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Google Router Rumors

Posted by timothy on Wed Jan 07, 2009 02:04 PM
from the google-cars-too-pass-it-on dept.
Businesses Google The Internet Networking
An anonymous reader writes "There's a new rumor that Google is developing its own router. The company won't comment on the story, but it's been in the hardware business for a while and expanded its presence with Android. If Larry Ellison can go halvsies with HP on a server, then Eric Schmidt should certainly be able to make Cisco nervous."
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  • one more reason... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gandhi_2 (1108023) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:06PM (#26361229)
    ...to procrastinate on the CCNA test.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Amouth (879122)

      why procrastinate? the CCNA really isn't that hard of a cert to get.. the NP's are difficult.. and no mater what google does.. if you have an IE you will be able to find a job

  • All that I need now is google underwear! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FictionPimp (712802) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:06PM (#26361231)

    All I need now is google underwear that twitters for me with real time gps tracking so I know where I've been.

  • Even looking at Google from the outside, even by just knowing that they have hundreds of thousands of desktop machines behind their world class search, even just knowing that those machines have to be connected someway somehow .... you know they
    1. Already have something that beats what Cisco offers.
    2. Have been testing/improving it for years.
    3. Can simply point to their success as reasons you should buy into their technology (no matter how proprietary it is).

    I seem to remember rumors of them building their own insane (10 GbE) hardware switches [nyquistcapital.com]. And I don't think that's hard to imagine as nothing on the market at the time could possibly meet their needs.

    Of course, there's a lot of questions that remain to be answered ... like many claims they could not be operating on TCP/IP stacks on the inside. Because it's such a resource hog in some respects but that's irrelevant--I'm certain they can apply some of their ideas universally. I would put my money on them being the leader in research on networks and network theory ... probably past Cisco even (although behind the NSA as no one's ever sure about those guys). I feel that networking is so closely tied to their bread and butter search application that they should be dumping huge R&D into that field. I can't offer proof but it certainly makes sense to me.

    And all I can say is that it's about time someone put pressure on the home & enterprise networking hardware companies. What a stagnant squabbling market that has become.

    • And all I can say is that it's about time someone put pressure on the home & enterprise networking hardware companies. What a stagnant squabbling market that has become.

      The fine article seems to be down, so I can't tell what it claims. But I suppose the "Google Router", if it exists, will put an end to Juniper and Cisco in the same way as Bigtable does for Oracle, PostgreSQL etc.: it doesn't because the technology is so fundamental for Google's success that they simply don't share it.

      • Re:In My Opinion, Cisco Should Be Worried (Score:5, Funny)

        by whoever57 (658626) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:09PM (#26362241) Journal

        But I suppose the "Google Router", if it exists, will put an end to Juniper and Cisco in the same way as Bigtable does for Oracle, PostgreSQL etc.: it doesn't because the technology is so fundamental for Google's success that they simply don't share it.

        Reading TFA, It is basically saying that the loss of Google alone as a customer would doom Juniper. It doesn't matter if Google shares its technology or not as far as Juniper is concerned.

          • Re:In My Opinion, Cisco Should Be Worried (Score:5, Interesting)

            by pyite (140350) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @04:23PM (#26363497)

            Isn't Juniper's business plan to install FreeBSD on cheap embedded hardware and pretend that it's special-secret-proprietary-magic? I wouldn't be surprised if Google could undercut them, for in-house use at the very least.

            This is not really true. On the higher end Juniper boxes, while the control plane is running FreeBSD, the real work is done on the forwarding plane which is comprised of custom ASICs. You can't route at an enterprise or carrier level using commodity hardware.

            If Google is building an in-house router, it's down to the hardware design level. Either they're developing their own ASICs (plausible) or they're using merchant silicon (even more plausible) and rolling their own OS and chassis.

    • Re:In My Opinion, Cisco Should Be Worried (Score:5, Interesting)

      by blahplusplus (757119) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:22PM (#26361531)

      "And all I can say is that it's about time someone put pressure on the home & enterprise networking hardware companies. What a stagnant squabbling market that has become."

      If they do get into network tech, I seriously hope they release some home routers. I'm probably not the only one tired of having to reboot home routers every so often, especially with multiple people connected and having their wireless connection suddenly drop.

