[Nuitari]

This is a quick platform point that doesn't take much to explain.

Recently the USA passed into law a mechanism for the President to shut off all the Internet in the USA.

Digital Sovereignty basically means that we would build up more Internet links to Europe & Asia instead of depending on the links via the USA.

[Concerned Citizen]

A very good plan and protects our own interests too. Ironically it is a problem that a vast majority of our traffic passing through to Europe goes through some NSA room in New York or Florida somewhere...This cannot be good to allow our citizens to be spied on by foreign agencies so easily.

[Mikkel Paulson]

(Click for big version.)

I don't think anything else really needs to be said. Canada isn't even on the map, literally.

[Jay Frank]

I really DO love this idea....tough challenge.

For Canadian Sovereignty we would certainly need a fallback to ICANN.

Alternative DNS root
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

Here is the public fiber map pdf from Shaw Business Solutions

http://www.shawbusinesssolutions.ca/sbs/pdf/shawbusinesssolutionsmap.pdf

Exit point to Europe is New York.
Exit point to Asia is Seattle.

So - your options are:

Montreal -> London
Victoria -> Kyoto

Launching a sat into orbit might be cheaper.

J

[Mikkel Paulson]

Satellites can handle considerably less bandwidth than fibre, as I'm sure you know. An extremely small percentage of internet connectivity is provided by satellite. Yes, launching a satellite or two would certainly be cheaper, but it wouldn't do a lot for us.

Upgrading infrastructure Vancouver to Victoria and running cables to Asia would be easy, but we don't have any major cities located directly on the Atlantic, which means a whole lot more overland infrastructure upgrades.

You're the one who knows all about network backbones; is it economically feasible? Will you let the government get involved there? How much money would we have to fork over to make it a reality?

[Nuitari]

Montreal-London could all be run underwater and also connect other Canadian coastal cities that are near the path.
If not then a good fiber overland between Montreal and Halifax and then an undersea cable from Halifax to London.

[Mikkel Paulson]

Remember the accident involving a cut cable in Alexandria? We don't want to run undersea cables down the St. Lawrence. That's just asking for trouble. It may be a pretty big river by the time it leaves Montreal, but it's still a river.

[Concerned Citizen]

Yeah you dont want to put fiber in place where there is heavy ship traffic like freighters. Because their anchors are so heavy they can chop those cables.

[Jay Frank]

I'm not expert on point to point signaling over fiber.
Granted - there are plenty of pipes that hit Seattle which is easy access and well peer-shaped with Vancouver.
Granted - at a best guess - up the St Lawrence and out to Iceland and down to Europe would be better than Victoria to Kyoto.
Main reason being ease of access.
There are massive hydro conduits running this channel and it would be a piece of cake to port along side them.
I could be wrong for sure - this is not my area of expertise - at all.
I talk to fiber planners from time to time in passing mostly because I'm interested and they humor me.

2-way sat tech is far more of a reality if we have a billion to launch something ourselves.
It's overdeveloped for military application and under-released for civilian use.

J

[Mikkel Paulson]

Again, you'd need a bloody constellation of satellites to even approach the capacity of one cable.

[Jay Frank]

Again, you'd need a bloody constellation of satellites to even approach the capacity of one cable.

That's not true at all.
What you'd need is a orbital ring of line-of-sight satellites built for 2-way that act in the exact same manner as a sonnet ring.
This is easily accomplished but requires a huge amount of overbuilt ports and extensive fiber fed land based uplinks.
I suspect it's cheaper than trying to run a fresh fiber across the ocean and has a huge advantage of shifting termination points overseas.
If you really wanted Sov....you can't just terminate in England.
You need to be able to reposition at will.
It would be far more redundant.

Just sayin.

J

[Ayes]

I am absolutely for Canadian digital sovereignty.

I've never considered the physical lines that connect the internet might not have central hubs in Canada.

It's clear to me now that this is a big issue, and we must give ourselves the means to access the internet effectively even if the United States cannot.

Thank you for that informative graph, Mikkel.

Shawn

[Mike Bleskie]

Upgrading infrastructure Vancouver to Victoria and running cables to Asia would be easy, but we don't have any major cities located directly on the Atlantic, which means a whole lot more overland infrastructure upgrades.

Halifax?

[Mikkel Paulson]

I doubt that Halifax has access to the kind of bandwidth that Montreal and Vancouver do. Remember that these connections would need to be able to handle most of the Internet traffic nationwide. But yes, an overland upgrade to Halifax and then an undersea cable from there would make the most sense.

[Concerned Citizen]

I think that we should also look into satellite as an option as well. Jay makes a good point in that it's easier to redirect such in the event of regime changes or other inconveniences that fiber does not have the advantage of. Also we could examine technology that uses more focused transmissions rather than slathering it across the entire countryside.