The Art of Connection

Especially in this day and age, where technology is all but integral to our daily lives, it’s shocking to consider the fact that most people who rely on the internet aren’t actually aware of how it works. There’s the conceptual idea of “The Cloud”, but is that really where our global digital connectivity comes from? In reality, this connection is far more physical than most realize. Millions of miles of fiber optic cables are laid all over the world, allowing data to travel at the speed of light between the data centers and consumers. These stretches of cables are referred to as “the middle mile” and are essential to creating the connection we rely on today. However, not every person has access to this connection, and as a result, the digital divide remains present in our current world.

One area in which this lack of connectivity becomes especially apparent is in education. Knowledge is something that must be shared, and without broadband access, that becomes increasingly difficult at such a large scale. This is the problem that Sun Corridor Network (SCN) wishes to address.

Executive Director Derek Masseth describes SCN as, “a network operator that provides connectivity to schools and research enterprises that’s built in such a way as to meet the unique demands of…high demand consumers.” As a specialized internet service provider, SCN provides a service to schools and universities to act as an overlay to facilitate advanced networking for education and research.

In Maricopa county, the data centers are usually large, concrete, nondescript buildings all around the county that house a majority of the data used by consumers daily. Buildings like these have electronics set up to connect to broader networks to deliver data swiftly and efficiently. 

However, in places that aren’t served by these large networks, such as communities located in rural areas, their connection is much slower, if it exists at all.

The providers that do serve areas like Aguila or Gila Bend are local internet service providers (ISPs) that use infrastructure that is more widely available in these communities that utilize wireless connection in the form of dishes and satellites. As they’re only able to provide a gigabit of data or so at a time, speeds are incredibly slow. To combat this, SCN is proposing new middle mile corridors that can help network providers connect these neighborhoods to data centers with fiber optic cables and a multi-gigabit capacity.

With SCN’s focus on connecting educational institutions, they have a strong partnership with Internet2, which is a not-for-profit network that provides high-speed connection to universities and research facilities around the United States. Through this partnership, they are able to securely connect schools, libraries, and research institutions around Arizona to this network–the data doesn’t transit the public internet when interacting with other places connected to it, allowing users to safely navigate the web without fear of their data being stolen or tampered with.

The only way to achieve this safe, fast connection is through fiber optic cables. There are other options–copper cables, or even satellite connections, but there’s a reason why fiber is used more than any other medium.

“It’s just faster. It can send 1.6 terabits of data per second. And so that's a lot right? That's 1,600 gigabits per second on a single fiber strand, which is the size of a human hair. And I can do it at the speed of light. Right? Because it's light.”

The speeds just aren’t comparable to copper, which only travels at the highest speed a negative ion can travel across a copper wire, which is nowhere near the speed of light. As for satellite, which uses radio frequency or RF, again reaches nowhere near the same speed as fiber is capable of.

However, the speed is just one benefit. There’s also the matter of the amount of data streams that can be sent along the physical cables. On copper and RF, only one stream can be sent at a time, but on fiber optic, the data is literally light.

People often think about fiber as white light, but if you really understand how light works, you understand there's a spectrum of possible wavelengths, and so on a single piece of fiber, we can send multiple different data streams. Because we'll send them on different colors, and they all show up. If you can separate them by colors with a prism, then you can pull them back apart and they can be separate signals on the same physical piece of equipment.

Another emerging technology is laser, which works much in the same way as fiber, as it is also a light-based way of sending data, just without the physical cable. While this seems like it has the potential to surpass fiber optics in efficiency and cost, that isn’t necessarily true. The infrastructure would be in the form of a satellite, and as it is wireless, it would be much more at risk to attack or be hacked.

There is also the issue of distance; while light travels unimaginably quickly, at large distances, there is still a noticeable delay. If a network connected Phoenix to LA for example, at a distance of a few hundred miles, the connection would be almost instant through fiber optic cables. If the connection were to go through a remote satellite, hundreds of miles above at its closest, and potentially thousands of miles if not, there would be a noticeable amount of latency.

With this in mind, Masseth advises, “Satellite is a good supplement, not a good substitute.” The technology is not effective enough to switch from completely, so the physical cables are still the best option, even if its largest disadvantage is not being able to connect to everyone. That is why the work SCN is doing is so vital to reach as many people as possible and promote education across all of Arizona.

The AZ-1 Arizona Broadband Map offers a deeper dive into current FCC broadband data and additional data layers, such as Ookla® speed tests, American Community Survey data, demographics, and more.