Bravo. On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 5:06 PM Ulrich Speidel wrote: > FWIW, a few weeks ago I had a fit of creative rage after someone asked > whether it would even make sense for Tonga to rebuild the cables. It's > resulted in an APNIC blog, which has just been published, and which argues > that we've been approaching cable projects in the Pacific from the wrong > end as dead-end streets to islands, rather than aiming for a resilient > cable mesh that results in redundancy for everyone, including the bigger > economies around the place: > > > https://blog.apnic.net/2022/04/20/rethinking-submarine-fibre-cable-projects-south-pacific/ > On 20/04/2022 12:43 am, Ulrich Speidel wrote: > > I can probably comment on this. > > The international cable went back into service on the 22nd of February, > one day before the official commencement of service to Tonga by Starlink. > Now I should probably add here that you can't order Starlink in Tonga - > they sent 50-odd terminals care of the Tongan government, and that's it. > Since these were no longer needed in Tongatapu, they were meant to go to > various of the other islands. The "Reliance" wasn't able to recover much of > the domestic cable and for lack of spares wasn't able to fix this one. It > subsequently left the cable grounds, unable to dock in Tonga due to Covid > restrictions. New cable is on order in France but probably about another 8 > months away, minimum. > > The biggest other islands, Vava'u and Ha'apai (more precisely, Lifuka - > pronounced Li-Foo-Kah) already had other satellite links in service, and > quite a bit of the GEO capacity directed at Tongatapu was shifted to them > post Tongatapu's reconnection. So I'd expect most of the terminals to end > up on some of the smaller islands - quite who gets to use them there I'm > not privy to. > > I understand that the government technician trying one of the Dishys in > Tongatapu got 300 Mb/s down out of it, probably not surprising given that > there wouldn't have been any competing traffic. Alas, I understand that > service is a bit discontinuous, which is to be expected. I've tried to ask > them as to how frequent and long the gaps are, but haven't had a response. > > Tonga is still in Covid border closure mode, which means that few people > are able to travel back and forth. One person that has been able to travel > there is Shane Cronin, our volcanologist whom I was talking to, and he has > been out of quarantine and is doing some interesting work up there - he > even made the front page of the BBC World Service the other week: > https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61071293 > > First reports we've had from him suggest that there was still quite a bit > of action after the international cable was knocked out. He's quite > familiar with Hunga and was able to pinpoint which earlier eruptions > various of the bits that were left had come from. He's been trying to get a > record of vessels in the area at the time to get ash reports from > BigOceanData and they promised to help. Alas, this coincided with a sudden > surge in demand for superyacht tracking, which presumably has kept them > busy, so we've not seen this data set yet. What we do know is that tsunami > run-up on Tongatapu's West Coast was about 15 metres - far bigger than the > waves whose videos still made it across the cable. Shane has also been able > to look at some of the tsunami deposits and this is likely to yield some > further insights. > > Meanwhile, Emily Lane from NIWA has done some modelling around the > pyroclastic density currents (turbidity currents of volcanic origin) that > could have come off Hunga. The amount of material displacement involved in > these simulations is in the several cubic kilometres! These show those > flows actually reaching both cable grounds, the domestic one first. The > domestic cable was essentially at the bottom of a trench straight downhill > from Hunga and never stood a chance - not only do the simulations show the > flow going across the trench eastbound, but then reflecting off the > opposite side back into the trench before flowing out of the trench like > water in a gutter. No wonder they couldn't find anything! The international > cable grounds would have been reached later, first on the western side > where they found the murky water weeks later, and then also on the eastern > side, where the cable was pushed north. That said, according to the > simulations, the first flow reaching the eastern side would have gotten > there well before the outage, and doesn't quite explain the 5 km > displacement. That said, the simulation was only run until international > cable outage time, and there's some question as to the validity of these > results generally as nobody knows whether the bathymetry in the area was > still anywhere near what it used to be. NIWA and others are sending ships > up to get clarity as to how the seafloor topography has changed in the > area. Hunga used to have a huge caldera, and at this point, nobody knows > whether it's still there, has subsided, or got blasted away. Lots of > interesting science happening there at the moment. > > On 20/04/2022 12:06 am, Dave Taht wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 4:57 AM Mike Puchol > wrote: > > > > Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I had totally missed this > post: > > > > > http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html > > > > It seems the gateway was setup in Fintel’s existing earth station, four > antennas only, however, and the cables in surface ducts. > > No apologies needed, in fact, does anyone know how well tonga is > recovering? > > > Best, > > > > Mike > > On Feb 25, 2022, 20:12 +0300, Ulrich Speidel > , wrote: > > > > I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but > that doesn't mean that nothing has happened. > > > > Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far > greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults > (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 km. > The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano > (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts for at least > parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship traced one > disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its nominal route, > found various sections had disappeared completely, and recovered sections > of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed. > > > > A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD > for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It > also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely > separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held > together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if > visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD > requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device > transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position traces. > The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern operations area > near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there was good (so ROV > could be used), but damage substantial. > > > > The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where > reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because of > bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed that > there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in and cut > the damaged bit out. > > > > They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: > Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) to > load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not only > for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems in the > wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in total. The > amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the damaged > international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of cable > lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being brought > up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the Reliance is > re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged section, and the > whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also > included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and > which was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my > contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery attempt > today (they've left the area after three drives and are heading West right > now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater > recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being > found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair to > be completed in the next few days. > > > > The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has > a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical reflectometer > from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a measurement from Vava'u > yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this revealed, the cable from > Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which heads to each destination from > a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That said, once the international cable > has been fixed, the Reliance won't have enough cable left to complete the > domestic job, even if some cable bits could be recovered there. The next > available stock of suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way > shipping away. They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm > sure would welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the > international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them > Omicron along with their aid deliveries). > > > > I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community > here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the > international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What we > know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor the > subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only well after > the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a combination of > submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety of sources that hit > hours and possibly many days after the eruption. Finding that a cable piece > has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at an event south of the cable > route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance > points at there having multiple events from multiple sources. There have > been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that > could have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them. > Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a > tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see > B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the > 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp > 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more > than 18 hours). > > > > Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, > but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and out > OK. > > > > On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote: > > > > Hi Daniel, > > > > I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people > were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have > been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be > pinged. > > > > Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error > of even a few km doesn’t really matter. > > > > Best, > > > > Mike > > On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov > , wrote: > > > > On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote: > > > > As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport > > facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been > > taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 > > > > > > Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx. > > > > Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground > > station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation? > > > > Thank you > > Daniel > > _______________________________________________ > > Starlink mailing list > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Starlink mailing list > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink > > > > -- > > **************************************************************** > > Dr. Ulrich Speidel > > > > School of Computer Science > > > > Room 303S.594 (City Campus) > > > > The University of Auckland > > u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz > > http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ > > **************************************************************** > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Starlink mailing list > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Starlink mailing list > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink > > > > -- > I tried to build a better future, a few times: > https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org > > Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC > > -- > **************************************************************** > Dr. Ulrich Speidel > > School of Computer Science > > Room 303S.594 (City Campus) > > The University of Aucklandu.speidel@auckland.ac.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ > **************************************************************** > > > > > -- > **************************************************************** > Dr. Ulrich Speidel > > School of Computer Science > > Room 303S.594 (City Campus) > > The University of Aucklandu.speidel@auckland.ac.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ > **************************************************************** > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Starlink mailing list > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink > -- [image: Company logo] *Jeremy Austin* Sr. Product Manager *Preseem | Aterlo Networks* Book a call: https://app.hubspot.com/meetings/jeremy548 1-833-773-7336 ext 718 <18337737336718> *|* 1-907-803-5422 <19078035422> jeremy@aterlo.com www.preseem.com [image: facebook icon] [image: twitter icon] [image: linkedin icon] [image: youtube icon] [image: Service of the Year Award]