Evolution of Asia Pacific subsea cable capacity
A golden age for APAN’s R&E community
Yves Poppe
BBC meeting (BackBone Committee) APAN 47 February 18th-22 2018, Daejon, Rep of Korea AARnet co-owner on the Indigo and JGA cables! REANNZ anchor tenant on Hawaiki
• The Indigo cable will run from Perth to Singapore and the JGA cable will connect Japan, Guam and Australia (Sydney). • The Indigo consortium comprises Google, Singtel, Telstra, Indonesia’s Indosat Ooredoo, Superloop and AARNet. It will be supplied by Nokia’s Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), RFS: mid 2019 • Each of the two fibre pairs will have a capacity of 18Tbps, with future increases possible. AARnet’s spectrum ownership will give it a staggering potential of 3Tbps between Australia and Singapore!! • The JGA partners include Google, AARnet and RTI-C, will be supplied by Alcatel and NEC, 36Tbps capacity, RFS Q4 2019 • REANNZ has a 25-year anchor tenancy on Hawaiki on behalf of the New Zealand government. Two APAN members own Terabits worth of subsea cable capacity, awesome, congratulations! Other key APAN members should follow their lead!
Pg 2 Consortium confirms completion of Indigo
AARNet, Google, Indosat, Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra have confirmed the completion of the Indigo West and Central subsea cable systems.
The consortium confirms that the commissioning period has now begun and on-track for its ready for service date of mid-2019.
“This is an exciting time for AARNet, added Chris Hancock, CEO of AARNet. “Indigo is the first in a number of significant investments for research and education in Australia. Indigo will provide the underpinning critical infrastructure to meet the future growth in collaborative research and transnational education between Australia and our important Asian partners.”
Once live, the 36Tbps, 4,600km system will boost connections between Australia and Southeast Asia delivering lower latency and increased reliability on its two fibre-pairs. Reported by Capacity media january 25th 2019 Telstra, PCCW, Singtel on a subsea fibre diet
1. Telstra 1. 25% stake in Southern Cross (SCNN) ; includes Southern Cross Next 2. Half fibre in Indigo (Perth - Singapore) RFS mid 2019 3. Half fibre in HKA (HK-USA) RFS 2020 4. 6Tbps in PLCN RFS 2020 5. Bought added capacity on NCP and considers ‘further investment’ on FASTER
2. PCCW 1. Stake in Africa-1 (South Africa – Djibouti) RFS 2021 2. Partnership in PEACE cable ( Pakistan – France) 3. MARS cable ( Mauritius – Rodrigues)
3. Singtel 1. Partner in Indigo 2. Lead in SJC2 consortium 3. Partner in Southern Cross Next The rise of international 100Gbps in APAN
• January 2014: 100Gbps challenge by Yves Poppe at APAN37 in Bandung, Indonesia: Connect Asia to America at 100GBps in time for SC14 in New Orleans in november. • SC14 New Orleans: A*STAR and SingAREN demonstrate 100Gbps connectivity and applications between Singapore and New Orleans. • September 2015: first operational transpacific 100Gbps R&E connection, cost shared between Singapore and internet2. • Today: six 100Gbps transpacific APAN member connections: Japan (2), Australia (2), Korea (1), Singapore (1) • october 2017: first intra-Asia APAN 100Gbps connectivity with the Singapore- Hong Kong – Japan circuit cost shared between SingAREN and NICT with mutual back-up and transit agreement in the spirit of the R&E GNA (Global Network Architecture). Singapore to Japan NII funded cct also upgraded to 100Gbps. • I00Gps connection from Singapore to London to be completed by end Q1 2019
Pg 5 The 100gbps R&E ring around the Globe becoming a reality this Q1 2019!
