It sounds crazy, but Earth's continents are physically linked to one another through a vast network of subsea, fiber-optic cables that circumnavigate the globe. Cords no thicker than your home's broadband connection stretch along the bottom of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans; through the Suez canal; across the Mediterranean Sea and around the coasts of Africa and South America.

Subsea fiber-optic cables can tie two giant centers of commerce together, reducing data traffic delays. Three companies are in the process of building cable networks that link London directly to Tokyo -- through the polar ice cap -- with cables capable of 10 gigabit-per-second speeds. (That's 2,000 times faster than your home Internet connection).
Those cables could reduce the Internet's latency by about 60 milliseconds between those two points.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn