Smart Cable Routing
Dijkstra-based routing through real submarine cables and landing points from the industry cable inventory. Accurate distance multipliers for land and undersea segments.
In-depth analysis of how internet traffic moves through 723 submarine cable systems, based on real measurements from our probes worldwide.
How it happened. The scene plays once; the time is sped up.
The major outage in Solomon Islands affected Solomon Telekom: signal down 100%, serves 76.2% of the country's users; Satsol: signal down 75%, serves 2.6% of the country's users. Together they serve about 78.8% of the country's users (APNIC estimate). Across the country, 69% of address blocks stopped answering our checks.
On October 28, 2026, a magnitude 5.2 earthquake occurred 6 km northwest of Balangonan, Philippines. The event impacted a localized area, with nearby communities experiencing tremors. Authorities responded promptly, and monitoring systems provided real-time updates to support situational awareness and coordination efforts. The earthquake's effects were geographically contained, with no widespread disruptions reported.
The submarine cable infrastructure in the region demonstrated robust resilience during the event. Key systems such as Apricot, Asia Connect Cable-1 (ACC-1), and SEA-US, all of which have landing points in Davao, Philippines (approximately 167 km from the epicenter), maintained stable operations. Apricot held an average latency of ~102 ms, ACC-1 measured ~205 ms, and SEA-US maintained ~192 ms over the past seven days, reflecting their ability to carry traffic seamlessly through the seismic activity. These cables play a critical role in connecting Southeast Asia to broader global networks, ensuring uninterrupted communication and data flow.
Monitoring of these cable corridors continues in real time, with 2857 latency checks conducted in the last 24 hours across the 720 systems we observe. This active watch ensures ongoing reliability and performance for the region's vital connectivity infrastructure.
October 28, 2026 was a quiet day for GeoCables' submarine cable network monitoring. Across 665 cables, we conducted 2939 latency/route checks with no anomalies detected, and only two active alerts. This peaceful state of the network is reassuring, indicating stable connectivity and operational integrity.
Notable changes in specific cables include warnings for Gemini Bermuda (+112% RTT) and Apollo (+5031% RTT), which may indicate temporary issues or normal network jitter. Other cables showed minor fluctuations: JAKABARE experienced a 13.2ms improvement, while I-2SEA saw a 63.6ms increase. These changes are typical of the dynamic nature of submarine cable networks and do not suggest any significant disruptions.
All cable incidents, each with its own report →
A 6-magnitude earthquake occurred 214 km northwest of Port-Olri, Vanuatu. The submarine cable Tamtam withstood the tremor.
Why did the signal travel around the globe, tripling the delay? We dive into the details.
Magnitude 6.5 earthquake off the Bonin Islands on October 25, 2026. The Ogasawara cable withstood the shock, and service remains stable.
The 6.9 magnitude earthquake off Vanuatu did not affect the operation of the submarine cable Tamtam. The infrastructure demonstrates resilience.
Internet traffic from Georgia to Japan routed through Singapore, causing a fourfold increase in latency.
Earthquake magnitude 4.5 near Honchō, Japan, caused anomalies on submarine cable SJC2. Analyzing impacts on internet traffic.
Discover how traffic routing increases latency by nearly four times.
The 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Vanuatu did not disrupt the operation of the submarine cable Tamtam. The infrastructure remains resilient.
| Point A | - |
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| Point B | - |
| Coordinates A | - |
| Coordinates B | - |
| Cable Multiplier | - |
| Crosses Ocean | - |
| Route Details | - |
| Data Source | - |
Dijkstra-based routing through real submarine cables and landing points from the industry cable inventory. Accurate distance multipliers for land and undersea segments.
Interactive map showing every cable your data touches - backbone nodes, landing stations, and submarine segments with real geographic coordinates.
Launch real network measurements from probes worldwide. Compare theoretical estimates with actual RTT and hop-by-hop packet journeys with ISP geolocation.
Speed-of-light physics combined with cable distance to estimate latency. See the real-world overhead - how much slower actual routing is vs fiber limits.
Enter cities, IP addresses, or domain names - everything is resolved to coordinates with hosting location identification and optimal cable route.
Traceroute hops enriched with city, country, ISP. Phases auto-detected: local → ISP → CDN → backbone → submarine cable. Visual RTT timelines.
City names, IP addresses, or domains. The system resolves coordinates, identifies countries, and determines whether the route crosses oceans.
A graph algorithm finds the optimal route through landing points and submarine cables with accurate distance multipliers for each segment type.
One click launches our own measurement network for real ping and traceroute. See actual RTT, identify every router, and find where your packet enters submarine cables.
Validate routing assumptions, estimate latency budgets, troubleshoot unexpected paths.
Understand your ping. Compare the physical speed limit vs reality for any server.
Choose optimal PoP locations based on submarine cable topology and landing proximity.
Teach how the physical internet works. Visualize the gap between light speed and real routing.
Over 500 submarine cable systems span the world's oceans, with a combined length of approximately 1.4 million kilometers - enough to circle the Earth 35 times.
Submarine cables carry over 99% of intercontinental data traffic. Despite what many people think, satellites handle only a tiny fraction of global internet traffic.
Light travels through fiber optic cable at about two-thirds the speed of light in vacuum. A signal from London to New York takes approximately 28 milliseconds one way.
Modern submarine cables are designed to last 25 years. Cables are buried in the seabed near shores and laid directly on the ocean floor in deep water, protected by layers of steel and polyethylene.
The deepest submarine cables reach the abyssal plains at nearly 8,000 meters. At these depths, cables rest on the ocean floor under enormous pressure, beyond the reach of anchors and fishing gear.
Major transoceanic cable projects like 2Africa or PEACE cost over $1 billion. Investment comes from tech giants like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as telecom consortiums.
GeoCables is a research publication on the physical infrastructure of the global internet. We publish in-depth analyses of how data actually travels between countries - which submarine cables are used, what the measured latency is, and why it differs from the theoretical minimum.
Our research is grounded in real measurements from our own distributed network of measurement servers. We trace specific routes across 723 submarine cable systems and 1,900+ landing points in the global cable inventory, then publish what we find.
Light through fiber travels at ~200,000 km/s - about two-thirds the speed of light in vacuum. That sets the theoretical floor for round-trip time. In practice, real RTT is 1.5-4× higher due to routing detours, optical amplifiers, protocol processing, peering between networks, and suboptimal path selection. Our research articles document this overhead on specific routes - measuring it, explaining it, and tracing it back to the cables and networks responsible.
We run our own measurement network worldwide and watch in real time how traffic moves through submarine cables: where latency climbs, where links drop, what is happening right now. Open the live map to see network health and where it is noisy.