• Professor Tan Tin Wee’s vision of a 100Gbps R&E ring around the Globe, first expressed in 2014 is on the verge of becoming reality. • At the TNC18 Conference in Trondheim, Norway, in june 2018, Japan announced a 100gbs connection to Europe via the Trans Siberian railway plus a 100Gbps connection from Europe to the USA, RFS Q1 2019. • Also at TNC18 a number of R&E partners including Nordunet, Geant and TEIN*CC, Surfnet, SingAREN and AARNet announced co-funding of a 100Gbps Europe to Singapore connection The RFQ was issued and a supplier selected to provide a 15Y IRU for a 100Gbps cct, RFS end Q1 2019 • This will bring GLIF closer to reality while the R&E GNA (Global Network Architecture) goes global with the partners providing each other mutual back- up, transit and overflow capabilities. Progress report on the Asia-Europe 100G (IRU, 15 years lease)
1. Collaboration and its parties • Co-funding of a 100Gbps Singapore to London, facilitation of Open Exchange • Six (6) parties – AARNet, SingAREN, TEIN*CC (Asi@Connect), NORDUnet, SurfNET, GEANT (Europe) • Each participant financially takes up 1/6th of the TCO, however on division/allocation of bandwidth among the parties of this collaboration, no allocation will be from an engineering perspective • GEANT led the procurement in line with the European Commission’s guidelines and AARNet contract signing with the awardee
2. Expected Effect/Outcome (in particular in terms of Asi@Connect) • Meet cost effectively the increasing bandwidth demand between Asia and Europe – currently 10Gbps co-funded with National Supercomputing Centre Singapore. Only 3 years to reach the Break Even Point with the existing cct! • Secure long-term sustainability of the use of R&E network between Asia and Europe – symbolic link for Asi@Connect project
3. Schedules and their status • Publish Contract Notice & ITT: 2 August 2018, Evaluate submitted responses: ~ 26 Nov. 2018 • Award Contract: 21 Dec. 2018, TTI (Turkey telco), Installation & Delivery: during 2Q 2019
Slide courtesy of Patch Lee Some subsea cable tidbits since APAN46
1. AJC completes upgrade, triples lit capacity (Jan 2019) 2. Construction begins on 72Tbps Ellalink (Jan 2019) 3. Indigo cable installation complete! (Jan 2019) 4. WASACE1 (Brazil-Portugal) 144Tbps end Q2 2021 5. AAE-1 to be upgraded to 200Gbps, 2 years ahead of schedule! 6. Ciena Wavelogic adds 6.4Tbps to Southern Cross cables 7. LoI for new HK-Philippine cable (China Telecom nov 2018) 8. ASC (Australia – Singapore) put in service 9. SIGMAR: Singapore – Myanmar financing being finalized. 10. SXS (California-Guam) contract awarded to NEC. With 96Tbps design capacity SXS will connect to Hong Kong-Guam (HK-G), Japan-Guam-Australia North (JGA-N), Japan-Guam-Australia South (JGA-S) and the SEA-US cable 11. BBG2: EW-1 (HK to Bilbao), EW-2 (Medinah to Capetown) EW-3 (Satun, Thailand to Sydney) . Trying to firm up partners and financing . 72Tbps design capacity over 8 fibre pairs, tentative RFS for EW-1 end 2020. Aluminum based conductors for subsea cables!
Under discussion for the last five years the commercial phase finally seems to get underway as announced By Alcatel (ASN) and Facebook who claim:
1. Has been tested, ready to deploy and is part of major planned subsea cable project. 2. Major cost saving compared to current copper based conductors 3. Allows for higher number of fibre pairs due to low direct current resistance
If this new variant lives up to expectations and becomes widely accepted, it could reduce cost per gigabit by another order of magnitude over the next five to ten years for long haul subsea transmission, in open, competitive markets. APR: Asia-Pacific Ring MoU signatories
MoU signed at APAN 45 in Singapore in March 2018 SINET Tokyo TP-PW Seoul
SINET “Asia Europe Ring” JGN-SG KOREN Asia Pacific Ring SINET HK 台北 PIREN TW TP JGN-SG Guam SG-I2 AU-SG-EU
TW SG
100G 100G Back up 10-20G AARNET
Asia-Pacific Backbone in 2019
Courtesy Kazunori Konishi at APAN46 Planned 100Gbps R&E connectivity by mid 2019
400Gbps ANA-400G Internet2,NORDUnet/GEANT/SURFnet 100Gbps 100Gbps 100Gbps SINET SINET KRLight 100Gbps Slough, EU South TransPAC/Pacific Wave/WIDE 100 Gbps Korea Tokyo, JP NICT/SingAREN Los Angeles, USA 100Gbps SingAREN/Internet2 100Gbps Singapore
12 Beyond Networking: APRP Asia Pacific Research Platform
• The vast majority of Researchers are not ad hoc communications specialists and do not care about VLAN’s or fine tuning GridFTP or Globus throughput rates. They want an easy API to access compute, data or instruments securely and efficiently, wherever they are located. • The various disciplines will enjoy the benefits of their own private network running over the shared infrastructure. This is made possible through te use of dedicated systems as data transfer nodes (DTNs) including Performance measurement and network testing systems that are regularly used to characterize and troubleshoot the network and most importantly Security Policies and enforcement mechanisms that are tailored for high performance science environments. • Operational RP’s are increasingly being used by various disciplines including weather forecasting, genomics, AI, HEP, astronomy and HPC.
• An APRP WG was formed within APAN with Jeonhoon Moon (KISTI Korea) as Chair and Andrew Howard (ANU Australia) as co-Chair. First APRP WG taking place here in Daejon.
• The final objective: Research at the speed of thought Convergence of Compute, Storage and Communications Collaboration is crucial for Economic Prosperity
• AI, Deep Learning, machine learning with associated simulations and analysis have become a source of discovery. Areas such as Genomics and personalized medicine require ultra high security and reliability, fast data replication and disaster recovery.
• Exascale computing is seen as the next Frontier with the USA, Europe, Japan and China allocating each in excess of one billion US$ to be the first to reach this milestone by the early 2020’s. The july 2018 TOP500 list now has 272 petaflop level machines up from 181 in November 2017 and 2 back in nov 2008. The list now includes sixteen 10 Petaflop level machines.
• To remain relevant facing the exascale challenge, Singapore would like to invite APAN members and in particular ASEAN members to build shared HPC resources and the associated network infrastructure based on APRP to support our researchers in Government and Industry Research Labs and Academia as all research areas are becoming data and compute intensive.
Pg 14 Subsea Capacity Evolution Plenty of terabit action continues in AsiaPac
2016: FASTER, BBG, APG, SEAMEWE-5
2017: AAE-1, SEA-US
2018: NCP, Hawaiki , ASC
2019: JGA, PLCN, HKG
2020: HKA, Jupiter, BtoBE
See telegeography interactive map:
https://submarine-cable-map- 2018.telegeography.com/ intra-Asia workhorses: APG and SJC SJC2 on the way Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) was launched in November 2016, 100Gbps capable and capacity of 54.8Tbps. South East Asia Japan (SJC) was launched in june 2013 has 6 pairs and 28Tbps design capacity SJC2 coming: Singtel led consortium, 8 pairs, 144Tbps, RFQ Q4 2020
SJC2
Pg 16 Asia Pac Subsea capacity: banner years
2017 has seen some major cables and capacity coming on-line • MCT cable : Malaysia – Cambodia-Thailand with 1.5 Tbps initially, upgradable up to 30Tbps launched in May. Partners are Cambodian provider Telcotech (owned by Ezecom), Telekom Malaysia, Symphony and DTAC. Golden opportunity for R&E in the region. • TGA (Tasmania Global Access) NZ-Australia : 2 pairs, 20Tbps: March 2017 • ATISA: launched May 2017; 4Tbps capacity: Guam to Northern Marianas • AAE-1 to Europe with 40Tbps capacity in July 2017 • SEA-US on the US-Hawaii-Guam-Philippines-Indonesia: aug 2017
And so did 2018 • NCP: New Cross Pacific China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, USA Design capacity; 81.9Tbps; Micosoft is a partner ;went live in May 2018 • HAWAIKI: Australia – Hawaii- US West Coast; 30Tbps design capacity went live in July 2018 with REANNZ as stakeholder • PLCN: Pacific Light Cable Network direct HK-USA cable. 5 pair, 120Tbps! Google and Facebook invest : RFS postponed to late Q2 2019
Pg 17 More Transpacific cables scheduled for 2020
• HKA: Hong-Kong – USA Supplier: Alcatel, 80Tbps design capacity China Unicom. China Telecom, Facebook, Tata, Telstra RFS 2020 • Jupiter: Philippines – Japan - USA Supplier: TE Subcom Facebook, Amazon, PCCW, Softbank, NTT, PLDT RFS 2020 • BtoBE: Singapore – HK – USA Supplier: NEC. 108Tbps design capacity China Mobile International, Facebook, Amazon (AWS) RFS late 2020 will connect to SJC2 also scheduled for Q4 2020 Pacific • Fiji, Tokelau and Kiribati have secured connections to the 60Tbps islands NEXT submarine cable linking Australia, NZ and the US. RFS 2019. • American Samoa, New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga have joined Hawaiki (RFS july 2018) linking Australia, NZ and the US. • Tui-Samoa cable network: connects Samoa to Wallis and Futuna, Vanua Levu (the second largest island of Fiji) and Suva on the Fiji mainland. RFS jan ; Manatua: linking Niue, Samoa, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia. RFS end 2018 • NATITUA system: will link Tahiti to eight atolls in the archipelago of Tuamotu, with two islands of Marquisas. NATITUA will extend the existing Honotua cable system, which connects the French Polynesian islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea and Bora Bora to Hawaii (US). 10Tbps , Alcatel. Work started in july 2018. • CSCS: Australia – PNG- Solomon RFS Q4 2019 • ICN2: Vanuatu to Solomon Islands Q4 2019 • Sea-US branch to Yap (Micronesia): RFS aug 2018. Up ; provides 500Gbps to Guam.
