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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
AMD 890GX embargo ends
 As mentioned yesterday, the details for AMD’s latest chipset have been
under embargo. That embargo ended this morning at 7am. Details of the
enthusiast 890FX chipset are still not available but here are the
details of the mainstream 890GX chipset.
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Just Cause 2 features NVidia/CUDA tech, demo tomorrow
 Square
Enix and Eidos announced yesterday that the PC version of Just Cause 2
will feature advanced NVidia GPU support, with “…next-generation
lighting and water routines and full support for 3D Vision…”,
apparently making the already advanced title look even better.
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Crysis 2 in 3D?
 Crytek, developers of the CryENGINE (Far Cry, Crysis and Crysis:
Warhead), has announced that its upcoming CryENGINE3 game engine will
feature full 3D support.
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Online game launched, aims for real-world results
 Urgent Evoke, an online game that launches today, is targeting
real-world results with their gameplay. Coming across as being closer
to a reality game show than a game, Urgent Evoke is a series of
challenges revolving around social entrepreneurship and is being backed
by the World Bank Institute
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[Rumor] Phenom II X6 release on April 26
OCWorkbench has reported that the new AMD Phenom II X6 will be revealed
at CeBit this week and released to the market on April 26. The expected
reveal will coincide with the release of information to the public
regarding AMD’s 890-series chipset (expect this information to be
posted once the NDA has passed.)
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Activision may have fired Infinity Ward heads
 Activision may have canned Infinity Ward president Jason West and
studio head Vince Zampella. This is nothing but rumour at this point
but it is being reported that security arrived at Infinity Ward’s
offices following a meeting between Activision and the two studio heads
and that staff at IW have not seen either West or Zampella since
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Non-slim PS3 units malfunctioning [Update]
 Reports are coming in of an error in old PS3 units which is wrecking
several sorts of functionality. Some players are unable to connect to
the Playstation Network, the Trophy system has been compromised and
other titles are unable to load at all.
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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://mippin.com/pcformat
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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