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Latest News
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The EASSy is landing!
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| These guys have over 1Tbs of bandwidth - you will never be this cool |
PCFormat has received confirmation from Telkom SA, a majority shareholder in the EASSy project, that the cable landing procedure started at 8am yesterday (15/2/2010). The cable was due to land at Mtunzini on Saturday (13/2/2010) but due to unforeseen logistical problems the procedure had to be postponed.
The East African Submarine Cable System, once completed, will consist of 10 000KM of undersea cable. The cable system comprises of two types of cable, a thick armoured cable designed to be buried under the sea floor and a lighter cable designed to be lay on top of the sea floor. The specialist ships designed to lay the cables, of which there are three, are owned by Alcatel Lucent. Two ships will be employed to lay the entire cable system. The Ile de Batz which is travelling from Mtunzini will lay cable up to Tanzania then depart for home. The second ship, which has already commenced cable laying procedures, departed from Sudan and is working its way down to the halfway point. Upon reaching that point its crew will splice the two cables together and then return to port.
The cable laying ships can hold up to 5500 tons or approximately 5 000KM of cable. These cables are kept in circular
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| Telkom's pride and joy - uber load balancers |
holds until needed. The cable contains the fibre pairs and the copper conductors used to transport the energy required to power the repeaters. The cable is tested periodically with a 10 000V electrical feed to detect any breaks. The ship uses multiple thrusters to keep it in position during cable laying procedures and has a tolerance of up to 1m. The computers that control the positioning of the ship are linked to multiple GPS systems to ensure accuracy. Cable laying speeds vary depending on the cable being laid and the sea conditions. In ideal conditions the cable ship can lay approximately 20KM of armoured cable or 180KM of lightweight cable a day. To bury the cable Alcatel Lucent’s vessel uses a plough to dig up the sea floor and lay the cable. The burying of the armoured cable will be done down to depths of 1800m after which the lightweight cable will be laid on the sea floor.
The laying of the shore cable will take most of today and requires that the sea earth be buried close to the shore line. The sea earth is a 1-ton circular stainless steel plate that is used to provide an earth for the DC electrical supply used in the cable system. Once operational the cable will have 15 000V and 850mA running through it to power the repeaters. The cable station at Mtunzini is already a landing point for the SAFE cable system. The station is divided into a wet room and dry room which denotes which section of cable each is connected to. The wet room is connected to both submarine cables while the dry room is connected to the terrestrial cable system. The rooms are connected by an underground cable.
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| The interior of the cable ship |
For both cables there are backup systems which, in accordance to international standards, take no more than an hour to come into effect once the main system goes down although Telkom does state that when multiple operators are affected then the switch over can take longer. Telkom has implemented “in-system” redundancy which is automatic. This “in-system” redundancy deals with internal system failures such as fibre optic cards or an entire fibre pair. These systems will automatically change to a new card or utilize the other fibre pair.
There are two sets of servers, one for the SAFE system and one for the EASSy
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| The chilling towers - not as cool as those in Die Hard 4 |
system. Each set of servers is not only capable of handling the management of both cable systems but are also capable of handling the management of the SAT-3 cable system should the servers at the Melkbosstrand station go down. There are backups for all the stations systems. This includes two backup battery systems, two generators (a third is currently connected due to FIFA requirements) and two aircon systems which each have three chilling units (two operational and one for backup). Should a fire break out the fire suppression system will pump Argonite into the station starving the fire of oxygen. The computer systems that control the station are completely off the grid preventing any unauthorised intrusion. The cable station is equipped with a radar and radio system to monitor ship traffic near the cable and to ensure that ships adhere to the exclusion zone.
Discuss this here
Michael Reed
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More News
Overclockers caught in cheating scandal, banned for life
 Four of the world’s top overclockers have been banned for life by
XtremeSystems.org and for one year by HWBOT for cheating in the recent
MSI Lords of Overclocking online competition. All were disqualified
from said competition
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Righthaven engaged in copyright trolling?
 Steve Gibson, the CEO of Righthaven, is taking on websites that are
illegally reposting content online by emulating patent trolls.
Righthaven is a new company that is buying up copyrights for newspaper
content posted online and then suing any blogs or sites that reproduce
that information illegally, which is apparently proving profitable for
the fledgling group
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Blizzard has embargoed all Wings of Liberty reviews
 Blizzard has introduced a global embargo on all StarCraft 2: Wings of
Liberty reviews, a move that is being reported by several sources
online, until after the game launches. According to Blizzard this is
mainly due to Battle.Net which the company would like reviewers to
experience in its entirety before publishing reviews
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UltraViolet the new DRM?
 There appears to be a new DRM (Digital Right Management) scheme on the
horizon, going by the name UltraViolet. Apparently backed by many of
the major players in the film and television industry, the official
site says that it is “designed to let consumers enjoy movies and TV shows without being locked into one specific format”
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Developer for female gamers launches
 Yesterday the formation of Silicon Sisters Interactive (SSI) was
announced. A Canada-based gaming company and the brainchild of Brenda
Bailey Gershkovitch and Kirsten Forbes, both of whom have been active
in the gaming industry for some time, Silicon Sisters aims to cater
specifically to female gamers
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Pinnacle makes offer to purchase Axiz
 Pinnacle Technology Holdings Limited (PTH) has made an offer to
purchase 100% of shares in Axis Technology (Pty) Ltd. Pinnacle’s aim is
to merge its solution focused distributor with Axiz which according to
Worgroup MD Doug Woolley will allow Worgroup to expand into new markets
as well as provide Axiz with Workgroups solution expertise
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Asus Crosshair IV Formula review
 The Asus Crosshair IV Formula is the first motherboard to arrive at the
PCF Ranch based on AMD’s new 890FX chipset. The 890FX is the flagship
of AMD’s 8-series chipsets and like its brethren lacks support for the
AM2+ socket/processors as well as DDR2 memory. AMD has given the 890FX
chipset a total of 38 PCI-E lanes which are split between four PCI-E
x16 slots which will have 8 lanes each, a single PCI-E x4 slot and two
PCI-E x1 slots.
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Click here for our news archive : news archive |
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Mobizine
After the initial success of the PCFormat Mobizine we have just relaunched our
mobile platform. To top it off we have made things a whole lot easier.
Instead of signing up for the service all you need to do is point your
phones browser to http://m.pcformat.co.za
As long
as your phone has some form of connectivity you will be able to enjoy all that
PCFormat Mobile has to offer
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