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Google's Dark Fibre Plans?
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jan 17, 2005 11:32 AM
from the reduce-reuse-recycle dept.
from the reduce-reuse-recycle dept.
sebFlyte writes "According to news.com "Google is looking for Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...(i)dentification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network." Is the search giant planning to build a global fibre-optic network?" Or perhaps simply use unused fibre that they can get for cheaper then from the datacenter providers; although at least from my talks with the datacenter folks, Google's not paying much per Mbps as it is.
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Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, Google might be getting cheap rates for www.google.com, but that probably wouldn't extend to customers, plus accessability wouldn't be that great...
I'm not quite sure what Google's angle on the market would be, except perhaps high-speed/low-cost, but that doesn't seem as elegant as Google's usual offerings...
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Google's plans (Score:3, Funny)
Or you could just go to a rave.
Re:Google's plans (Score:2)
Dark Fibre (Fiber) is a common product (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:4, Informative)
Dark fibre or unlit fibre (or fiber) is the name given to fibre optic cables which have yet to be used. They are hence not yet connected to any device, and are only there for future usage.
There is a second meaning: It is fiber which is not lit by the provider. For example if you have two locations and lease a dark fiber between the two, you are essentially getting two ends of a single fiber with no networking equipment in the loop. You will then connect your own equipment at each end and light it your self.Parent
Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Informative)
This means you provide the equipment, potentially giving you vastly more bandwidth than the telecom could sell you on that fiber. It also means you can upgrade your equipment later for faster speeds. It also means less points of failure on the line because its just optics all the way through.
Dark fiber usually isn't sold by the telecoms. Usually you'll have to get it from companys such as the railway and sewer owners - the guys who oversee the cables themselves, not the higher level services.
The disadvantage of dark fiber compared to a telcom OCx circuit are 1) you can't get channelized services eg split this DS3 into a few DS1 to this locations, and few DS1s to that location, a couple DS1s for ISDN PRI, etc etc. 2) you have less flexibility in choosing the endpoints - your choices are limited to big data centers where the vendors are willing/able to provide dark dervice 3) you don't get to deal with the really nice helpful people at the phone company
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Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:4, Informative)
There's probably 100* more dark fiber than lit fiber in the world - when they're putting it down it's dirt cheap to put a few more bundles in. You can get it pretty much anywhere to anywhere (where there's some kind of physical link anyway).
The real cost though is lighting the thing. It costs a fortune to rent the mux equiment, and it's large enough that space considerations at the other end come into play. That's mostly the reason why it's still dark in the first place (that and the telcos have so much excess bandwidth already they don't know what to do with it... it's more cost effective to negotiate a cut rate on a piece of existing fiber).
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Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:4, Informative)
When 2 pair costs $.20 per foot, without install costs, and 12 pair costs $.30 per foot, and it costs the same $10 a foot to bury the sucker, you might as well guard against future expansion, breakage and whatnot by installing the 12 pair. Standardizing on 12 pair also simplifies inventory work. I've heard that many telco's standardized on 12 pair everywhere except for major, major backbones because the savings from standardized purchasing, inventory, and etc made it cheaper.
*all costs are estimated
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Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Funny)
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Unification (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unification (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level 3 (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW, the Light Reading guys were the ones who "broke" this story back on January 6th [lightreading.com]
Re:I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell would Google want to buy up an existing ISP/telco with all the crap that that entails?
What they are doing is actually very sensible.
By looking to negotiate purchase/lease of dark fibre over the medium term they are avoiding the big cost which is actually putting fibre into the ground.
I imagine that they would ensure that the maintenance of that fibre is the responsibility of the provider, so they don't need to run their own maintenance crews either.
And the BIG plus with having access to fiber is that you can then ramp up your capacity by using WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing) to get more bandwidth out of your fibre.
They have probably realised that to ramp up their networks to cope with their future plans they need more bandwidth that they can afford to buy as "service" from a regular telco. Its just too damn expensive!
By leasing the fibre themselves, they light it how they want, rather that how the telco wants to sell it to them.
This *might* have biogger up front costs, but the recurrent costs are MUCH lower.
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Thats quite a leap, I doubt they have such plans (Score:2)
Re:I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if all these new hires do is help Google's datacenter providers make good decisions about new or altered peering networks, they'll probably earn their keep.
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The Google Empire (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Google Empire (Score:2)
They've been connected to the ams-ix for some time (Score:5, Informative)
The AMS-IX is the largest Internet Exchange / NAP in Europe.
Re:They've been connected to the ams-ix for some t (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I heard the largest Internet Exchange was located in London.
