During the last ten years, thousands of kilometers of submarine cables have been rolled out to connect regions around the globe and improve intercontinental connectivity. However, while it is relatively easy to get information about the frequent roll-outs of these cables, it is challenging to translate these developments into network information to facilitate networking research. For example, announcements for new submarine cables typically mention landing points and not router IP addresses. With this network information, it is easier to assess the impact of a new submarine cable on end-to-end delays in the connecting regions. In this paper, we investigate the necessary and sufficient conditions to translate public announcements for submarine cables to network information that enables networking research on this topic. We also develop and evaluate a methodology to automatically extract IP-level information for deployed submarine cables and assess their impact on end-to-end performance.

During the last decades, public and private investments contributed to building the Internet infrastructure, including undersea cables, long-distance fiber links, broadband networks, and satellite constellations to reduce end-to-end delay. In this study, we measure the inter-city delays over the last six years, considering 17 major metropolitan areas around the globe. Our analysis shows that the delay for 88% of city pairs end-to-end delay has decreased. Moreover, we study delay changes for regional and long-haul (intercontinental) pairs. Our analysis shows that end-to-end delay has decreased for 80% and 55% of city pairs in Europe and North America, respectively. Our study also shows that despite the overall decrease in intercity delays, global phenomena, e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, profoundly impact many inter-city connections simultaneously while not affecting others.