Tracking submarine cables in the wild

During the last ten years, thousands of kilometers of submarine cables have been rolled out to connect regions around the globe and improve intercontinental connectivity. However, while it is relatively easy to get information about the frequent roll-outs of these cables, it is challenging to translate these developments into network information to facilitate networking research. For example, announcements for new submarine cables typically mention landing points and not router IP addresses. With this network information, it is easier to assess the impact of a new submarine cable on end-to-end delays in the connecting regions. In this paper, we investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions to translate public announcements for submarine cables to network information that enables networking research on this topic. We also develop and evaluate a methodology to automatically extract IP-level information for deployed submarine cables and assess their impact on end-to-end performance.