New Japan to Singapore high speed cable gives 40Gb/s speeds

The internet is always advancing in speed thanks to better network adapters, routers, server level hardware and network infrastructure. Japan and Singapore are the latest to benefit from an improvement in network infrastructure as a 7,800km cable covering Japan, the Phillipines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore is finally ready.

The Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) connects a the Asian countries listed above together through an underwater data cable.

The cable was laid out in as straight a line as possible to reduce data transfer times down to just 65 milliseconds (i.e. 65ms ping) from one end to the other, or speeds of 40Gb/s, hundreds of times faster than the broadband connections most people in the region are used to.

The superfast connection is just 3 milliseconds faster than other lines connecting Tokyo to Singapore, but that fraction of time is vital to high frequency trading, where thousands of financial transactions are made in under one second, and where such a tiny amount of time can be the deciding factor in a successful trade.

The ASE will help make up for several undersea cables in Japanese waters that were damaged in the 2011 earthquake. This event and an earlier one in 2006 led to the new cable being laid in different places that are less prone to seismic shifts.

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