    • Re:In My Opinion, Cisco Should Be Worried (Score:5, Funny)

      by StaticEngine (135635) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:37PM (#26361739) Homepage

      although behind the NSA as no one's ever sure about those guys

      The real secret of the NSA is that they've got a zombie Alan Turing kept functioning on a combination of nutrient bath and Jeff Stryker porn.

    • They are using OpenMPI with a custom transport over Gig10e hardware. For their switching they have basically gone to a stacked of switching fabrics. It is pretty much a 3D fabric they call a bolt.
      Of course I am making all of this up but dang it sounds good :)

    • You mean Juniper should be worried (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fred Ferrigno (122319) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:23PM (#26362467)

      Just like with the 10G switches, this has all the earmarks of something for purely internal use rather than something they're planning to sell. That means their current vendor, which is Juniper according to TFA, loses Google as a customer, but that's about it.

      If anything, Cisco should be happy that their competitor is losing business.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by alta (1263)

      I for one welcome my new free, yet perpetually in beta router.

      All you have to do is let them monitor all of the traffic that goes through them so they can data mine it for useful but anonymous markeing information.

  • If they do (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Daimanta (1140543) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:09PM (#26361297) Journal

    I hope they include sensible and up-to-date standards and protocols. I'm thinking about the possibilities of the interface of the tomato firmware and importantly, inclusion of ipv6 support. If we want this to happen in this generation we need to get software support on at least basic networking devices(thinking of routers and OSes).

    • Re:If they do (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kickboy12 (913888) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:44PM (#26361853) Homepage

      I really hope they throw in IPv6. There are no consumer-level routers available with IPv6 support; it's been driving me crazy. Everyone will probably be forced to buy new routers in a few years anyway.

      With that said, I think Google is probably developing a router for their own in-house use. I have doubts this will actually hit the consumer market.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by chaim79 (898507)

      It's interesting that Apple OSX has supported IPv6 for a while (probably a side-effect from using BSD) and Apple routers (Airport Extreme) supports IPv6 and (if I remember the specs right) tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 out of the box and enabled.

      While that does not represent the vast majority of the computers/home routers in use, this does show that some companies are trying to start the trend.

  • Google was just trying to save money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jandrese (485) <kensama@vt.edu> on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:15PM (#26361377) Homepage Journal
    It seems likely to me that since Google is full of really smart people who seem to have a touch of the NIH syndrome, it probably isn't surprising that they wanted to develop their own routers from scratch instead of paying through the nose for Cisco or Juniper devices, especially since they needed hundreds or thousands of them and really don't want to have to pay for support contracts. I'd see a Google router announcement as just a productization of something they already use internally, just like Protocol Buffers.

    The problem is that Google develops tech internally that is extremely good at solving their problems, but they don't always apply well outside of Google. Protocol Buffers aren't exactly obsoleting XML and from all indications they probably never will. The Google router will probably be super fast and simple, but lack a whole bunch of the more obscure features. The problem is that there's someone out there for each one of those obscure features, and if you don't support it your product won't even make it in the door. This is a problem Juniper runs into a lot, they have good and fast hardware, but the only thing it does is route.

    In fact the article points out that Google's router is most likely to compete directly with Juniper instead of Cisco.

    • Re:Google was just trying to save money (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mshannon78660 (1030880) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:51PM (#26361957)

      The problem is that there's someone out there for each one of those obscure features, and if you don't support it your product won't even make it in the door.

      Too right on this point. I used to work for Cisco, and was always amazed at the number of bugs filed by customers around really obscure and esoteric features. Every one of those obscure features is in IOS because somebody (usually somebody big with deep pockets) is still using it... Even simple things like OSPF timers - they all have to be adjustable, because some big shop has decided that they can squeeze an extra .1% of bandwidth out of their pipes by fiddling with those timers - and if your new box requires them to reconfigure their whole network to standards (or worse yet, to the values that worked best in Google's network) they're not going to be very interested...

  • If they're smart... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MikeRT (947531) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:18PM (#26361447) Homepage
    They'll be 100% on the up and up WRT implementing standards compliance, and will release every last detail as open source, no-strings-attached goodness for the world to use. Such an act would be a giant cudgel that they could use against arguments that they're embracing proprietary tactics. They should do for routers what Android is trying to do for phones.

  • I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ohio Calvinist (895750) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:26PM (#26361601)
    I can see it now...

