Atlantic Crossing 1

Schematic representation of the submarine cable AC-1

2 Land's End in White Sands, UK 3 Westerland, Germany 4 Beverwijk, The Netherlands

Atlantic Crossing 1 ( AC-1) is a transatlantic submarine cables for the transmission of binary information. The optical cable has a length of 14,000 km.

It connects the United States ( Brookhaven ) with the UK (Lands End ), the United Kingdom, with the Netherlands ( Beverwijk ), the Netherlands with Germany (Westerland ) and Germany with the United States. The four cables stations are connected together to form a ring.

Since May 1998, the United States is linked to the United Kingdom. In November 1998, Germany was connected with the United States. In January 1999, the Netherlands were connected to the UK. In February 1999, the ring was completed with the connection between the Netherlands and Germany.

This ring topology consisting of two routes between North America and Europe, thus increasing the resilience to damage to a part of the piece, for example by an earthquake or by ship anchors. Originally data transfer rates of 40 Gbit / s ( 4 x 10 Gb / s ) was implemented using a wavelength division multiplexing. In August 1999, the transmission capacity was increased to 80 Gbit / s.

The builders of the AC-1 was the Tyco Submarine Systems Ltd.. ( TSSL ), operator of the Global Marine Systems Limited, a subsidiary of Global Crossing Network, which was acquired by Level 3 in 2011 and now do business together under the name of Level 3 Communications, LLC.