Google's Experimental Fiber Network 363
gmuslera writes "Not enough speed from your ISP? Google seems to go into that market too. 'We're planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.' The goal isnt just to give ultra fast speed for some lucky ones, but to test under that conditions things like new generations of apps, and deployment techniques that take advantage of it." If they need a test neighborhood, I'm sure mine would be willing.
more competition (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:more competition (Score:5, Interesting)
I see this as a response to the filtering and tiering complaints. Google seems to be attempting to say "Fine, take your toys and go home. We'll just give everyone new toys"
I wish them luck, and hope we're not seeing the founding of the new IBM/Ma Bell empire.
Re:more competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:more competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Gigabit to the home not on Comcast? Um, sign me up for $120+/mo...
Or is that just me? I would expect the service to come down with time, and I realize this is a big gamble on their end, but $DEITY I would love to see anyone else in my neighborhood @now
Re:more competition (Score:5, Funny)
I would expect the service to come down with time
Well, with Comcast, the service DOES go down with time. Unfortunately the more the service goes down, the more the price goes up.
Re:more competition (Score:4, Funny)
You do understand the concept of RTFA ... oh wait. I see.
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Heck, give me a service that's better than Time Warner Cable, and I'll pretty much pay any price they want. Right now I'm waiting for the local phone company to finally go under so Verizon FiOS can come in. I'll get their top-tier service just on principle.
Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care.
If this means more competition to the likes of Comcast and Verizon with internet in the home, so be it.
I am so sick of the cable companies stranglehold. It's obvious the FCC won't do anything about competition.
I'd gladly welcome Google.
Competition is GOOD.
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
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We're paying something like $750/month each for 3 T1 point to points between our main office and our 3 field offices. Might be per end, might be both ends, all I know is we pay through the nose for this crappy service.
Not to mention all the lost productivity waiting for large files, or even windows updates, to traverse the network.
If google wants a rural test bed, I guarantee they would be well received by state officials in wyoming.
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Re:Google (Score:5, Funny)
Problem: All the competition is incompetent. Google is not. Google will move in to this area, destroy everyone else, and then there will be no more "competition" (not that there necessarily was any before). In the end, we might end up with but one ISP....
Even if that happens, we'll still be (slightly) better off. Rather than have incompetent ISPs with no competition, we'll have a competent ISP with no competition.
You can sign up for the beta here [google.com].
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For the love of everything in every power, that people do and don't believe in. I want more competition. If google can bring it, I'll sing praises until I'm blue in the face. I have the option of 2 ISP's. Both with 60-90GB/mo caps, this is nothing but good in my book.
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
this is nothing but good in my book.
We already bitch and moan about our privacy and how much information we want any single company to have.
Now you're excited about giving the internet's biggest data-miner 100% of your browsing traffic and behavior?
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Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Ostrich farming.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of an ostrich carrying a pack of SSDs.
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>> Never underestimate the bandwidth of an ostrich carrying a pack of SSDs.
> yes, but the latency is awful!
Yeah, and it's more of a UDP than a TCP connection, too. When they stick their head in the sand, you could be waiting a _long_ time for your data. *shrug* Still, it's funny to think of what the NSA has to go through to catch them to tap your communications. :)
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Re:Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes. (Score:5, Funny)
It's a "head in the sandbox" virtual machine.
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For the love of mod points, someone mod this one up. Brilliant!
Re:Google (Score:5, Funny)
Privacy protection; and ad-blocking.
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They don't do video game consoles, keyboards, mice, or portable media players... *cough*
Re:Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Old news (Score:5, Funny)
tm
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Re:Old news (Score:5, Informative)
TiSP is WIRELESS - this article talks about fiber to the home
"Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines."
RTFA!
tm
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Re:Old news (Score:5, Funny)
Be careful, fiber will increase the "data" flow.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:4, Insightful)
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RTFS?
They want to use it as a test-bed for programmes and services under ultra-high-speed conditions. That's why they're only planning a relatively small roll our (what, less than 1/500 of the US population?).
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Except they can claim they're bringing competition to areas that don't have it, such as mine, and encouraging the local content provider to invest Federal dollars in my area as well. The Federal Gov't has already earmarked a large chunk of money for doing exactly what Google is talking about doing privately.
Now, I agree that I wonder if Google is the best one to do this. But, who else is going to try? Another large media conglomerate that owns channels and distribution and newspapers? Like Comcast? Oh yeah,
Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:4, Insightful)
A) There is undoubtably money to be made installing ultra-high speed internet, the market is large and the suppliers are few. It's entirely possible that they simple intend to move into the ISP business
B) It's in Google's best interests for everyone to have a high quality internet connection. Specifically, this is probably more about creating a market to test the next generation of web based apps than it is about anything else. Presumably, ultra-high speed connections will be more common in a few years, and Google would like the opportunity to see what exactly people will use them for. We already have the bandwidth for video, VOIP, and webapps, so what's next?
Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:5, Informative)
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Now the real question is why
Why not?
Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it is damn expensive, that is "why not".
The "why" needs to give them a good reason. My guess is this:
1. Google's main revenue generator -- ads -- are very effective. I know a lot of people who hate Internet ads but don't mind Google's because they aren't in-your-face offensive. Considering their revenue, there are a LOT of people like that.
2. The better your experience on the Internet, the more money Google makes.
3. Google, therefore, rolls out products designed to improve your experience on the Internet.
4. Profit! (Goto 2)
This is the same logic I use to believe that Chrome isn't a threat to Mozilla Firefox. All Google cares about is better, faster, stronger Internet experience. They have the tools, they can rebuild it. Chrome isn't a competitor to Firefox.
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Personally, I want it (Google's ads are less offensive, and 1Gbps? Yes please).
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You missed my meaning. Google would be just as happy with Firefox succeeding as with Chrome. Their purpose is a faster, more capable Internet experience. Whether that is with Chrome, or with Firefox, or even IE, they don't care as long as the speed and capabilities are there.
All browsers lead to Google, which is their core purpose.
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Google gets bandwidth quite cheaply in general. Lots of ISP's would happily string a cable to Google or offer them server hosting for free, just to not have to pay for the traffic through their transit providers.
Tier 1 ISP's are probably different, but there aren't all that many of those.
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Why should you be more fearful of Google doing that as opposed to our current swath of ISPs and Telecoms? Especially given that some of them have been proven to be amenable to wiretapping during the Bush era? Maybe I'm blurring the lines between internet and phone, but a lot of these companies provide both and as the amount of valued information continues to shift away from the telephone jack and to the ethernet cable, it is indeed a valid concern. Sure, some may prefer the Devil they know, but when weig
Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, if they just wanted the tracking data, there are almost certainly cheaper, easier, and very much quieter ways to get 90% of the effect. They already have ads on some huge percentage of webpages, and set cookies all over the place, not to mention the people who stay logged in to iGoogle and the like all the time. I'm sure the additional data they could get by being the ISP would be a bonus; but I'm a lot less sure that it is a bonus worth going into the infrastructure business, and bringing down the combined marketing/lobbying wrath of every cable and telco incumbent in the US over.
More likely, they have two basic concerns: Network quality and network neutrality.
If available net connections suck, webapps will suck and online experiences generally will suck. More people will continue to use desktop apps, or iPhone style purpose-specific applications, which will mean fewer people looking at adsense ads and using webapps. That would make Google a sad panda.
If the incumbent carriers, telco and cable, are in the position to do so, it will be immensely tempting for them to sell access to "their consumers". At worst, this will mean Google gets blocked entirely. At best, this will shift money out of Google's margins and into Comcast and Verizon's margins. Google really has to shiv them before they shiv google on this one.
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With a broadband connection 100x faster they can deliver 100x more ads :)
Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't. They want to embarrass the real ISP's into building decent networks so the network-neutrality issue goes away and they don't wind up having to pay the ISP's for traffic they're sending to its customers.
Google is always playing the chess board three moves ahead.
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Since the state of high-speed internet in the US today is basically an abusive oligopoly, Google has a huge interest in changing that market for the better.
Re:What is Google's interest? Data Tracking? (Score:5, Interesting)
Among many other reasons, its a net neutrality insurance policy. Google favors net neutrality, but if net neutrality foes succeed (and that's an ongoing threat, because they don't tend to back off even as the FCC reiterates its support for net neutrality principles) it needs its own links directly to consumers as a hedge against other big network providers (particularly those that are also trying to compete with other Google services, whether video offerings that compete with YouTube, phone offerings that compete in some ways with Voice, or something else) -- impairing access to Google's services. If Google can position themselves as a competitive fiber-to-consumer provider, it puts them in a position where such actions by competing service providers that are also fiber providers are riskier because of the potential for retaliation.
Google has a strategic investment in not making the internet into a set of disjoint walled gardens, but ultimately the best way of insuring that is to guarantee that if its competitors try to convert it into such a system, those competitors will lose.
Here is what is going to happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
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Which will pan out about as well as Palm's attempt to get Apple in trouble for breaching the USB standard.
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I'm inclined to agree with you, but it sucks that innovative companies like Google will have to deal with this.
