How is India connected to the internet?
As on 2016, India’s combined internet speed was 36,000 Gbps!
Where does your Internet service provider get internet from? How does Internet reach India? Let us dive into the world of networking .
More than 99% of internet traffic relies on high-quality fiber optic cables connecting various countries. Only a minuscule part of the traffic goes through satellites. [1]
These cable networks are laid and maintained by various governments and giant companies. Such projects are usually undertaken by multiple companies due to the large cost of investment. There are three tiers which differentiates the size of the network held by a company.
Tier-1 :- These are the companies which have a global network connecting so many cables around the world. They will be able to provide access to any destination on the internet without paying fee to others. They usually access the network of other tier-1 companies without paying any fee. This network acts as the backbone of the internet.
Tier-2 :- These are companies which have a regional networks and are usually connected to one or more tier-1 networks. They have to pay a fee to access the tier-1 company’s network.
Tier-3 :- These are the Internet Service Providers(ISPs) from whom we buy our broadband connections. They are the last tier, connecting the internet to the end users.
India is connected to the world at Mumbai, Cochin, Chennai, and Tuticorin. All of our international internet traffic goes through these port cities. The place where the international cables connect to the land is called landing stations.
Tata Communications owns 3 landing stations in Mumbai, Chennai and Cochin. They are the only Tier-1 company from India.
Bharti Airtel owns 2 landings stations in Chennai and Mumbai.
Reliance Globalcom owns 1 landing station in Mumbai.
Sify Technologies owns 1 landing station in Mumbai
BSNL owns 1 landing station in Tuticorine connecting to Sri Lanka. [2]
On the eastern side, we are connected to Singapore from Chennai. On the western side we are connected to UAE thorough cables from Mumbai. And, on the southern side we are connected to the cables coming from south Africa.
Handing over of traffic from one network to another is called peering. There is a non profit government organization in India called National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) which allows Indian ISPs to use each others network in an efficient manner rather than using foreign servers. This also increases the quality of service for the consumers and decreases the chances of data being snooped by foreign agencies such as NSA. NIXI created in Registry in 2005 to start .in domain. (The website names with .in extension.) [3]
Networks within India
There are several networks within India, one of them is RailTel- a government project started in 2000 to lay fiber optic cables along the routes of the railway tracks. These cables are capable of bandwidth upto 400Gbps and have redundancy systems that re-routes the traffic in case of any malfunction at any point. They have a network of over 30,000KM. [4]
National Optical Fiber Network
This is a project started in 2011 to connect over 250,000 Grama Panchayaths via high speed fiber optic cable at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore. The plan was to use the existing optical fiber networks of RailTel, BSNL, and PowerGrid to extend the network to more locations. [5] The aim is to bring a minimum of 100Mbps connectivity to each Grama Panchayath. As of 2015, only 40% of the planned network has been completed, the biggest hurdle is stated as ‘right of way problem’ which in simple words means people are not allowing to lay cable over their land. [6]
Internet Usage
India used 967 petabytes per month in 2014 and is increasing at a rate of 33% per year. It is expected that it will grow to 4 Exabytes by 2019. [7] According to a newspaper report from 2013, India has a total international bandwidth of 33,900 Gb per second although only around 6,009Gbps are ready to use while only 1,110Gbps are consumed. Certainly this figures must have increased by now. [8]
New projects
A new cable landing station in Digha, West Bengal connecting south east Asia was approved for Rs 1600 crore in 2011. Since then, I haven’t heard anything about this project.
A new connection is being established from Bangladesh to Agartala. This will give better connectivity to North eastern states. This project was signed during PM Modi’s recent visit to Bangladesh. [9]
Internet Disconnected.
Now, for the evil minds out there, it is possible to disconnect a country from internet by cutting these cables. In 2012, the only cable connecting Bangladesh to the international network was cut off and they lost their internet for nearly a month. Similar incidents have cut off internet to Myanmar multiple times. [10]
In July 2005, a portion of the SEA-ME-WE 3 submarine cable located 35 kilometers (22 mi) south of Karachi that provided Pakistan‘s major outer communications became defective, disrupting almost all of Pakistan’s communications with the rest of the world, and affecting approximately 10 million Internet users.
In March 2007, pirates stole an 11-kilometre (7 mi) section of the T-V-H submarine cable that connected Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, afflicting Vietnam’s Internet users with far slower speeds. The thieves attempted to sell the 100 tons of cable as scrap.
Source: Submarine communications cable
Image: Internet visualized.
Check it yourself
If you are on a PC running Windows:-
- Open your command prompt. (Search CMD in windows search )
- Type tracert google.com
If you are on a MAC or Linux system:-
- Open Terminal
- Type traceroute google.com
You will now see the IP addresses of all the devices through which you are connected to Google’s server along with the response time it took at each stage. This helps in knowing the path/cables through which your information is being passed. You can try some other websites too.
That was a small peep into the world of underwater/underground cables – although they are essential for the internet to work, theses are some things which many people are unaware of.
Footnote Reference
[1] Submarine communications cable
[3] National Internet Exchange of India
[4] RailTel Corporation of India
[5] National Optical Fibre Network
[6] Easier said than done: Centre, states disagree over laying fibre network
[7] India’s internet traffic to grow 33% annually: Cisco – Times of India
[8] Cable landing fee cut to make international bandwidth cheaper
[9] North-east to get high speed internet from Bangladesh by year-end
[10] SEA-ME-WE 3 Cable Cut Disrupted Myanmar Internet
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Posted on: September 17, 2020, by : Bhavin Thakkar