    Z:\>ping 192.168.1.20

    Pinging 192.168.1.200 with 32 bytes of data:

    Reply from 10.2.1.254: Destination host unreachable. Did you mean 192.168.1.2?
    ^C

  • doing it right (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bugs2squash (1132591) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:30PM (#26361667)
    Presumably the people that would buy stuff just because it was made by Google are not a major demographic. So Google will need to do something to

    1) raise the barrier to entry, no point issuing a device that anyone could make with Linux and a '386. Also, many cisco routers (eg. the 1800 series) genuinely represent value for money.

    2) Provide good quality support.

    So to raise the barrier to entry, it has to be a pretty special product, maybe doing the most useful 80% of what a cisco does flawlessly and improving upon cisco in come other areas (ones I can think off of the top of my head are ease of deployment and virtualization (vrf)).

    The other reason people insist on Cisco, even when there are other cheaper options, is that they believe Cisco support their product well with training and technical support. This in my experience is an illusion. By and large the Cisco TAC is awful and maintaining certification is expensive and time consuming and the training materials are riddled with misprints, bugs and corporate "best practices" that are self-serving to Cisco.

    So Google have a huge hill to climb, but I'm sure that it can be done in the space of a couple of years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zappepcs (820751)

      I don't think it's that huge of a hill for Google. Remember the iPod? Came from nowhere. Google has a pretty good brand name. If their product slips out and performs well, there is no reason to believe that it won't be accepted as fast and widely as other Google products.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hedwards (940851)

        Yes, but Apple had an incentive and a business model that consumers could live with. I'm not sure that you can say the same thing for a Google router. There's no particular business model other than spying on the owner and I doubt that many people would go along with that without something in it for them.

  • TFA says Juniper is doomed. Not so fast. (Score:5, Informative)

    by IGnatius T Foobar (4328) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:31PM (#26361683) Homepage Journal
    TFA says that Juniper is doomed because Google is getting ready to switch to their own in-house brand of routers. I find this difficult to believe for several reasons. One is that even if Google is Juniper's biggest customer, one customer does not a demise make -- Juniper has many other customers, including the entire UUnet (MCI, WorldCom, Verizon Business, whatever they're calling themselves this year) backbone. But there are far more practical reasons. Routers contain a lot of specialized hardware designed for rapid switching of packets. Google may have a lot of smart people working for them, but they certainly don't have the resources on board to design and build all of those ASIC's and other custom hardware, and it doesn't really make sense for them to get into that business during a recession just for an in-house project. (And no, don't give me that line about how a fast enough server with multiple Ethernet cards can substitute for even a mid-grade Cisco or Juniper. I manage a data center network and know the numbers. It can't even come close, no matter how good the software is, because a general purpose computer has to forward every packet using software, while a real router only makes a routing decision once and then all the rest of the packets for that destination are switched in hardware at wire speed.)

    Nothing to see here. Move along.

    • Re:TFA says Juniper is doomed. Not so fast. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:44PM (#26361859)

      Of course Google would not waste time developing their own ASICs. Companies like Marvell, Broadcom, and Dune offer plenty to choose from, and companies such as FDRY and JNPR already use these to build their own offerings.

      It only makes sense for Google to use the building blocks to make a device that meets their specific needs.

    • Re:TFA says Juniper is doomed. Not so fast. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR (28044) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:00PM (#26362069) Homepage Journal

      Or Google could buy Juniper. Let the rumor drive down the stock and pick them up at fire sale prices.

    • Re:TFA says Juniper is doomed. Not so fast. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by whisper_jeff (680366) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:04PM (#26362149)
      "...even if Google is Juniper's biggest customer, one customer does not a demise make..."

      That really depends. For smart companies, they've sufficiently diversified their client base such that the loss of one will hurt but not cripple. Some clients, however, just become so damn big and a company simply can't get enough other clients or the increase the volume from the other existing clients high enough to balance against that one mega-client. Once one client represents a massive percentage of your revenue and the loss of that client would force you into immediate emergency restructuring in the hopes of survival, then yes, one client a demise can potentially make.