Notice that prior to laying down the fiber network, they took the town to court to prevent competition:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/want-50mbps-internet-in-your-town-threaten-to-roll-out-your-own.ars [arstechnica.com]
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if you think Google is going to have 1gbps of bandwidth for everyone one of their users then you are deluding yourself
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Re:Here is what is going to happen. (Score:4, Interesting)
When Google offered 1GB mail storage, that was industry changing. They didn't end up with 1GB storage per customer though, most people use far less. The trick was to avoid the pitfall of only getting the heavy users.
Perhaps they can pull the same trick with fiber.
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Re:Here is what is going to happen. (Score:5, Interesting)
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
Perhaps they will. But consider: this is not a profit engine for Google, in much the same way that Android isn't a profit engine. Google says this service is to test new high-bandwidth technologies, and I don't doubt that's true, but it's probably also true that they're just trying to upset this market because the established cable companies are a threat to their other businesses, both because of their slowness to raise the bandwidth bar and because of their marriages to legacy content distribution.
Because of this, Google probably doesn't care whether they own this service or not. I bet if the big networking dinosaurs sued Google, Google could settle with them by agreeing to spin off the fiber Internet company, yet still accomplish all of the original project goals. It would be like if Google had to cut Android free - it would still satisfy Google's main goal of creating an open platform that's more friendly to their mobile web services than Apple's or Microsoft's is likely to be.
Re:Here is what is going to happen. (Score:4, Interesting)
The big names in networking (AT&T, Charter, etc.) are going to sue Google on antitrust grounds because it is easier to hire lawyers than to upgrade failing and obsolete networks.
Maybe. Except that, if they base their anti-trust claim on the basis that Google would own both the content and the connection to that content, then Comcast's acquisition of NBC would also be subject to this same suit.
I can't see Comcast suing itself.
meanwhile, (Score:2)
CEO: [loading gun] "Jimmy, tell my wife... Tell her I never gave a fuck about anyone but myself. Ha! Hahahahahaaa!"
[pan to wall. shot heard, brains splatter]
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They need not worry. They already bought and paid for the local politicians to make sure nobody else comes in.
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He wasn't talking about Google, fuckhead. He was talking about the already entrenched ISPs. You know, the companies that were being mocked in the GGP's post.
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Community Organization? (Score:5, Funny)
Me too, me too (Score:2)
Me too please ;-)))
Re:Community Organization? (Score:4, Informative)
Filling in the community organization is optional (not a required field).
Time to upgrade the home network? (Score:2)
Almost everything inside my house is still running at 100Mbps (or less, over 802.11g/n wireless bridges). And even then, my router still melts if I actually let BitTorrent run full out. I sense a lot of upgrades needed before I could even come close to taking full advantage of a 1Gbps line.
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I sense a lot of upgrades needed before I could even come close to taking full advantage of a 1Gbps line.
That's called 'incentivizing'. :)
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Usually that's not related to the actual throughput. The problem is that those routers don't have enough RAM to keep up with all the connections bittorrent opens, and many lock up or slow down.
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I would be constrained by the fact that no one else has 1G/s available for me to even use
I suspect Google would.
It would still take 6 hours to back up my MythTV storage. But that seems reasonable to me - current connections would be about 5 months.
Gigabit to the home is probably about what we need for real Network Computing, accounting for the information density of the human sensory systems.
I'm shocked (Score:5, Funny)
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23 comments about a 1 gigabit home connection, and not one of them has even mentioned the word "porn"?!? Man, you guys are slipping...
I was going to post something about that earlier, but my typing hand was...otherwise occupied.
Better late than never.
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On the downside .... goatse at fiber speeds eewwwwww.
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23 comments about a 1 gigabit home connection, and not one of them has even mentioned the word "porn"?!? Man, you guys are slipping...
It's the Astroglide.
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1Gbps connection would be overkill, as there is another bottleneck in terms of porn consumption.
Let's just say my pipe would be saturated.
No article, just a blog post (Score:3, Interesting)
Google really understands Slashdot. Everything pertinent in the blog post fits just fine in the summary. No need to read the "article." It isn't an article. It's just a blog post soliciting proposals.
Seems an odd way to go about it. It's missing the one thing that is relevant to market demand: price. I don't know whether my community would care to be part of it because I don't know how much it would cost the users. I know for a fact that people are only willing to pay so much for high bandwidth, and past that, they decide it's not worth the cost.
Worse, most internet hosts throttle or load balance their outbound throughput to any one destination. I had 20 megabit downstream service for a while, and the only way to come remotely close to saturating it was bittorrent. And I never did saturate it. I managed to sustain over 10 megabit only twice, ever, and that was hard to do and didn't last. Even most streaming video sites transmit at no more than 300 KB/s (2.4 megabit), and many, if not most, transmit slower than that.
