This visualization shows the growth of the undersea cable network, global internet peering capacity, and the distribution of IP addresses via BGP announcements over time. Use the controls at the top to play the animation or step through year by year.

For more details and insights, please read this blog series.

Legend:

• Existing Undersea Cable
• New Undersea Cable (Added in Current Year)
• Decommissioned Cable
• City
• New City (Added in Current Year)
• Existing City (No Added Peering Capacity in Current Year)

Pan by clicking and dragging. Zoom with the mouse wheel or the controls on the right.

Access the underlying data used to generate this map. All files are in JSON format.

• all_cables.json

  A GeoJSON FeatureCollection containing all submarine cables. Each feature includes properties like name, rfs_year (Ready for Service), decommission_year, owners, and landing_points.
  About GeoJSON format »
• year-summaries.json

  Brief textual descriptions of notable events or milestones for specific years, displayed in the footer.
• city-dominance/<year>.json

  Per-year JSON files (e.g., 2026.json) with detailed city-level peering capacity, regional information, and coordinates. Used for rendering city markers and calculating regional statistics.
• meta.json

  Metadata including the minimum and maximum years covered by the visualization.