TPE Cable Network Topology

The TPE cable network consists of 6 cable landing stations, with two in China, i.e., Qingdao Cable Landing Station and Chongming Cable Landing Station, each in the US (Nedonna/Hillsboro Cable Landing Station), Korea ( Keoje Cable Landing Station), Japan (Shin-Maruyama Cable Landing Station) and Taiwan (Tanshui Cable Landing Station).

The TPE cables comprise of four fiber pairs in all the segments, forms a protected ring network among five cable landing stations in Asia. There is one fiber pair with a linear connection between the US cable landing station and each of the cable landing stations in Asia except for the Shin-Maruyama Cable Landing Station. TPE's landing in Japan was decided when NTT determined to join the TPE consortium in Feb, 2008.

The TPE cable network was designed with 64x10 Gbps DWDM technology, with a maximum trans-pacific capacity of 2.56 Tbps. And the TPE cable network is capable of upgrading with 40 Gbps technolgy, which may upgrade TPE's trans-pacific capacity to 5.12 Tbps or even higher.

The TPE cable network is now a major trans-pacific internet cable for carriers in China, Korea and Taiwan, but it  is not optimized for the traffic between Japan and the US. As there is no fiber pair directly connecting TPE cable landing stations in Japan and the US, the internet traffic over TPE has to be routed from Japan to either Korea, China and Taiwan, and then to the US, which may result in longer latency.  Even there is additional longer latency, Japanese carriers are considering to use the TPE cable network for internet traffic between Japan and the US, especially when there are more concerns on the diversity of submarine networks after the Japan earthquake in March 2011.

In the US mainland, the TPE cable lands at the Nedonna Beach, Oregon, with TPE terminal equipment installed at the Hillsboro Cable Landing Station which is approximately 150 miles away from the Nedonna Beach. There are multiple backhaul providers at TPE Hillsboro cable landing station, including Verizon Business, Level 3, AT&T, etc.. The TPE capacity can be extended from the Hillsboro cable landing station to the internet data centers (IDC) and colocations in the west coast, such as Seattle (320  Km, 3.2 ms), San Jose (1400 Km, 14 ms) and Los Angeles (2000km, 20 ms) .