      • Re:TFA says Juniper is doomed. Not so fast. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bberens (965711) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:51PM (#26363009)
        I've often heard this referred to as the Wal-Mart effect. Once Wal-Mart distributes your product nationally, they basically own you. Because once you ramp up production to meet Wal-Mart needs, you can't just scale back down if they drop you... and they can and will drop you if you do not behave.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by whoever57 (658626)

      Routers contain a lot of specialized hardware designed for rapid switching of packets. Google may have a lot of smart people working for them, but they certainly don't have the resources on board to design and build all of those ASIC's and other custom hardware, and it doesn't really make sense for them to get into that business during a recession just for an in-house project.

      The questions really are: how many different types of ASICs and boards are in those routers plus how many of the ASICs cannot be r

  • No Thanks. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sexconker (1179573) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @02:34PM (#26361711)

    My router works fine, and I don't have Google stealing all of my LAN packets and serving me ads.

    A fucking grouter had better make me warm delicious waffles if they want me to buy it. Even then, I'd only use it to make waffles.

    And now I'm off to amazon to look for a waffle maker.

  • Not in "hardware business," won't sell routers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 (162816) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:00PM (#26362063) Homepage Journal

    Everybody seems to be assuming that these new routers will be for sale. That's obviously not going to happen — there just isn't room in the marketplace for a new player, even if that player is Google. Breaking into a new hardware marketplace is hard. You have to develop sales channels, create a hardware support organization, set up an operations organization to manage production, etc. etc.

    I know about these things because for the last couple of years my job has been to document some of Sun's hardware products. Before that I mostly documented software, and the shear complexity of designing, building, distributing, selling and supporting actual physical products still boggles my mind. At product team meetings I sometimes feel at sea, even though the technical concepts I have to deal with are actually much simpler than those I faced when I was on software product teams. The logistics are just mind boggling.

    Google isn't set up to be "in the hardware business". They make their own servers because there are no manufacturers that are able to meet their specialized needs. Now they seem to have decided that their routers also require specialized in-house designs. They haven't tried to sell these servers to other companies, and they won't try to sell their routers. Even if they could hope to compete, it would mean building up the kind of technical bureaucracy that Google's top echelon has no interest in managing.

    Hell, they don't really have a proper bureaucracy for the much simpler job of creating and distributing their software products. If they actually charged money for most of them, they'd be trouble.

    And Android? How does Android count as being "in the hardware business"? Is Google selling a cell phone I haven't heard about?

          • Re:Not in "hardware business," won't sell routers (Score:4, Interesting)

            by pyite (140350) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @11:33PM (#26368231)

            Huh? Gigabit ethernet is "hardly relevant"? What world are you living on?

            The world of high performance networking. GigE is "hardly relevant" to the notion of building your own router because it's now ubiquitous. Everyone can do GigE and cheaply. There's really no money to be saved by building your own GigE router. 10 GigE is what everyone needs. If Google is building any hardware, rest assured it's for non-blocking 10 GigE port density and price.

            Well, it's hard to refute a statement that uses marketing-speak like "enterprise-level pps performance". A commodity PC can achieve gigabit throughput, though

            It's not marketing-speak. Poor packets per second performance is a common problem with networking gear. In actuality, it's a very normal "market-speak" thing to quote Gbps numbers without specifying packet size (like you did). Do you know the difference between being able to forward 64 byte packets at GigE and 1500 byte packets at GigE? Hint: small frames/packets can often kill commodity PC routers. So saying something "can achieve 2-3 Gbps" is meaningless if you don't specify a packet size.

            And to be clear, Vyatta might very well be able to do 2-3 Gbps with 64 byte packets. Google really wouldn't care though, as 2-3 Gbps is nothing.

  • Am I then only one who... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JustASlashDotGuy (905444) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @03:00PM (#26362083)

    Am I the only one who read this and thought, "Hmmm, it must be time for Google to renew their support contracts with Juniper.".

    "leak" a rumor about no longer needing Juniper, and watch juniper lower their support rates.

    • Re:Vyatta anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pyite (140350) on Wednesday January 07 2009, @05:08PM (#26364179)

      I can't believe nobody has made mention of Vyatta. It's an excellent appliance-like distro based on, I believe, Debian.

      It's not mentioned because it's not even remotely relevant to the discussion.

      All the bells and whistles you'd expect from a high-end device at a fraction (by which I mean ~1/3) of the cost relative to a Cisco purchase.

      Including bells and whistles like custom ASICs and switching fabrics? Oh, wait, it doesn't have those. Nothing about Vyatta is "high-end." It is, however, a viable alternative at the very low-end.

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