Smart Cable Routing
Dijkstra-based routing through real submarine cables and landing points from TeleGeography data. Accurate distance multipliers for land and undersea segments.
Live monitoring of 695 submarine cables. Original research based on real network measurements worldwide.
A RIPE Atlas probe in Harstad, Arctic Norway traced a route to Sydney: 403ms through Oslo, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Marseille, Singapore, and Perth. GeoCables analyzes how a packet crosses from 69N to 34S latitude using Arelion backbone and SEA-ME-WE cables.
Our Jerusalem probe traced a route to Tanzania that passes through Djibouti — a country of 800,000 people with 10 submarine cables and 8 foreign military bases. GeoCables analyzes how this tiny Horn of Africa nation became the internet gateway to East Africa.
Our Jerusalem probe traced a route to Peru: 584ms through Italy, France, Virginia Beach, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Hurricane Electric carried the packet across two oceans via its global backbone. GeoCables analyzes why Israel-to-Peru traffic detours through Brazil.
GeoCables monitored over 695 submarine cables this week and found packets taking absurd detours: 1,021ms to Taiwan through 10 countries, 724ms to Mauritius via South Africa, 548ms Singapore to Colombia via Paris. Here are the most extreme routes of March 24-29, 2026.
| Point A | — |
|---|---|
| Point B | — |
| Coordinates A | — |
| Coordinates B | — |
| Cable Multiplier | — |
| Crosses Ocean | — |
| Route Details | — |
| Data Source | — |
Dijkstra-based routing through real submarine cables and landing points from TeleGeography data. Accurate distance multipliers for land and undersea segments.
Interactive map showing every cable your data touches — backbone nodes, landing stations, and submarine segments with real geographic coordinates.
Launch real network measurements from probes worldwide. Compare theoretical estimates with actual RTT and hop-by-hop packet journeys with ISP geolocation.
Speed-of-light physics combined with cable distance to estimate latency. See the real-world overhead — how much slower actual routing is vs fiber limits.
Enter cities, IP addresses, or domain names — everything is resolved to coordinates with hosting location identification and optimal cable route.
Traceroute hops enriched with city, country, ISP. Phases auto-detected: local → ISP → CDN → backbone → submarine cable. Visual RTT timelines.
City names, IP addresses, or domains. The system resolves coordinates, identifies countries, and determines whether the route crosses oceans.
A graph algorithm finds the optimal route through landing points and submarine cables with accurate distance multipliers for each segment type.
One click launches RIPE Atlas probes for real ping and traceroute. See actual RTT, identify every router, and find where your packet enters submarine cables.
Validate routing assumptions, estimate latency budgets, troubleshoot unexpected paths.
Understand your ping. Compare the physical speed limit vs reality for any server.
Choose optimal PoP locations based on submarine cable topology and landing proximity.
Teach how the physical internet works. Visualize the gap between light speed and real routing.
Over 500 submarine cable systems span the world's oceans, with a combined length of approximately 1.4 million kilometers — enough to circle the Earth 35 times.
Submarine cables carry over 99% of intercontinental data traffic. Despite what many people think, satellites handle only a tiny fraction of global internet traffic.
Light travels through fiber optic cable at about two-thirds the speed of light in vacuum. A signal from London to New York takes approximately 28 milliseconds one way.
Modern submarine cables are designed to last 25 years. Cables are buried in the seabed near shores and laid directly on the ocean floor in deep water, protected by layers of steel and polyethylene.
The deepest submarine cables reach the abyssal plains at nearly 8,000 meters. At these depths, cables rest on the ocean floor under enormous pressure, beyond the reach of anchors and fishing gear.
Major transoceanic cable projects like 2Africa or PEACE cost over $1 billion. Investment comes from tech giants like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as telecom consortiums.
Over 95% of intercontinental data travels through submarine fiber optic cables — physical wires laid on the ocean floor connecting continents. GeoCables calculates the actual distance your data travels through this cable infrastructure, not just the straight-line distance between two points.
The tool uses real submarine cable data from TeleGeography (500+ cables, 1900+ landing points) combined with a Dijkstra-based routing algorithm to find the optimal path through landing stations and backbone nodes. For trans-oceanic routes, it identifies which submarine cables your data most likely traverses.
Light travels through fiber optic cable at approximately 200,000 km/s — about two-thirds the speed of light in vacuum. GeoCables estimates minimum latency using this physical constant. Real-world RTT is typically 1.5–4x higher due to routing overhead, optical amplifier delays, protocol processing, peering between networks, and suboptimal path selection. The RIPE Atlas measurement feature lets you see this overhead directly.
A RIPE Atlas probe in Harstad, Arctic Norway traced a route to Sydney: 403ms through Oslo, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Marseille, Singapore, and Perth. GeoCables analyzes how a packet crosses from 69N to 34S latitude using Arelion backbone and SEA-ME-WE cables.
Our Jerusalem probe traced a route to Tanzania that passes through Djibouti — a country of 800,000 people with 10 submarine cables and 8 foreign military bases. GeoCables analyzes how this tiny Horn of Africa nation became the internet gateway to East Africa.
Our Jerusalem probe traced a route to Peru: 584ms through Italy, France, Virginia Beach, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Hurricane Electric carried the packet across two oceans via its global backbone. GeoCables analyzes why Israel-to-Peru traffic detours through Brazil.