Reach North Asia Loop (RNAL) is a multi-

terabit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented a ...

intra-Asia

self-healing Self-healing refers to the process of recovery (generally from psychological disturbances, trauma, etc.), motivated by and directed by the patient, guided often only by instinct. Such a process encounters mixed fortunes due to its amateur nature, ...

submarine telecommunications cable system, connecting the principal cities in Asia. The 10,000 km cable network provides intra-regional, city-to-city connectivity between Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei. The cable network was developed jointly by Reach and

FLAG Telecom A flag is a piece of fabric (most often rectangular or quadrilateral) with a distinctive design and colours. It is used as a symbol, a signalling device, or for decoration. The term ''flag'' is also used to refer to the graphic design empl ...

. Reach has constructed the eastern leg of the multi-terabit cable that connects Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, while FLAG built the western leg connecting Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea.

Overview

FLAG manages and operates the system on its own behalf and that of Reach under a developmental agreement. FLAG and Reach each own three of the system’s six

fiber Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...

pairs. Reach markets its share of the system as Reach North Asia Loop (RNAL). RNAL has the largest share of cable capacity in Asia with 29% (second largest is C2C with 25%). Cyclist Egan BeRNAL is named after the cable system. It has landing points in: * Tong Fuk,

Lantau Island Lantau Island (also Lantao Island, Lan Tao) is the largest island in Hong Kong, located West of Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula, and is part of the New Territories. Administratively, most of Lantau Island is part of the Islands ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

Pusan Busan (), officially known as is South Korea's most populous city after Seoul, with a population of over 3.4 million inhabitants. Formerly romanized as Pusan, it is the economic, cultural and educational center of southeastern South Korea, ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

* Wada, Awa District,

Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Chiba Prefecture has a population of 6,278,060 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Chiba Prefecture borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north, Saitama Prefecture to the ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Toucheng Toucheng Township () is an urban township in Yilan County, Taiwan. The township includes Guishan Island and Guiluan Island in the Philippine Sea. The Senkaku Islands, known in Mandarin as the Diaoyu Islands, are claimed as part of the townsh ...

, Yilan County,

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

Technology

RNAL is a high-capacity 6-

-pair redundant loop system, upgradeable using Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM). Reach owns 3 fiber pairs and FLAG owns the other 3 fiber pairs.

Service Availability and Configuration

The cable landing shore ends are buried through plough and jetting techniques to minimise the possible impact of fishing, large ship anchors and other ocean hazards that can occur in shallow water. Armored cable protection is also utilised in shallow water areas including the shore ends. The RNAL is a self-healing loop cable with a traffic restoration time of less than 1 second in the event of a cable fault and availability of 99.999% (about 5 minutes of downtime per year). Damage to RNAL was reported as affecting internet traffic to China on 18 August 2009.

Upgrade

In January 2012

PCCW Global HKT Limited (), also known as Hong Kong Telecom (), is one of the largest telecommunications companies of Hong Kong. It has a dominant position in fixed-line, mobile, IDD and broadband services in Hong Kong. HKT Group is a subsidiary of PCCW si ...

and

Ciena Ciena Corporation is an American telecommunications networking equipment and software services supplier based in Hanover, Maryland. The company has been described by ''The Baltimore Sun'' as the "world's biggest player in optical connectivity." T ...

Corporation jointly announced their intent to upgrade RNAL with Ciena’s WaveLogic coherent optical 100G networking solutions.

will light a ring of

dark fiber A dark fibre or unlit fibre is an unused optical fibre, available for use in fibre-optic communication. Dark fibre may be leased from a network service provider. Dark fibre originally referred to the potential network capacity of telecommunic ...

s on RNAL so that it can support significantly more than its original design capacity.

External links

Comprehensive list of the approximately 1000 cable landing sites globally

References

{{Submarine communications cables in the Pacific Ocean Submarine communications cables in the Pacific Ocean Japan–South Korea relations