Sounds to me like the whole thing is going to be a disappointment to them. Truly high bandwidth demands will only emerge when truly high bandwidth (1 gigabit) is widely deployed and widely subscribed to, and when major servers move from truly high bandwidth to absurdly high bandwidth (10 gigabit through to the backbone). All of their scenarios can be satisfied by deploying fiber to just a few premises, like hospitals and clinics, which is a big dumb duh idea anyway. It's not already done? The nebulous "let's see what happens" goal they have depends on lots of people having access to lots of bandwidth. Network effects have to kick in before a network is valuable. Build it and they will come, but there's no way to predict what they'll actually use it for. It will take large numbers of bored programmers fiddling around with their high bandwidth to generate something to use all that bandwidth, and they won't bother if 90% of their potential audience has 1/1000th of the bandwidth.
In short, it's the network, stupid.
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So what? You don't use more than one app at the same time? I like being able to use bittorrent, plus download files (over HTTP), plus l
Google isn't stupidly altruistic (Score:2)
Ooh...ooh, pick me! (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously. Blacksburg, Virginia (home of Virginia Tech) was supposed to have 10bT to every home back in the 90s - the Blacksburg Electronic Village they called it. You would think we'd be sitting pretty for even higher speed by now. It never materialized. We've got Verizon (copper only, 3Mb max speed) or Comcast (formerly Adelphia, ~7Mb max speed, when the moon is full). There are a few other minor players, but they are either geared towards the large apartment complexes or businesses (and make Verizon look inexpensive). Heck, I'm close enough in that my power is from Virginia Tech electric.
I don't need huge total volume, I just want blisteringly fast for shortish periods.
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My small (8500 people) hometown in southwestern Missouri was going to have something like that as well - I believe it was called an Acorn televillage.
The developer only built one house before it went bust, and the house was never occupied.
pulling a gmail (Score:5, Insightful)
For the love of all that is good... (Score:3, Informative)
in the world, please compete with Comcast and the other monopoly ISPs. The speeds in Chicago finally got upgraded a bit but the throttling, bandwidth caps, and retarded pricing shenanigans still have to go. Comcast is still one of the leaders in customer service douchebaggery so any competition is greatly appreciated. (RCN and Verizon FIOS are the only thing even close, speed wise, but they have never been available in any of the areas I have ever lived in in Chicago.)
It would be nice (Score:2)
It would be nice to see if they have some for Canada as well, I am looking forward also to them offering their successful venture once it is up and running to the public as a replacement to most disgruntled ISP clients that are tired of not having any choices.
Omaha needs some love (Score:2)
Omaha is right next door to your new data center in Council Bluffs, IA, and a telecommunications hub for the country. You know you want to roll out here.
No Northern Locales? (Score:2)
I take this:
to mean that they're not going to deal with winter in this round.
Is today fiber day or something? (Score:2)
I get this post [gwi.net] from a friend of mine in Maine. Looks like our government is sporting over some recovery funds and one of Maine's more aggresive ISPs is gonna spend it making fiber around the rural areas of Maine.
And he better hurry, or Google will beat him to it! Oh, wait... Google will be looking for density and volume users. Where volume is spelled with dollar signs.
Now, are other states also going to start pulling fiber to add to the existing dark fiber, so we can continue to be ready to serve rural A
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Mark Shuttleworth (Score:3, Insightful)
People often forget too that downloading at that speed is dependant on hard disk throughput. You'll struggle to get above 50MB/sec which is about 400MBit a sec.
Re:Mark Shuttleworth (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if you're intending to save it to disk. Streaming multiple HD video streams (one for you, one or two for your kids) etc. etc. will use gobs of bandwidth with zero disk activity - and is only going to get larger (3D, 4K-resolution, etc).
Granted, you'd still have plenty of room left over in your gigabit, but I'm sure we'll find something useful to use it for. (Astronomers working from home? :)
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, they could. So what? Instead of Comcast, Cox, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc, Google can get their stats direct. Yes, there's a much bigger pipe, but you and I are still generating the traceable data as fast as we can.
Of course, I see another possibility for this. You know how many of these ISPs are trying to make providers pay for "preferred" access? Maybe Google is seeing this as a way to ensure net neutrality in the market, or possibly turn the tables. We shall see if it makes it far into the market, and if it ends up making a real difference.
I, for one, would welcome such a bandwidth overlord.
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But it is cold and it snows and I am don't live there.
I sent the link to my local government and hope they will do something with it.
Part of me hopes they pick some small towns in the midwest right now only get's dial up. But I don't live so the truth is I hope they will pick here.