• Manatua (Samoa to Tahiti): Contract announced (nov 2018)
Pg 19 More projects materializing
• ASC (Australia Singapore Cable): linking Perth-Indonesia- Singapore : RFS date: august 2018, 30Tbps . Up and running • HK-G: Hong Kong Guam: 48Tbps RFS Q4 2019 connects to SEA-US • NEXT : Southern Cross project 60Tbps Australia-NZ-USA. Owned by Telecom NZ (50%), Singtel-Optus (40%) and Verizon (10%) ; will interconnect with existing Southern Cross cables. RFS end 2019 • MYTHIC: Myanmar-Malaysia-Thailand 20Tbps capacity RFS 2020 • SEAX-1: Singapore-Indonesia-Malaysia, 24 pairs, a 9.6Tbps RFS mid 2018 (?), Huawei • SEAX-2: Singapore- Indonesia - Guam – 10Tbps (financing?) • SIGMA: Singapore-Myanmar RFS mid 2019 (?), 32Tbps capacity • PEACE: Pakistan-Djibouti-Kenya. 60Tbps, RFS Q3 2019, Huawei. Financed by China Development Bank. To connect to Silkroad terrestrial cable. • SAEX-1: South Africa to USA via Fortaleza, RFS Q4 2020 • SAEX-2 : South Africa to Malaysia, 4 pairs, minimum 48Tbps. RFS?
Pg 20 Elsewhere in the world
• MONET cable: 60Tbps, three pairs, Brazil to Forida: RFS may 2018. Up and running
• SEABRAS-1: Brazil to New Jersey: 72 Tbps, RFS sept 2017. ABRB cable (Argentina – Brazil, 48tbps) will connect to Seabras-1. RFS mid to late 2018.
• MAREA: transatlantic, Virginia Beach to Bilbao, Spain; led by Microsoft and Facebook; 160Tbps capacity!! RFS Q4 2017, up and running
• SACS : Angola to Brazil where it will connect to Monet: upa nd running (sept 2018)
• HAVFRUE: US to Denmark. RFS Q4 2019 108Tbps capacity. TE-Subcom. Investors include Facebook, Aquacomms
• SAIL: Kribi (Cameroon) to Fortaleza (Brazil),. China Unicom is Partner. 72 Tbps RFS: Q4 2018, Huawei.
• ELLALINK: Brazil-Portugal-Spain: 72Tbps, Alcatel, RFS 2020. Geant has a 25mega$ commitment, partner with RedClara under the BELLA project
• CC: China –Chile crossing the Pacific. Three possible routes being evaluated.
• IOX: South Africa- Mauritius-India 54Tbps Alcatel. RFS end 2019
• CURIE: LA to Valparaiso. TE-Subcom. 100% Google owned! RFS?
• QUANTUM: Israel –Cyprus-Greece-Italy-France-Spain: 160 Tbps, RFS oct 2020 will connect to MAREA.
• DUNANT: 100% Google owned, TE Subcom; , Virginia Beach to France. 4 pairs, RFS Q4 2020
• WASACE and WASACE2: Portugal to Brazil via Canary Islands and Portugal to South Africa: RFS2021
Pg 21 Petabit level transoceanic cables in the early 2020s?
• When MAREA capacity of 160Tbps came on-line end of 2017 the Petabit horizon of the late 2020’s came forward to the mid 2020’s • Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks and Nokia Bell Labs have achieved 65 Tbps transmission capacity over a 6,600 km single mode fiber using Bell Labs’ Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS) technology with a new modulation technique to maximize the distance and capacity of high-speed transmission in optical networks. • In May 2018, NEC and Google demonstrated a possible factor of 2.5 capacity increase on the 11,000 km FASTER cable using AI and probabilistic shaping at a modulation of 64QAM. It was the first time, on a live cable, that AI was used to analyze data for the purpose of nonlinearity compensation (NLC). NEC developed an NLC algorithm based on data-driven deep neural networks (DNN) to accurately and efficiently estimate the signal nonlinearity. • 400Gbps single carrier achieved on MAREA by Acacia in December 2018!
Pg 22 A prediction? The world will see Exascale Computing in 2022 and the first Petabit level transcontinental data transmission cable in 2024
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm
Pg 23