Re:They've been connected to the ams-ix for some t (Score:2)
Apparently both the LINX and the AMS-IX claim to be the largest. Let's just say that the AMS-IX is one of the largest. It's not about measuring dick size ;-)
As for stats, I could not find stats for the LINX; the AMS-IX peaks at 49.7 gbit/sec and they have 210 members using 322 switch ports.
Who has got the bigger one? (Score:4, Funny)
AMS-IX has more members 210 against LINX having only 169 members.
However they are both equally fun to party with.
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Re:They've been connected to the ams-ix for some t (Score:3, Insightful)
It is? I was always under the impression LINX [linx.net] held that honour..
GoogleISP (Score:3, Interesting)
GoogleISP: Dark fiber to your city, fiber to you home coming soon.
And after they can give everyone a super high speed broadband connection, it's just one more step to selling a subscription for the comping suite of web-based apps that GMail proves they're so good at.
Doubtful (Score:3, Insightful)
If they were truly making such plans they would also have to hire literally tens of thousands of people, or make a monstrous acquisition. Neither of which appears in the cards from what I can tell.
Pure speculation: buyout AOL? (Score:2)
Re:Google WiMax VoIP (Score:3, Interesting)
Google + WiMAX + VoIP = enough technology and brains to stomp any RBOC or cable company.
The only problem with this is that the WiMAX timeline is far away, and it's unclear how much the end-user antennas will go for. Will users want to install another dish?
Even if they don't go this route, that dark fiber could be a useful asset down the road. If they can price it well enough, they'll be on the "buy" side of a make
I know! (Score:3, Funny)
They want to take over the Internet.
Create a new backbone. Replace InterNIC and all the suits who control the net now.
Then compete and eliminate most first tier providers, and generally own the global network.
Best luck, Google! I hope you will succeed!
Re:I know! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I know! (Score:2)
Re:I know! (Score:2)
Google would be
Re:I know! (Score:3, Funny)
Not surprising... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
As in: they used provider A for 36 hours, provider B for the next 36h, provider C for the next 36h, etc... (bear in mind it was not surfer facing transit, just used to sync up the DCs.)
They've probably reached the level where they've got too much data to get away with that scheme. So they've got a pretty simple choice:
- Pay for the commited rate they really need.
- Link the 2 Data Centers with dark fiber lit with 10GigE.
Based on the over provisionning most fiber companies did when they built their networks, there's a lot of room for negociation when you're shopping for fiber, especially when you can hang the promise of a huge internationnal network in the balance.
The second option is pretty much guaranted to turn out to be much more affordable.
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Re:Not surprising... (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlit fibre (Score:2, Interesting)
What i am thinking though, they want to build their own private network which links their many datacenters around the US, so that we can get our search results even faster, or any of the other things like gmail.
Storing mail in two seperate locations is possible, but it would make for a pain in the ass if it takes to long to sync the changes between the servers in different datacenters to get people
quick grammar question (Score:5, Funny)
--
so dark, you'll forget the fibre
"Glut of fiber assets" (Score:5, Insightful)
And even where there is overcapicity, it is mostly in the urban areas, put in place for business, not single family homes. Good luck getting dark fiber in the 'burbs, let alone the sticks
Re:"Glut of fiber assets" (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they are right. There is a glut of fiber.
The press makes it sound like there's dozens of dark fibers just a few inches from your house, and those darn telcos/cable companies just don't want you to have access to them.
I've never gotten that impression. Never in the talks about fiber gluts and dark fiber have I heard about it being related to last-mile fiber. It is always about things like this, a c
Perhaps just better performance? (Score:2)
I think people may be reading too much into this. They're talking about hiring out a small number of positions. Going from that to wanting their own national fiber network is a huge leap, but I suppose its fun to speculate...
than (Score:4, Funny)
Am I the only one.... (Score:4, Funny)
Am I the only one who thought of a few laxitive jokes when they read this?
This isn't about what you think (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering what Google has built internally for server management and redundancy, I would hypothesize based upon available data (i.e. GFS) that they're looking to light up fiber between their data centers, while running either TCP/IP or IPv6 (with modifications of existing IGP and routing protocols, more than likely BGP or OSPF) between them.
This is a very smart move on their part, if this is true. This would allow them to do their own internal traffic control and shaping over a private network, and develop/modify algorithms for efficient transfer of data over said network, without having to "play" by Telco/ISP rules.
In other words, they're more than likely building their own global network to more efficiently transfer data over the Internet by completely bypassing it for their inter-server traffic. This is a very smart move, if true.
Nice business idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Seeking assets (Score:4, Interesting)
A simple Google search (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You mean "than" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:horrible writing (Score:2, Funny)
this article is horribly written! impossible to understand.
Why did you try to read it?
Nobody else here ever does.
Re:Google is taking over the world. (Score:5, Funny)
We are practically a Google Temple here, folks.
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