spent only for the laying of the cable. The costs were shared by 50 telecommunications companies , including Deutsche Telekom AG , which contributed 250 million D-Marks (approx. 128 million euros). A channel about one meter deep was plowed into the seabed for the laying. In places where the ground was too hard, the cable was reinforced with a steel jacket. These measures are intended to protect it from mechanical loads such as those caused by B. can be caused by ship anchors.

With a total length of 15,000 kilometers, the cable is 50 mm thick and has eight glass fibers or four glass fiber pairs. The cable system is designed in a ring topology so that in the event of a cable break, the data can be routed through the part of the ring that is still intact. This topology means that there are two routes between North America and Europe, with each route being able to transmit a maximum of 160 Gbit / s per fiber pair (640 Gbit / s total). Together, one terabit or the equivalent of around 1280  gigabits of data per second are possible.

One route begins in the north (Germany) and leads via Blåbjerg (Denmark) and the Shetland Islands through the Atlantic to Manasquan and Tuckerton ( New Jersey ). Another route also begins in the north and leads via Katwijk (Netherlands), Saint-Valery-en-Caux (France), Bude (Great Britain) through the Atlantic back to Tuckerton and Manasquan. These submarine cable terminals are considered important to US national security by US security agencies.

Damage

In November 2003 two cable breaks occurred within a few weeks, which meant that Internet services in Great Britain could not be used at times.

Another defect occurred on March 23, 2008, presumably in the Calais area. Internet connections to the US were slowed down as a result.

According to preliminary reports, TAT-14 also appears to be responsible for the limited connectivity between Europe and North America on May 19, 2014.

Monitoring by the GCHQ

On June 24, 2013 it was announced that the British secret service GCHQ in the Bude station in Cornwall should be able to eavesdrop on the data traffic. Documents from former NSA employee Edward Snowden revealed that data from TAT-14 was probably intercepted in the British coastal town of Bude (research by Süddeutsche Zeitung and NDR). The cable is one of more than 200 fiber optic cables that the GCHQ taps and intercepts as part of the secret Tempora program . The service obviously started directly at the cable nodes ( splice ) at communications companies and therefore did not have to access the cable from outside. Two telephone companies, Vodafone and British Telecommunications (BT), are said to have helped the British eavesdropping service .

On February 18, 2014, the state government of Lower Saxony announced the following in response to a small request from the SPD:

“In the submarine cable terminal in North / Lower Saxony there is no recognizable evidence that - as various media reported - foreign (or German) intelligence services divert the data stream of the overseas cable TAT-14 for monitoring purposes at this transfer point. Monitoring of the communication that takes place via this submarine cable at the landfall of the cable in Bude (Great Britain) and / or the terminals in Manasquan and Tuckerton (both USA) should be very likely. "

- Response of the Lower Saxony state government to a small request from the SPD

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Richard Sietmann: New data highway across the pond. In: Heise online . March 21, 2001, accessed June 26, 2013 .
  2. ^ Franz Patalong: Asia offline: The fragile network. In: Spiegel Online . December 27, 2006, accessed June 26, 2013 .
  3. ↑ TAT-14 Landing Station Map (map of the two routes and stations). In: www.tat-14.com. Sprint Nextel, 2009, accessed June 26, 2013 .
  4. ↑ BACKGROUND: Submarine cables in the sights of the secret services ( memento of the original from June 29, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. By Sebastian BRONST, Eric Piermont / AFP, Thüringer Allgemeine, June 25, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thueringer-allgemeine.de
  5. ↑ Reference ID 09STATE15113 WikiLeaks
  6. ↑ Graeme Wearden: Cable Failure Hits UK Internet traffic. In: ZDNet . November 26, 2003, accessed June 26, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Benjamin Benz: Damaged submarine cable slows down Internet connections to the USA. In: Heise online. March 23, 2008, accessed June 26, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Network Outage in EU affecting AMS1 and AMS2 hosting provider Digital Ocean, May 19, 2014
  9. ↑ EU phone home! Cloudy transatlantic cable coughs, gags, chokes - Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, hit by big problems. By Jack Clark, theregister.co.uk, May 19, 2014
  10. ↑ Volker Briegleb: Report: GCHQ siphons off German Internet on the overseas cable. In: Heise online. June 24, 2013. Retrieved June 26, 2013 .
  11. ^ Secret service taps into an important fiber optic cable TAT-14: British spy on German data from n-tv, June 24, 2013
  12. ↑ Small request from the SPD to the Lower Saxony state parliament regarding TAT-14 , February 18, 2014